The Virtual Line

Just a little while back, I spoke of Simon Reynolds' excellent "Retromania," specifically the passages regarding the changes in how music is consumed and experienced these days. The old models of hoofing it around town, looking for a new release in stores or standing (or camping out) on a line overnight outside of a store just prior to the day of a hotly-anticipated album's release are antiquated and outdated. In our current reality of gadget-assisted immediate gratification, we can scour the internet instead of having to put our pants on and leave our homes. And with actual tactile incarnations of new albums becoming a quaint, unprofitable and unfashionable thing of the past (to some), there's no more fuss and muss. Within a couple of keystrokes, the album is handily downloaded onto the device of your choice (or, I suppose, to an intangible meta-storage space referred to as your "cloud," if I have my facts right).

This is all fine and good (well, no it's not), but I noticed a peculiar hold-over from the old way of doing things. My beloved Killing Joke is poised precariously on the eve of releasing a brand new album, MMXII. From what has been leaked thus far, it promises to be a barn-stormer. I plan on getting my mitts on it (and by "it," I mean the physical compact disc) as soon as humanly possible. The odd thing is that there's an offer to pre-order the album on iTunes.

What's the point of that?

Time was you pre-ordered something so you could get your hands on it first, or at the very least, have a copy reserved (i.e. set one aside with your name on it). That made sense. There'd be a finite supply and the release could easily sell out, and then you'd be left either waiting longer, or trudging about to other outlets, trying to put your hand to it.

With iTunes, though, the album will become available at the appointed time, and -- honestly -- that will be that. It's not like iTunes is going to suddenly run out of it.

Of course, it's simply the music industry's ploy to maximize profits -- stoking the flames of anticipation by creating the aura of rarified, limited supply. ACT NOW!, etc. But it seems so out of step with the rest of the scheme.