But I do, Radiohead. I really do. Don’t I?
Everyone and their brother’s sister is talking about how awesome it is that fans can digitally purchase the new Radiohead album, In Rainbows, for whatever price strikes their fancy. This isn’t new, necessarily. Jane Siberry has been doing this for years. But Jane Siberry doesn’t have the following that pursues Thom Yorke and his sullen band of musicians. And so, there is no denying that a name-your-own-price major release is big news.
Unfortunately, the ordering process has been a major disappointment.
The news dropped early yesterday, sending fans in droves to InRainbows.com. After clicking through a couple of screens, they are given a choice between the digital download (available on October 10) and a discbox (shipping in December). The £40 discbox will contain not only a pair of actual CDs, but the double-album in vinyl. Purchasers of the discbox will presumably get the same digital access as the download only folk.
So yesterday morning, I kept Firefox humming in the background behind my day-to-day work. Not only was the InRainbows site incredibly slow, but buggy as hell. When it didn’t time out completely, getting to see a download in my shopping cart was a crap-shoot.
Eventually, the gods of e-commerce allowed my selection to go through. At that point, I got to do what had been promised. After doing the conversion in my head from pounds to bucks, I popped in a fair price and clicked a button marked Pay Now.
Then I waited some more. All for naught. It timed out.
So I made another attempt, starting back at the beginning. Select the download, wait, pick my price, wait, and then …
Progress, it seemed. I was on a different URL now, one that asked for log-in information and gave me the opportunity to register as a new customer. I did so. At first, it didn’t like my phone number, but then it did. The next page asked me for credit card information. It looked like I was getting somewhere.
Then I faced a new screen, one featuring the Verified by Visa logos at the top and a disclaimer telling me that the vendor had no control over what might appear “in the frame below.” I’m guessing that I should’ve seen some kind of means of proving myself to be human, but nothing showed. Ever. Firefox just kept spinning optimistically all the while.
Finally, I gave it a rest. Unsure of what exactly happen’d, I sent an email to the customer service contact listed on the second URL, saying in so many words that I’d tried to order and gotten nowhere, so could they give a look see and tell me if I have an order or no.
A day later, no response.
This morning, I took another run through the InRainbows site. It is certainly quicker today, giving little to no delay between pages. In fact, it might be too fast today, because when I selected the download option, the next page said that my basket was empty. But when I refreshed the basket, hey, there it was. However, once I was given another opportunity to give payment information, the next screen I saw was not a confirmation or an order review, but … the empty basket again.
I applaud Radiohead for taking this bold step forward in music distribution, as the pay-what-you-wish model might just be the key to saving the industry, but I really wish their distributing mechanicals would’ve given their ordering system a stouter backbone. Surely they realized how many interested souls would be pummeling their poor server, yes?
Note: I’m stateside. I’d be interested to know if these problems have plagued only those of us who are across the Atlantic.
[tags]Radiohead, In Rainbows[/tags]
