iTunes Store pre-orders going to extremes

I love the iTunes Store. Not only has Apple’s five-year foray into music sales saved the music industry from itself, it’s created an entirely new type of music buying experience which has encouraged me to not only buy more music, but to branch into new artists and genres in a manner that the traditionally genre-segregated record shops never did. In fact I’m such a fan of the iTunes Store that I’ve purchased more than fifteen hundred songs through iTunes in the past five years, only opting for a physical CD in the rarest of circumstances.

And the reason is simple enough: browse it, listen to it, and if I like it, buy it…all with no more effort than, say, looking up the latest sports scores. The straightforward nature of iTunes is a big part of the reason I spend so much time meandering around the virtual store, grabbing music as I go. Like a song? Buy it for a dollar with a single click. Like the whole album? Buy it for a single click as well. Not only is the pricing more than fair, it’s so simple that nearly everyone understands how it works. Any time you can fully explain a computer-related activity to a non-technical person in one sentence, you’ve got a winner. But I’ve noticed a trend within iTunes lately which has given me pause.

In my iTunes Store browsing over the past month I’ve noticed an increasing number of albums being made available for pre-order. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose. If there’s a new album coming out soon that I know I’ll want, I can go ahead and pre-order it, ensuring that I’ll end up having it on the day it’s released, thanks to the friendly iTunes reminder via email. But Apple might want to be careful about just how frequent, lengthy, and vague these pre-orders become, for fear of overrunning the place.

Earlier this month I noticed that the new Smashing Pumpkins album was the fifth-best selling album in the iTunes Store, but when I clicked through to check it out, I found that it was still a week away from being released. If nothing else this served to demonstrate just how highly anticipated the album was. But what I found strange was that a week later, after the album was released, it still occupied the same number five ranking on the album sales charts. The very idea of an album selling as many copies before it’s available as it does after it’s gone on sale makes me a bit uncomfortable for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on, but this alone is certainly no reason to condemn the idea of pre-orders.

But then KT Tunstall went and released her new album for pre-order and got me all excited until I realized that if I ordered it on that particular day, July 16th, I wouldn’t receive it until September 18th. Uh, no thanks. If I really want to order an album now and receive it two-plus months later, I’ll just order it via Amazon’s free super saver shipping (doing so rarely takes much longer than a month and a half). Sorry, but I just can’t make myself plop down money for an album which two months of waiting might make me lose by desire to own it. It’s not that I think I won’t want to album by mid-September. It’s just that I’m not sure I want to make that decision now. On the other hand, I routinely buy tickets for concerts months in advance, so I was thinking maybe my concern with pre-orders was more my problem than anyone else’s.

Then it happened. I encountered an iTunes pre-order which confounded me to the point where I thought my head just might explode and I was finally forced to conclude that Apple has indeed taken the concept just a little too far. Take a look at this particular pre-order, which I also spotted on July 16th:

Let me see if I have this straight: I’m supposed to buy this album now, and aside from the fact that one of the thirteen songs is from John Mayer, not until I download it a month later do I get to find out which of Live Earth’s “various artists” might be making an appearance? I’m all for the Live Earth cause, but even when it’s for charity I think I have to draw the line at pre-ordering an album when iTunes can’t even tell me which artists or songs might be on it.

My advice to Apple: keep it simple, guys. It’s what’s worked for the first five years. That straightforward simplicity is what has given the iTunes Store eighty percent-plus marketshare in the digital realm, and it’s what has elevated iTunes to the point where it sells more music than all but two retail chains. It’s bad enough that you can’t accurately explain this iTunes Plus nonsense to the average user without making them more confused than when you started. Let’s not add to the confusion by putting albums up “for sale” that won’t really be for sale until months later. And for crying out loud, don’t try to get me to pre-order a mystery album with no clues as to who or what it might contain.

The iTunes Store has grown into something awesome over the years. Let’s keep it that way.