Beck’s new album Guero was released on March 29th, 2005.

• At Amazon, Guero is $10.99, has 13 songs, no DRM, comes with some extra paper and plastic and you’d have to take a few minutes to rip the songs to MP3 before listening (what? music can play from a CD?! How retro!).
• On iTunes, Guero is $9.99, also has 13 songs, some mildly annoying DRM limitations (but good karma?), doesn’t have any paper or plastic to collect dust around the house and comes pre-ripped to protected AAC.
• A very easy to find torrent of Beck’s new album is available on nearly every BitTorrent tracker I checked. It has 16 songs including 3 labeled “bonus track for Japan”, no DRM, no plastic, no paper, was encoded at a bit rate higher-than iTunes and downloads faster than the CD could be ripped.

To be fair, Amazon is also selling a Special! Limited! Collector’s! Edition! and iTunes has an exclusive set of remixes. The special edition with the DVD is $29.99 $23.99 and contains the three extra tracks plus four other remixes currently unavailable on iTunes but are all over the p2p networks. The four iTMS remixes are iTunes exclusives and not available physically, but are also available via p2p.

Legitimate users lose out. Saddled with DRM, offered fewer songs, price-gouged and treated poorly. Music piracy is never going to get better until the best stuff is given to legitimate users first and easily. No more bonus tracks for Japan or “collector’s editions”, give the good stuff to iTunes. The music will always escape. Might as well encourage and reward people for doing the right thing.

Vader/Leia’s Law: “The tighter you clench your first, the more star systems will slip between your fingers.”