A couple days ago I was at a local retail store perusing CDs and came across a couple CDs I was curious about. One of them was Return of the Champions by Queen. The live concert with Bad Company frontman Paul Rodgers. I was curious how he did singing the late, legendary Freddy Mercury’s vocals. The price of the CD, $22.95, made me pause, so I didn’t make the purchase. My secondary plan? Find it at the legal online stores and listen there first.

Turns out that was easier said than done. As of this writing here are the online music services I checked and results:

iTunes - not available yet.
MSN Music - not available yet.
Napster (we are currently subscribed to their monthly plan) - not available yet.
MusicNow - not available yet
Wal-Mart Music Downloads - not available for download, but I could buy the CD from Walmart.com for $19.88.
Amazon sells the Return of the Champions Queen DVD (affiliate) of the concert for $14.99 and the Return of the Champions CD (affiliate) for $20.99. Interesting Queen tidbit (affiliate, emphasis mine below) from Amazon Top 50 reviewer, Darth Kommissar:

This album was released not long ago (at the time I write this review), so availability should be no issue if you want to purchase it. I was dissatisfied with the packaging, though - rather than a jewel case, the band did one of those cardboard packaging jobs. Because of the way it is constructed, the liner notes can fall out rather easily. Take my advice - get the album at Best Buy, because you get an exclusive DVD if you buy the album there.

That’s something, one of Amazon’s top 50 reviewers is saying not to buy it online at Amazon, buy it at Best Buy instead!

MusicMatch - required account creation with credit card to search song database? Forget it.
puretracks - not availablet yet.
passalong.com - not available yet.
Yahoo Music Engine - not available yet.
Yahoo Launchcast - yes. I gave the album five stars and Yahoo Launchcast started playing within three or four songs the song The Show Must Go On.

I stopped searching at this point. Seemed like Launchcast was the best choice to be able to demo the album (full songs) in any capacity. The free version of Launchcast is more like a radio in that you can’t put in the exact order of songs and you have to deal with audio ads every couple songs. Upgrading to Launchcast Plus ($3.95/month) gives you unlimited skipping. There is a 7 day free trial.

Still, to actually buy the CD, I’m being pointed by online back to the retail store (Best Buy). Sure, this is only one recent example of a prospective customer’s adventure interested in a CD, wanting to sample the CD and possibly buy for download, and finding the online music scene inadequate. Yahoo Launchcast was closest to the mark, but all the other music services, including iTunes and Napster which we are already paying a monthly subscriber for, didn’t have the specific CD I was interested in.

The online music scene needs to have everything the retail stores has and more. 1.5+ million songs doesn’t help if the one new CD you see in the store isn’t available buy/download online. If I have to order the CD, why not just buy it in the store and be able to take it home right away and rip/burn it?

I realize iTunes is all the rage online, selling tons of songs, but I still haven’t bought even one song from them. They had a chance today and the result?

Lost sale.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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