Bad CD alert: Jason Mraz - We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things

Usually if I really like some songs, I would buy the CD to get the best audio quality, flip through the quality packaging, and enjoy the art in the lyrics booklet. Also, some really good artists make their albums a continuous experience with each track smoothly leading on to the next.

Today I got the "Jason Mraz - We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things" album.

So the package was beautiful, with some simple drawings. But, the booklet only contains credits, no lyrics. It's an "enhanced CD", you plug it into your computer and launch an app on the CD, which brings you to their Website. Oh, sorry, you have to sign up for email spam to see the lyrics. Didn't I paid for this?

Next, to load it into my walkman, natually, I launched iTunes and tried to convert it into music files. (AAC, to be exact) Well, lo and behold, iTunes only gave an error message.

Well, that "enhanced" screwed up iTunes. Clearly Atlantic records want you to buy the music AGAIN on iTunes. What did I pay for by buying the CD?

In the end, I found an alternate encoder: XLD, but that's not the point. The point is these record companies are hostile to their customers. Before this, I only blame the slide of CD sells on how there's less good music on the market then before the 90's, and how record companies always throw in horrible "filler" music into an album so that only 2 songs are good, while the other ones are rubbish.

Well congratulations, Atlantic records, you just lost one of the few people who still believe in CDs. Maybe I should stay away from main stream pop music after all.