It’s taken a lot of work to get it where it is.

Interestingly, we still get the occasional person who finds it difficult to use (missed the email, their connection reset, they pressed back at an unusual time, etc) and we make adjustments wherever possible. It goes to show that even though you think something is easy to use, when you try it out with real people everyone has a different perspective.

Also – the one problem with PayPal is that if you’ve _ever_ registered your card details with an account and can’t get logged on then it won’t let you just do a quick payment. In this instance I’ve had to redirect people over to Boomkat who also have an excellent download service and catalogue.

Over the next few months we’re upgrading the service following feedback to supply higher resolution MP3s – eventually I guess we’ll need to move over to supplying lossless downloads for real audiophile buyers.

We’re aware of the ID3 tag issue on a few of the recent albums and I’m in the process of sorting this out… thanks for the reminder.

To go off topic I’m also looking at doing an overhaul of the site to integrate more community features as you’ve mentioned here a few times.

Our first experience of this was ‘spam overload’ which is something to warn your readers about if they’re looking at doing innovative stuff.

Make sure you have a stong spam-protection method. I spent many nights tearing my hair out about writing custom anti-spam systems…. Akismet and is the way.

Enjoy the music!

Re: Amplifier – I simply cannot figure out the bank transfer so I’ve given up, and the chap I asked about PayPal said that the last time they reviewed it, it just wasn’t cost effective to use it, but that they would check again in the near future to see how it looks based on their costs. No comment.

Actually, I should raise one niggle with the Type Records download — and it’s a pretty widespread problem. No ID3 tags on the mp3 files, so the tracks were just named 01, 02, 03… and there was nothing embedded in the file as far as artist, title, album name, artwork, year, etc.

The album cover jpeg file was in the zip folder, so I was able to go back to the site, find the names of the tunes, etc. But it ended up being a ‘more clicks’ process.

Such a shame after getting so much of everything else right.

As an iTunes devotee, I’ve recently started buying music from 7digital (when they have iPod friendly files, that is),and I really LOVE that my files are there to re-download whenever I need to (There is a limit, I think, but the option is there as a worst-case scenerio back-up). They also use PayPal. Cards too, but PayPal is so easy.

Other example, amplifier.co.nz. They sell NZ music to download dammit! Brilliant – but they don’t use paypal. They take international credit cards and bank transfers though. Bank transfers? What century is this? You have to wait for them to clear first! I plan to prod them about giving PayPal a try…

Anyway, cheers. Really enjoying the ‘thing #’ series.