This past week I was perusing music videos on the YouTube (which didn’t exist five years ago) and found a new one for a UK band I like called Cornershop. I was surprised – and I then discovered via their site that they had dropped a whole new album last month! It was like Christmas in July and I missed it.
They sold the album directly in MP3 or physical formats, a nice touch. But I hopped over to iTunes and Amazon to take a peek and… nothing. The album was only released in the UK, not here in the US, and Amazon had the import CD for a cool $36. Now, 15 years ago or better, I might have shelled out that cash as that was the only way to hear this whole album.
But thankfully we live in the future. I headed back over to Cornershop’s site, paid the $13 for the album (it was £8.99 – PayPal (which started in ’98) automatically converted the amount for me), and had a ZIP file downloading. Of course, the ZIP file had an issue and couldn’t uncompress. An email to their support address and within an hour I had a fresh and clean download which worked.
None of this could have happened this quickly and easily just 12 years ago, and hardly any of it could have happened 5 years ago. It’s great, eh?
Posted in Technology