Why I'm never going to buy another CD again!

I'm pretty pissed off.

I'm one of those people who downloads music from pirate bit torrent sites. I've downloaded A LOT over the years. A quick check of my hard disk says I have 932 albums stored on there, plus a gazillion more individual tracks. But I'm also one of those people who supports music and whenever possible I will buy the album on CD if I actually liked what I downloaded. I probably have the largest CD collection amongst all my friends. Moving house would be a heck of a lot easier without boxing up all these moldy plastic discs.

I tend to be fanatical about certain genres of music or certain artists and buy EVERYTHING, but unfortunately, nearly all of those artists are dead, and have been for decades. So not a lot to buy these days. Contemporary music, with only a few exceptions, has absolutely no relevance in my life anymore. I hate to say that because I used to live and breathe all kinds of contemporary music. I played music. I wrote music. Well, I still do, although it often gets put on the backburner when 'real life' takes priority. I listen to music all the time. But the music the majors are pushing these days is, well, rubbish. Music has become a business, no longer an art, and that's a shame. Of course this has been going on since long before I was born, but even as a teenager I could smell pre-packaged teen pablum the second I heard it. I wonder if kids today can? I hope so. These days there's little distinction amongst new 'major' artists. My company, BehindTheBeat, strives to avoid these kinds of artists. You'll notice even the 'major' artists we've featured are generally of a much higher standard.

Today, when practically everyone you see has white iPod buds hanging from their ears, I prefer listening to other people's conversations, or birds, or even - nothing. I never really got into the Sony Walkman craze, and the ipod/mp3 craze is no different.

I've only purchased 6 CDs in the past 18 months. One was Brian Wilson Presents Smile, possibly the greatest album of his career. It's brilliant and there is such a history behind it, and the man, that you can't help but love the guy for finally overcoming his inner demons and presenting such a beautiful gift to the world.

Last week I purchased Paul McCartney's Chaos and Creation in the Backyard. Very close to his best ever album in my opinion. For once, his lyrics are strong, and boldly head into new areas for Paul. No more "Say you don't love him, my salamander" - which was a great song ruined, in my opinion, by insipid lyrics, any sadly typical of a lot of McCartney songs. I still love the guy. And the songs on 'Chaos' are top notch. The production is solid. A brilliant album. Love it.

Yet I've never EVER heard the CD. Or rather, I can't hear it. That's why I'm so pissed.

The record companies finally seem to have developed copy protection which prevents any CD players I own from actually playing the disk. Not in the car, not on the computer, not in the CD player, not in the Xbox, not in the notebook. Nowhere. I even googled for tools to rip the disk and found none which worked. Obviously someone has managed to rip it, because the only version I have heard is a somewhat less than perfect MP3 rip which I downloaded from The Pirate Bay.

This is not the first time this has happened. I now have 3 or 4 CDs I've never been able to play. I have always felt I was doing the right thing by supporting artists I like by buying their CDs. Now I feel like such a fool. Buying legit music online, besides not being available where I live, and not being priced sensibly, apparently leaves even less money to artists. So I still can't consider that option. If record companies want to sell these useless shit CDs I'm outta here. I have no sympathy for their plight - I hope all record companies die. Sorry Paul, next time I'll just download your new album. I won't be buying it. I tried to do the right thing, but...

Funny thing is, I would have just ripped the CD to MP3s on my hard disk and played it from there, and then filed the original CD away in a cabinet somewhere. CDs are so old-tech and inconvenient these days.