Finally, someone understands what music downloaders want…
…and, unsurprisingly, it’s Rhino Records, who’ve already been catering to the music geek community for years with their Rhino Handmade label.
It hasn’t been publicized nearly enough, but if you visit the label’s website, you’ll see a link to a new section simply called “Digital.” It’s not a particularly glamorous section; in fact, the intro only consists of three sentences.
Sometimes great albums go out of print. It’s just a fact of life. Here are some from the Warner Music Group vaults that we’ve brought back as high-quality digital downloads.
The downloads are 99 cents per track, and they cover various genres, but those who’ve wanted to hunt up certain out-of-print discs but couldn’t afford the eBay pricetag will be giddy to hear things like Guadalcanal Diary’s Jamboree, Marshall Crenshaw’s Downtown and Mary Jean & 9 Others, the Dream Academy’s self-titled debut, or the Dead Boys’ We Have Come For Your Children will now have their chance. Selection is pretty limited at the moment, but here’s hoping the endeavor proves successful enough to cause the Warner vaults to be opened wide…
Now, there’s one thing you should note: as it stands right now, these tracks are available as WMA downloads for Windows users only.
Which sucks.
But, still, it’s a start…
I got very, very lucky and scored copies of Downtown and Mary Jean and 9 Others in 2001 for about $12-$15 apiece on eBay and some other CD site that’s surely gone under. God love Rhino for doing this, it’s ABOUT FREAKING TIME someone actually listened to my suggestions from four years ago about using the web to make sure that no album was ever really out of print again. And no one deserves the extra cash more than Marshall Crenshaw and the Dream Academy.
Certainly you can find a WMA to MP3 converter, no? You’re not one of those lowly Mac users are you?