This article has been updated. The initial version was, well, dodgy, naff and poxy (my favourite words of the week). Here’s the new one. Dig.

Marillion’s new single See it like a baby is out. Well, kind of. It’s been out all this week as a “download only-single”, ever since monday, but i’ve had a genuinely hard time getting the damn thing for myself. Somewhere else, the single is doing remarkably well. It’s been #1 on HMV’s download charts all week in UK. The single will be a Top-40 on the UK lists for this week.

Lucy, propagada angel of Marillion, listed nine stores where the single should be available if you’re in Finland. Wasn’t there. Checked them all. It was painful. Many carried some old Marillion material, but not the new single. Many did a great job hiding what they had. For instance, when i did a search on marillion on mp3.com, i got seventeen pages of artists who are not Marillion and if the band i was looking for was within that result, i must have missed it. (Update 2007-Apr-02: I still cant’ find it on the net.stores, but FreeRecordShop does get a micro-point by listing Porcupine Tree on their home page as pre-order)

Finally and fortunately, the solution came in a mail later this week. See it like a baby is available on 7Digital. This store was presented, also by Lucy, as an alternative outlet for all the US fans. And heureka, the single was there. Didn’t even take much searching.

The purchase process was remarkably painless. It was almost like a drive-by registration, very efficient, and adding a credit card took almost no effort at all. Downloading went without a hitch. The real pain came when i actually wanted to play the music. Which was in protected Windows media (wma) format. Not good.

First, i thought i’d play the music in Winamp because, frankly MS guys, i don’t really trust you yet. No offence, we just need to get on under better and more trusting terms, but i’m still open for discussion.

Well, that didn’t work out. Winamp wanted to get a license from 7Digital but that failed.

So it was Windows media player after all. But first, the WMP wanted to update itself (which was a red flag for me, since my colleagues have had probs with the latest Windows media player together with Nokia’s PC suite). And accept the Genuine Advantage (yeah right) bits and all whatnots. Then i needed to log in again with my 7Digital credentials. And only then the damn thing would play.

I mean, why does the music publishing infrastructure start with the assumption that i’m the criminal, when i’ve actually gone through the hoops and actually paid for the music? In fact, i’m only doing this as a karma collection for the band — i have the song from a podcast and i will have the full album in a few weeks time. It’s not about having, it’s not even about getting, it’s about a collective effort and throwing fifty cents into the tip jar.

Anyways, as you could read in my next article (strange thing, this editing of older stuff and knowing about your own future….), the collective download effort did pay off and i couldn’t really classify myself as an honourable freak if i hadn’t joined in.

Somewhere else, in about two weeks from now.