2 bands I like are releasing new albums shortly: Brooklyn's Yeasayer and Portland's Menomena. This is awesome. In fact, it's so awesome that I went off to go and pre-order both albums. "It's 2012," I thought to myself, "surely each band will offer me a lossless audio download option for their new albums. Won't that be nice?"
And then cold, hard reality set in. Menomena offers a cool t-shirt, a vinyl pressing, and a CD. That's it. Yeasayer offers a big deluxe bundle, a CD + a couple MP3s, an LP + a couple MP3s, and an even bigger deluxe bundle. Neither of them offers a download-only option. Neither of them is selling through Bandcamp or a similar service. Neither of them, in short, is catering to me or others like me who truly want to support bands they love, but are not interested in paying an extra $3.60 (for example) for shipping and handling.
And so, bands, I implore you: please give me a download-only, lossless-audio option for your albums! I will download them. I will not share them illegally. I will even promote them on my blog to all 5 of my readers. Pretty please?
My plaintive cry to this effect was retweeted by Menomena themselves, and subsequently by many others - telling me I'm not the only one who feels this way. So maybe, one day soon, things will change. In the meantime, you can check out an awesome track from the new Menomena album here, and you can stream the entirety of the new Yeasayer album here, thanks to the good folks at NPR Music.
