As you know, on Monday, I started my online hunt for Rubyhorse‘s Fell On Bad Days ever since I heard it on the season finale of Rescue Me. Usually, my search starts and ends on iTunes but this time I came up empty. My next try was a P2P application (note to musicians: put your shit on iTunes or we’ll download via P2P) but that also came up empty which is not really a big surprise as this is relatively an unknown band. Unrelenting, my next try was the MSN music store. I had heard about it on the blogosphere and wanted to see if they had it, and surprisingly enough, they did! After setting up an account, I downloaded some required DRM software and then I started downloading the track for a buck. From here the frustration level started to go skyward.

I donwloaded the file which was a DRM wma file. I use iTunes now as my primary playlist application and of course, a DRM wma file doesn’t play in iTunes (just as I suspect a DRM aac file doesn’t play in WMP). iTunes automatically converts wma files to mp3 files in order to play them, but it can’t convert a DRM wma file. My only option was to burn the wma file to CD and then convert it back to mp3 using iTunes. So I burn the single file to a CD and then iTunes, for some reason, read it as Gaither & Hall; which is some gospel group (here’s a screenshot) although the file was actually Rubyhorse. I’ve never had a problem burning AAC files to CD and haivng them show up with correct information, for some reason, WMP10 completely messed up the mp3 info and labeled it this Gaither & Hall. Thanks WMP!

During this whole frustrating experience that would have sent an everyday PC user’s rage gauge to red, I asked my friend to see if he could download the track from his P2P application that he uses. Before I was done burning the CD, he emailed the song to me and get this, it sounds BETTER than the version that I bought from the MSN music store.

Overall, the MSN music store isn’t really a bad thing if you live and breathe in the Microsoft world, but as soon as you want to step outside of it, then things start to go bad. In reality though, the bigger problem is DRM’d music. It’s a nightmare for the customer, it locks you into using a proprietary format that you have to have a proprietary application to use. Yet another reason why P2P applications aren’t dead.