The last few albums I bought have come directly from iTunes. Despite the convenience of being able to have an album after just a few clicks of a mouse, I resisted purchasing mp3s, etc for a long time for a variety of reasons, restrictive DRM being chief among them. However, since iTunes has dropped DRM and I'm now the proud owner of both a Macbook Pro and an iPod (I know, fast on my way to becoming a fanboy), I felt more comfortable buying mp3s. However, when Triptykon announced that their debut album would feature an extensive color booklet with artwork by HR Geiger, I knew I had to get a physical copy (Note: it looks like you can download it at Amazon but not iTunes). I mean, I get all the great artwork plus a physical backup of my purchase should my hard drive and iPod somehow simultaneous bit the dust, right? Oh how wrong I was.
I came home from Saturn (basically the German equivalent of Best Buy) with the disc in one hand and some Turkish baklava in the other. In short, I felt how God must feel when he's about to hear new work from Tom G. Warrior AND eat a tasty treat. As I have no other means of playing CDs, I put the disc into my computer. After a few whirs and clicks, my beautiful, new CD was spat out mockingly by my computer.
Upon closer inspection, I noticed that the bottom of the CD was black like that of a PlayStation game. Curious to see if this had anything to do with it, I googled "'black cd' macbook." Sure enough, there were quite a few forum posts of people complaining about not being able to read black CDs on their Macbooks. However, the majority of them were complaining about not being able to use burned CDs. Something really smarted about buying the fancier, more expensive version of a product only to have it not work. At present I have found no solutions.
Frustrated, I downloaded the album in a manner that would definitely be illegal had I not purchased the CD and hopefully is considered understandable given my current predicament, although I'm sure if the RIAA reads this they'll try to have me water-boarded by Toby Keith and Dick Cheney. I almost feel like posting a whiny comment on the band's myspace, although I'm sure thousands of CDs have already been printed and of course this really isn't the band's mistake but Apple's.
Moral of the story: if you own a Macbook and want the new Triptykon album, you'll either have to buy it on Amazon or get a turntable and buy the vinyl edition.
