Practicalmadness

The new Belle and Sebastian album, The Life Pursuit, is out today in record stores, shipping now from Amazon.com and available for download via Emusic. However, it is conspicuously absent from the iTunes Music Store. What the crap is this? I can get something on fucking Emusic before I can get it on iTunes?

Emusic is a competing service that gives you copious downloading for a low monthly fee — in my case, 40 songs for $10/month — but only offers music from indie labels. Which is great for when you’re looking for Sufjan Stevens or anything from Matador Records, but less useful after many of the indie bands one likes get signed by the majors.

It’s also historically been my impression that while iTunes is the shiny new cineplex downtown, Emusic is the ancient $3 theatre up in my girlfriend’s neighborhood — that they don’t get new releases until they’ve had a week or two in brick-and-mortar stores and on iTunes. Cause, like, why would one pay $10 or more for an album when they can download it for $2.50, unless they actually want the physical CD for their collection? Granted, I’ve never bothered to check them for new releases, so that may have been a bad assumption all along.

Anyway, the album: it’s all right so far. I liked the single (“Another Sunny Day”) when I downloaded it from Matador’s website last month, and I still like it. Other than that the album isn’t sticking with me yet, but that may change.