Love/hate iTunes Store

I've been an iTunes fan since the moment it was released. I used SoundJam prior to iTunes, the app that apple's software was based on originally. I have all my CDs in my iTunes library, have gone through three of four different iPods over the years, and used to buy lots of stuff from the iTunes Store. My current iPod has almost 10,000 tracks, the vast majority ripped from my eclectic CD collection. I thought for a while I would stop buying CDs, since I now could find almost any album I wanted for $9.99 or less (sometime more). However, since January 14th 2008 I have not bought a single song from the iTunes Store, and am resisting out of a matter of principle. I bought an album a couple of days earlier: The Stars at Saint Andrea, by Devics. For the first time since I had listened to a song on the iTunes Store, I experienced several poorly encoded songs. I contacted the support staff to report a problem. They credited me for the five songs that clicked and hissed, and reassured me that in a matter of weeks the problem should have been corrected. Now, six months later, nothing has changed. Until those songs are fixed I will continue my resolution to only buy music in the forms of CDs, and also only buy them from a local, independent music store. Perhaps I should consider Amazon or eMusic.

I'm also peeved that Apple still has many DRM'd songs. Plus, I wanted to get Radiohead's Pablo Honey, which is the only Radiohead album I don't own, but refuse to buy anything that is tagged in bright red as Explicit. I could not believe it when Apple did this with some Lloyd Cole songs I bought a couple of years ago. A nice way to kill interest from customers.

I'd rather still be buying stuff from from iTunes, and me staying away will not affect their bottom line, but I did write an online review warning people to stay away from this album until the issue is fixed.