Good Digital Citizen Fading
I just got the new Green Day cd in the mail. Fine. Although (hypothetically) I already had the music (obtained thru other sources a while ago) I liked the disc enough to buy it. That's the rule I have. If I like. I always buy. Even if I already have. To keep things balanced. (And being like this has let to me buying more cds than I ever would have otherwise so it seems to work). Anyway I bought the Green Day. I get the CD yesterday and pop it in my disc drive on my computer. No music plays. I just get this screen on my monitor:
Hmmm.. ok... No music playing. Where's the songs? Where's the track listing? Just this promo thing for ringtones and crap. I click 'Click Here' and it takes me to some website. So I hit Exit and I just get my Desktop. And sit there. Nothing. WTF? (This happened before with one other cd I bought weeks back. I thought the cd was broken.) So I got into My Computer and 'explore' my CD folder. I see this:
That's it? Where's the music? I click on the Start.exe and it takes me to the popup screen again. I make the CD autoplay it takes me to the popup thing again. I click all over the window to try and get this thang to play. Nothing! Just web crap.
Ok I'm not a super techie or anything but I know a decent amount of computer stuff so I couldn't believe how hard it was to get my computer to play this friggin disc. I tried opening it in Windows Media Player and Winamp. Nope. Finally iTunes understood whatever this CD was talking about. But I don't like iTunes. I like my Winamp! WTF!
Finally I just took the mp3s (that I hypothetically already had on my harddrive) and used those in WinAmp again and put the physical CD on the rack forever. Discouraged with the idea of continuing being a good digital citizen. I understand that music people need to protect themselves by making things more complicated to prevent rippers or whatever- but when it's at the point where I can't even figure out how to PLAY a cd it's getting ridiculous. Maybe I'm the dumb one (or my computer's dumb) but it shouldn't be possible for me (or it) to be so friggin dumb we can't play the cd!
So hello! Hey! Music industry! I bought some music (I hypothetically already had) solely out of moral and artistic respect! And you gave me a headache for my money! Respect is a two way street! Stop putting together junky cds or I might think twice next time... and twice might be one time too many!
Help me stay clean! I want to be good! (sorta)...
ok bye!
tOdd