Great, a lot of people thought, but why go through the hassle? I can download all the albums that I want from certain buccaneers and get the same files without the hassle of registration. So they went and did that. Some, of course, used the Radiohead site but the number of downloads from alternative sources kept rising and rising.
Now, there's Coldplay. They're putting a new album out soon (I guess it's called "Viva") and now offer one song ("Violet") for download as well. Great move, Coldplay. But why are you forcing me to put in an e-mail address, zip number and country? Why do you care?
I mean, couldn't you just put a download link there? Now I have to get a throwaway address just to check out whether it's worth all the hassle because I'm most definitely not giving you my data. Especially not if your great Privacy Policy states:
Your personal data, in aggregate, non-personally-identifying form, may be provided to other carefully selected third parties for marketing, advertising or other uses.
Screw you! That's what's wrong with the industry and it seems to be what they're not getting. Downloading music is easy, fast and hassle-free. Yes, it is being made illegal in more and more parts of the world but that's not really stopping anyone from doing it, is it?
So, nice try to both Radiohead and Coldplay but it's just not enough.
Dennis
