the delta machine dilemma

this feels really odd for me…

…a new depeche mode album came out yesterday, and for the second time in a row it’s not a big deal to me.

now, it’s not that i’m not a fan or have grown out of ’em. far from. i’m not nearly as fanatical as i used to be (posters, getting records multiple times just to have different colors of vinyl or different countries of release), hell i don’t even really buy hard copies of the music any more – i did the big fancy shmancy box set for the last release in 2009, and then just did iTunes downloads of the big remix one in 2010 and of this one in 2013…while i might get the CD eventually (they do sound better than MP3s, although vinyl sounds all the cooler so i might go that route) this marked the second occasion of something that, years ago, woulda made me SUPER happy…

…i got it a bit in advance, all be it quasi-legally.

this time i only got it a week early, and i think (guarantee) that it was because a week prior to its release they started letting people stream it on iTunes, which makes it pretty easy to dupe and record. i was able to download super clean copies of all thirteen basic tracks last monday night (my pre-order is, not surprisingly, the expanded edition with four bonus songs, but one was already released as a b-side so i paid fifteen bucks yesterday to hear three new tunes) and i’ve been enjoying it ever since.

so why didn’t i cancel the pre-order and just pay five bucks for those three tracks via amazon who will part out such stuff versus iTunes which will make them “album only”?

because i believe that you should pay artists for their work. plus it’s three more songs, right?

well, not so much…in the course of writing this (which is taking place on saturday morning, to spoil some of the magic) i (for shits and giggles) went back to the site where i downloaded the regular album tracks last week, and was able to get the other three. hell, now i don’t know if i’ll do the pre-order or wait a bit…