downloading music - if it worked

Been to EBGames lately? Yeah - the signs are plastered all over their stores - buy a used game and get a PIN for 10 free song downloads. The on-line store turns out to be Puretracks. Dunno if you also buy frozen pizzas or anything like that but from time to time they give out coupons for free songs too ...and yes, those are also from the same subset of Puretracks.

And for the most part it's a great idea for publicity. But the problem is that as a subset, I hardly ever find anything of interest. And worse - I walk away with the distinct impression that that's all there is that Puretracks can offer me. Now I could be wrong (I'm not going to waste my time going to the actual Puretracks.com site to prove myself wrong), but that's their own damn fault for pissing me off.

And on top of that impression - I also have cultivated a distinct hatred for the web server engine there. Puretracks just damaged the reputations of all online music stores in my view. That is, if one store can't get their shit right, what's to prevent other stores from having the same buggy software running the show? I just spent an hour browsing their meager offerings attempting to find 10 songs I was remotely interested in. Mind you, this was for free music - imagine if I were looking for something to pay for? And then I went to click on the Checkout icon everything went south - firstly at one point the cart wouldn't refresh (switching between a full cart and an empty one). Then clicking checkout revealed that the store had tallied the full 35-track double-album I had previously accidentally clicked (and thought I had removed). Then upon logging in a second time later in the evening hoping to rebuild my shopping cart, clicking on the Checkout icon this time dropped me back to the main home page and zero items in the cart!!

What the hell - they can't even give this shit away. I'm not even imaginative enough to make this shit up, either.