In Digital Music, Multinationals Are Often Provincial

I had a few minutes to kill last night so I decided to head over to Amazon.com and try out their new MP3 download store. Shopping list in hand (okay, onscreen) I metaphorically walked through the doors to browse the racks.

It didn't take me long to find two albums I wanted: David Sylvian's Gone to Earth and Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life, at $9.99 and $8.99 respectively. I dithered for all of two seconds, went for the Stevie Wonder album, clicked the Buy MP3 Album button...

...and there it was in fine print, parenthetically no less: "Amazon MP3 Purchases are limited to U.S. customers."

I can't say I was entirely surprised; this is fairly common when it comes to music purchases, due to the Byzantine array of licensing and distribution deals that are common in the various media industries. (I was, however, piqued that this limitation wasn't made clear before I started browsing -- and Amazon isn't the only online vendor guilty of this time-wasting oversight.) So I kinda understand where Amazon and the music companies licensing their tracks to them are coming from.

But as a consumer, I don't care. After all, the whole point of the digital revolution is that it's supposed to be easier, not harder, for me to get my grubby fingers on what I want. In the pre-download days, I could drive over the border to New York or Vermont and buy a CD if it wasn't available here. The issue wasn't where I lived, but where I bought the disc. In the e-commerce era, that didn't change: I could buy a disc from Amazon.com and have it shipped here.

So, finally, we have the ultimate convenience of downloadable media -- and suddenly, in this global medium that erases boundaries, the formerly porous borders are impenetrable.

Shouldn't there be a better way by now? Shouldn't I be able to buy an MP3 unfettered, while behind the scenes Amazon (or Wal-Mart, or whoever) takes a note of my billing address, aggregates the geographic data of all purchases by region, and then sends that data over to the relevant music companies so that the appropriate distributors get paid? I should be able to buy Songs in the Key of Life here, with Universal's Canadian arm getting their cut.

Is this unreasonable? I don't think so. Ultimately, it comes down to a slightly more complex database than the ones already in use. Also, much of the downloadable music available in the world is controlled by multinational corporations, the very same entities that have the resources to keep track of these kinds of intricacies.

The closest I've come to that kind of flexibility thus far is eMusic, where I download album after album every month, but I can't get Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson's From South Africa to South Carolina. ("We're sorry. This album is unavailable for download in your country (Canada) at this time. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause." Nice of them to say that up front, and nice of them to apologize twice.) It's better than a blanket denial of services, but -- as a fan who's more than willing to spend a lot of money on downloadable, high-quality music -- it's not quite good enough. The last decade has seen a lot of lip service to the idea of global companies, but in some areas they're startlingly provincial.