Artificial barriers cause real business loss

When I discussed Universal ditching DRM (but not on iTunes yet) I stated that I was ready to buy the entire Cure back catalog as soon as it was available online. I thought that I was ready to go with this when I found that everything Cure was now available on the Amazon store. Unfortunately when I tried to purchase I discovered that the downloads are only available if you have a US credit card. Living in Australia I obviously don't have one of these so my quest to give Universal money was thwarted.

The Internet is the medium that allows distribution without barriers. For a product like music every extra sale is added profit. While the music companies are finally starting to listen to some of the people that actually know what they are talking about, but they still insist on trying to control the market. If there is one thing most likely to drive people to alternative markets then artificial restrictions to the legitimate ones. Thousands of years of smuggling operations have proven this.

Maybe the advances in sanity that the music industry has started to show, there may be hope that they will actually start delivering their product in a method that suit their customers. Then we only need them to find their way back to good music.