Why do you guys make it so hard to take my money?

Now that I’ve calmed down after a very frustrating evening yesterday I am pretty sure I can have this little rant without getting too riled up – but no promises. You see, last night I decided I wanted to buy some tunes as I had a sudden urge to play some music of one of my all-time favourite band Flash and The Pan. That’s okay I’ll understand if you don’t know who the hell that is; although AC/DC fans might know since it was Angus and Malcolm Young’s older brother, George, who started the band. Anyway, I wanted to listen to some of their stuff but at the same time I decided that I would see about buying MP3 versions of their albums.

So off I head to Google to search up some music sites that might have any of their music for sale. I had to go the Google route because neither Amazon or iTunes accepts PayPal as a payment method (and to nip it in the bud – iTunes will not let you open a store account with PayPal BTDT so leave it alone). Now I will say the the results looked pretty promising and I had high hopes that I might even be able to pick up all their albums. Then I started going through the results getting madder and madder as I went.

First off whose bright idea was it that you hide your payment methods until after you have forced some poor unsuspecting sap sign up to your raggedy ass music e-commerce sight? You deserve to be taken out back of the outhouse and slapped right silly – seriously – I’m not joking. When you do this one has to wonder what other bullshit you are hiding on unsuspecting customers plus on top of that; from this point on I couldn’t care less if you had every single piece of music I wanted – you’re not getting my money.

Like really, is it so hard to be up front and honest and let people know before you put them through a pointless signup procedure what payment methods you allow. Along with that what is this subscription stupidity and making us use some piece of branded software so we can even download our purchases – if we can make any. Here’s the thing – I want to drop buy when the urge hits – this month or maybe next month or even in five months – buy a couple of albums; or songs, and be on my way. I don’t want to have to pay you each and every month or use your software to download what I do buy. Guess what – you’re not getting my money either.

Like what is this crap at Napster where they say you can keep the music for as long as you are a member – WTF you mean if I stop paying for a membership my music is toast? I can’t believe that people would willingly fall for this crap at $10.00 per month or $120.00 per year and then for whatever reason down the road they quit paying; only to find out they no longer have what they paid for – bullshit!

Then you have eMusic which is billed as the cooler alternative to iTunes which it might be but I’m not going to be forking over $11.99 per month for a membership; especially since if I don’t make use of my download allowance for the month it is gone – no roll-over for ya sucker. Guess what eMusic – none of my money for you either.

What is so hard about letting a person drop by a site, find the music they want, enter in their payment info, pay for what they want and then download it?

There is no need for memberships unless it is purely for the customer’s ease of use – not a way to build up a database. You don’t need to know who the hell I am or where I live. You’re not sending me anything in the mail so you don’t need my address. I don’t need any special software in order to download my purchases unless of course you are incorporating some sort of DRM or watermarking. If that is the case – bye bye.

By the way, if either Young or Vardas would like payment for some Flash and The Pan albums I found email me. As for the rest of those music sites guess what – you lost out on making some money last night and for the rest of my music purchases. In the spirit of Twitter – you #suckit.