Darkoshi

In February of this year, I posted about a song I was trying to find for purchase. At the time, Amazon did not have it available as an MP3 on the U.S. site. I found it on the U.K. Amazon site, on one of a series of "Disco Discharge" CDs. Then I found the same CD on the U.S. site too. At the time, I considered buying the CD. I made a note of it on my "maybe sometime later" list.

Fast-forward to November. Now, the CD that I had found before is no longer even listed on the U.K. site. It is still listed on the U.S. site, but from only 3 sellers, each of whom is asking over $100 for it. I didn't like the CD enough to pay that much for it.

However, now the song is also available on the U.S. site in MP3 format, in several versions. There's even a remix!

How much are next-gen music services really paying artists?
Bandcamp: 85% to 90% of sales.
Amazon & iTunes: about 70%.

I was looking to legally buy an mp3 version of a particular song (Margherita by Massara) which was popular when I was a kid.

(I had stumbled across Boney M's version of the song, which subsequently led me to discover the name/artist of the original song which I was familiar with.)

I didn't find the song on Amazon.com - it is only available there on vinyl (used). The song must not have been much of a hit in the U.S.

Since I lived in Germany when it was popular, I then checked the Amazon.de German MP3 site. But again, the only results are on vinyl (used).

Then, since it was an Italian band, I checked the Amazon.it Italian MP3 site. That site didn't have any results for it.

Now, I just thought to check the UK Amazon site... it doesn't have the song for sale individually, but it *does* have a EuroDisco MP3 album for sale with that song included! The other songs on the album sound good enough that I'd consider buying the whole thing.

I wonder why there isn't an Amazon page that lets you search all the country-specific Amazon sites at once...

While browsing other songs on the German site, I couldn't help but notice the Terms of Use link. The Terms state that based on agreements with the music content providers, the German site only sells music to people living in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. ("Wie von unseren Anbietern von Musikinhalten vorgeschrieben, sind Musikinhalte nur für Kunden in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz verfügbar.")

Furthermore, all the other Amazon MP3 sites, including the U.S. one, have the same restriction in their Terms of Use. It is the last sentence of section 2.2:
2.2 Restrictions. You must comply with all applicable copyright and other laws in your use of the Music Content. Except as set forth in Section 2.1 above, you may not redistribute, transmit, assign, sell, broadcast, rent, share, lend, modify, adapt, edit, license or otherwise transfer or use the Music Content. We do not grant you any synchronization, public performance, promotional use, commercial sale, resale, reproduction or distribution rights for the Music Content. As required by our Music Content providers, Music Content is available only to customers located in the United States.

What a let-down.


Well, let's see. The MP3 album from the UK site is sold in CD-format on the U.S. site. The name of the Margherita song is spelled differently on that page, which may be why it didn't show up in my search results before.... Nope, doing a search on that alternate spelling brings up nothing at all, not even this album. Weird.

So, I could buy the CD, and then rip the songs to MP3. It would be a lot easier if I could simply buy & download the songs in MP3 format to begin with.

Apparently, BestBuy.com doesn't let you include special characters in your account password. I tried 4 different passwords, all of which followed the stated guidelines (6 to 30 characters, must include at least 1 number), and yet were rejected. Then I tried one without any special characters, and it was accepted.

I recently bought scent samples from The Mad Poet's Perfumery Menace. Because all of the descriptions sounded intriguing, I got one of each available scent. They are made with essential oils... I've got a nice collection of essential oils of my own, and sometimes use them to make a room smell nice. I enjoy sniffing new scents and combinations of scents; it's like opening a present to discover what's inside. So now I've got a bunch of little presents to open and sniff. So far, most of them have been quite a wonderful experience. I might even take to wearing them on my skin once in a while.

There's some underlying ingredient (I suspect artificial musk) in many commercial perfumes which is off-putting to me, but I don't have the same reaction to essential oils.

I got to wondering about the logic in having some scents marketed as "feminine" and some as "masculine". I'd expect heterosexual people to choose scents for themselves to wear, which are pleasant to both themselves and their existing and/or prospective partners.
Therefore a "feminine" scent should be pleasing to both women and men, and a "masculine" scent should also be pleasing to both women and men. So why are the scents marketed by gender? Why do women prefer a certain type of scent on themselves versus on their partners, and vice versa? If they like a certain scent on themselves, why wouldn't they like it on their partners too?

Or is there a non-cultural bias of men towards favoring certain scents, and women towards favoring other scents? As long as either group of scents isn't off-putting to the other gender, that could lead to a scent divide along gender lines. But that wouldn't explain why a woman would prefer one scent on her and a different scent on her masculine partner.

That seems to simply be cultural... certain types of scent have been deemed more acceptable for women, and other types have been deemed more acceptable for men.

Based on traditional divisions of work by gender... Food scents may be associated with women, because if a woman smells like nice food, that may indicate that she is a good cook. Woodsy scents may be associated with men, because if a man smells woodsy, that may mean he's been hard at work in the woods. Or if he smells spicy, that may mean he's been hard at work in the spice-mines. :-)

This shop on Amazon.com is selling batteries for various cordless phones for only 1 cent each! How can they do that? Are they trying to get rid of stock? Do they make their money off of the standard Amazon shipping charge?
Elsewhere one of the same batteries I was looking for costs between $7 and $16 each.

ETA: After posting this, I recalled a bad transaction I had with the company in question (EMT company) a few years ago... I had ordered a cell phone battery from them, but what they sent to me turned out to be a used battery that wouldn't even hold a charge. So I won't be dealing with that company again.

Don't ever order anything from "Home Trends" or "QCI Direct". They will start sending you a paper catalog every month, and they won't stop sending them no matter how many times you email them requesting to be taken off their mailing list, nor no matter how many times you call them.

The only reply they give to the emails is "What you received is a promotional catalog. As long as no orders are placed out of the catalog, the catalog will stop on its own." It's been a whole fucking year, and they are still sending me their goddamn catalogs. I don't care how nifty some of the things they sell may seem, I will NEVER EVER order anything from them again and I hope no one else does, until they learn to respect their customers' wishes.

Hoo-ray for e-Bay. I found climate control knobs for my car there, which I couldn't find anywhere else. I had bought a generic 3-piece assortment at an auto store, which had one knob that looked exactly right, but turned out to be about a millimeter too narrow on the stem. Since my knobs broke, I haven't been able to even turn on the fan to clear the windshield when it fogs up. Hopefully the new ones will fit and won't break.

I bought a nice-looking dragon fruit at a new Asian market in town, as well as a bunch of leek flowers.