Listeners also bought

As the digital release of my next album nears I figured I'd do some background research to see how stuff looked for my album that was released back in 2006. You know, get an already-too-late view of where my music stacks up against the pack.

To keep it simple, we'll just look at iTunes: no customer reviews (no news is good news!) and there are songs in the "Top Songs" list so that means that someone has actually used this service to buy my album. The 2nd and 3rd "Top Songs" happen to be the 2 songs from the album that I have available for free download on my website. That makes me think that the model of: give some songs away for free, people listen and love and then buy works.....or that you might just have to do a little more research before buying. Doesn't matter really because I'll never know the answer to this question. I have no idea what models work and which don't. I only know how to make the songs. The business of this is a clusterfuck.

Now the actual reason I'm writing this comes here: Listeners Also Bought. Make your eyes go all squinty and take a look for yourself.


But before I get too caught up in the weirdness of this I want to say that this could be a glitch in iTunes. When you first go to the album's page there is no "Listeners Also Bought" list. It's not until you click off of the page and then back that you see the list, so who knows what's actually happening here. As of today Britney Spears was replaced with The Pussycat Dolls. If this isn't a glitch, there is a 14 year old girl out there who accidentally bought my album. To you, my dear, I hope you find something in my songs that you don't find in most of the other albums you buy that makes you just as happy but in a different sort of happy way.

And just a little bit more on iTunes. It was my first choice when deciding to self-release my next album. I figured that if I could get it onto iTunes I'd be happy enough because I like the product now that they offer iTunes Plus, which is higher bit rates without the stupid DRM. I buy albums on iTunes. I don't buy albums anywhere else really these days. And if I had to tell you what I thought the best song I've purchased lately was well then I'd have to tell you that it's Watership Drown by hollAnd.

Lastly, the new album, it's called Hold Horses (ok?) will also be available at amazon.com/mp3 and eMusic. Amazon.com has the physical cd for my old album but up until 2 days ago it was listed under "Michael S. Downey" so it was basically buried unless someone really really searched for it. I don't know much about eMusic except that it's a subscription service and you can get 50 free mp3s if you give them your credit card number and then cancel it after you get your songs. I don't know, when my album comes out go do that and get it for free and then paypal me some bucks to cut out the middle man. That's just one idea.