You lose out in the end.
Too often I am confronted with this message:
That message is not the vendor's fault (I've contacted them). They are simply not allowed to sell me, the South African, that offending record, because the label has some territorial distribution deal with... the UK... Patagonia... the mystical "Africa"... whoever and wherever I am lumped under this week, and they cannot allow me to legally buy (yes, pay for) a digital copy. If I want it, I have to haul my arse to whatever local store *might* sell the cd... or order an import....please, I beg you, what does a record store look like? I haven't been to one recently.
So this message goes out to (in this case), Secretly Canadian, because I wanted to download Odd Blood by Yeasayer. I was shown the message in question. I could've skipped the next step, but to be fair, checked whether Yeasayer is one of those bands I might still buy a physical product (also called a compact disc) of.
Time passed...
Nope. Sorry, Yeasayer's not one of the chosen 10 artists I still buy cd's of, which is a pity, I would've liked to listen to Odd Blood. Alas! they fall into the category: digital downloads. Which, if some 1980's way of music distribution prevents me from getting a legal copy, means tough luck. And tough luck has many possible implications, none of which involve the band being fairly compensated. So I'll rather move on and buy something by... hmmm... oh, yes! Melt Banana. Because it's available to me.
And I just remembered, Secretly Canadian signed BLK JKS, the band I drove a mere 15 minutes for to see live two years ago, before they became world famous, and in the process their music (specifically After Robots) not available to me, back in the ZAR, via digital download.
This turned out longer than I intended. All I wanted to say is: "Hey, labels! Recording Industry! Wake Up!"
No comments:
Post a Comment