Still, try as I might, it’s not always easy to give Apple money. Especially when you’re in a different country to them. As most people are aware Apple segments their online stores by country. If you don’t have a credit card issued from a bank in the respective country it’s almost impossible to purchase from the store. This is the case even if your credit card will otherwise work in that country (as mine does). Why does Apple do this? I’m sure they’d blame the rightsholders who license content for the store and maybe they’d be right. I can’t help but think it’s a nice way for Apple to extract maximum value from different markets.

Now I’m a believer in both the power of globalisation and the power of the Internet and I’d be damned if some artificial trade barrier was going to stop my monetary transaction. Also, and more importantly, music is cheaper at the US iTunes Store. This is the case even when you take into account the Australian dollar-US dollar exchange rate. After my last foray into downloading from iTunes I was also eager to give it another whirl and see for myself if those download problems weren’t first day jetters after all.

First step was to try to create an account at the store. I knew it probably wasn’t going to work but I felt it was worth a try. But nope, no sooner had I entered my credit card details than Apple informed me no can do. Not put off I moved onto Plan B.

I was aware that not so long ago Apple had started taking PayPal payments. Well, I had a PayPal account, I thought. It was connected to the Australian subsidiary but they weren’t to know that. Turns out they were to know that. I didn’t progress any further than I had with my direct credit card attempt.

Now it was time to tap into the vast data store that is the Internet. With Google at my side I tried looking for sites talking about purchasing from the iTunes Store in the US. If there are any doubts in your mind as to how US-centric the web is try that search on for size. I had more luck finding information on purchasing from the Japanese iTunes Store. You could almost see Fate chuckling at me.

It was MetaFilter which came to the rescue with their excellent and answer subsite. A bright spark there explained iTunes Gift Cards could not only be redeemed by those outside the country but could be used to set up an account without an associated credit card. My prayers had been answered! Or almost answered. There was one small snag. It turns out you can’t buy iTunes Gift Cards for the US store outside of the US. Gift cards in other regions are tied to their version of iTunes. I’d known it was too good to be true. And then I remembered eBay.

Blessed, blessed eBay: where you can find almost anything for sale. And there they were! Two US$15 iTunes Cards for about US$34. Sure there was a markup but it wasn’t much and the guy was willing to email me the codes. Instant gratification! I quickly paid my knight in shining armour, set up Outlook to check for new messages every minute and waited. It didn’t take long. Soon the codes were in my inbox and almost as quickly punched into the iTunes Store. Oh, sure there were a few extra steps. I did have to create an identity for myself in the US. I do hope Apple doesn’t actually try to contact the phone number I provided. Unless they want to order a Domino’s pizza, that is.

So I was in. And what a rush! There was something almost illicit about it. My hands trembled as I looked over all that I could purchase. For some reason it hadn’t occurred to me that I would now be able to purchase not only cheap music but movies and television shows. I could download episodes of the Daily Show! The excitement in the room was palpable.

Still, as tempting as it might have been to order a TV show or a movie (Oh my God! I just remembered they have old Law and Order episodes!) I told myself to remember why I was there. I was there to purchase music. This was for science. I couldn’t let myself be distracted by the bright lights and vivid colours of Pixar’s movies. Clicking on the iTunes Plus link I delved further into the shop.

I already knew what album I wanted. It was the Queen Greatest Hits CD I’d seen on the Australian store for $20. $20?! Ha! Who did they think I was? Joe Average Knucklehead? I wasn’t going to pay $20 for something that came to me down an Internet tube! At least not when it was possible, at least in theory, to get the very same content for a lower price.

Unfortunately Fate hadn’t finished laughing yet. See it turns out in Australia Queen’s music is licensed by EMI. But in the United States its handled by Hollywood Records (who distributed through Universal). Since EMI is the only major label to agree to selling its music DRM-free this meant that while I could buy Queen in the iTunes Plus format in Australia (so long as I didn’t mind being milked) I couldn’t from the US store. Aren’t intellectual property laws wonderful!

But not being able to download the album I wanted was only a minor inconvenience. There were still plenty of other fish in the sea. I like AIR and noticed they had released a new album. After briefly checking out some reviews to ensure it wasn’t another 10,000 Hz Legend I clicked to go to the checkout and start downloading.

Now the last time I downloaded something from iTunes it was not a pleasant experience. Komala assured me this wasn’t typical of regular usage and I’m pleased to confirm she is correct. The downloading began straightaway and went off without a hitch. In about five minutes or so I’d sucked down the whole thing and it was only sheer restraint that prevented me from grabbing something else.

All in all, this time around the whole thing was very positive (once I’d set up the account that is). It was more contrived than it ought to have been for 2007 but such is the current state of intellectual property. With any luck the new Amazon store that’s set to launch later this year will make this whole process a lot easier. In which case I’ll give up fighting to give Apple my money. I don’t like Steve Jobs that much.

Well, maybe not. I’m sorry to say that my first experience with the process wasn’t particularly positive. First step was to upgrade to iTunes 7.2. I’m not sure why this is necessary but long ago I stopped questioning why various iTunes upgrades were required. If the Mighty Steve issues a dictate I obey it. With iTunes updated I moseyed over to my iTunes account (up until this point only useful for downloading album art) and ‘enabled’ iTunes Plus. ‘iTunes Plus’ is what Apple is calling their sans-DRM files. As well as sporting improved portability these files are also encoded at a higher fidelity than the old 99c ($1.70 if you’re unlucky enough to be a member of the Australian store) ones did.

OK, so far and so good. Downloading a 30 MB file isn’t the most user friendly experience in the world but it could be worse. Rest assured, it got worse.

Just as an aside: Is there no way for Apple to make their software more modular? Perhaps I’ve become spoilt by Firefox’s automatic update system (which, coincidentally, is updating itself as I write this) but frankly, if you’re a major developer producing software in the year 2007 and you require me to manually download your entire program every time you fix a bug you’ve screwed up somewhere. It shouldn’t be this difficult.

I digress. The next step was to see if there was any music I actually wanted. Luckily for me EMI is the big music label based in England and controls the works of a number of English artists I like. I recently listened to a dynamite live set from Arctic Monkeys on Triple J and decided their new album, Favourite Worst Nightmare, would be a good one to experiment with. Purchasing music on iTunes is notoriously easy and after adding Favourite Worst Nightmare to my shopping cart it was all I could do not to toss a few other ones in there as well. When I’m in an actual store and I have CDs in my hands they have a certain weight – the weight of responsibility saying, ‘You can’t afford all this music.’ But online there is no weight; it’s effortless. I don’t even take out my wallet so there’s no moment where I realise this is my grocery money I’m spending. Luckily I was able to hold firm this time but who knows what will happen if more labels start to add their music. What of Amazon’s upcoming store? If I can purchase music at US prices… well, I might never be seen again.

I say ‘might’ because I’m not particularly looking forward to using the iTunes Store again. While things up to this point in the story were relatively positive it quickly went downhill when I tried to actually download the music I’d purchased. You see, when you purchase songs in iTunes it automatically begins to download them. Or so the theory goes. For me it was a little less with the downloading and a little more with the endless waiting. While the download appeared to initiate it didn’t seem to want to go any further than that first step regardless of what I did. Occasionally one file would randomly download while another complained that the network connection was timing out. Deciding maybe it was just slow I left the computer on overnight and went to bed, looking forward to listening to my new music on the train to work in the morning. Unfortunately my early morning commute was without musical accompaniment. I awoke to find the download still pretty much where I’d left it – going nowhere. Since a torrent had successfully downloaded overnight I knew the problem wasn’t that the connection had dropped out.

I tried it a few more times and was able to get most of the songs from the album barring four or so. Not quite the replacement for going down to the old record store. I tried again 12 hours later upon coming back from work and met with varying degrees of success. Again, some files whizzed by while others stagnated. One track in particular, ‘If You Were There, Beware’, is still refusing to download as I type this. I’ve grown so desperate I’ve emailed Apple technical support in the hopes of a resolution to this problem. I’ll let you know how that goes.

All in all, not exactly the type of experience that fills one with confidence. I want to like this. It’s what I’ve been waiting for it for years. I guess I can wait a little longer.

So why I am missing music? Well to be more specific I’m missing two things: Australian music and new music. Although the latter eventually tends to make its way over here it’s still not uncommon for ‘new music’ in Japan to be months, if not a year or so, old. This varies greatly depending on the artist and the record label and there are occasions where almost the opposite is true. Having said that, though, Australian music rarely gets to Japan unless it’s played in an iPod commercial. This makes me very sad since back in Australia my radio station of choice was the ABC’s ‘Youth Network’ Triple J. For those reading this who aren’t very familiar with the Australian radio landscape Triple J is to MTV what the Village Voice is to E! Entertainment Television.

Triple J’s specialities are Australian music and new music. Unburdened by the requirements of a corporate network (the ABC is the government-funded broadcaster in Australia) Triple J was free to play music without needing to worry about whether it would be popular or not. That a great deal of music would eventually find its way onto the commercial networks was testament to the programming skills of the boffins working at Triple J. Still, there’s plenty of music that for whatever reason would never get any airplay were it not for Triple J. It’s this music in particular – obscure Australian hip-hop for instance – that I was most missing.

So I like Triple J. I’m sure some of you are already heading to the comments section as you read this to let me know, ‘Mike, you can stream Triple J to your heart’s content. You can even do it in mp3 format.’ Yes, this is true. After initially only supporting Real Media and Windows Media streams Triple J also streams all their content in mp3 format (you can listen to it here). This would almost be good enough were it not for my iPod. As it stands a great deal of the music I consume listen to is on my iPod and needing to be chained to my computer just doesn’t cut it.

I like to think it’s here that a lesser man would have simply given up and thought, ‘There are more productive things I can do with my time.’ Not I. Sure, there’s plenty of things I could be doing but if I used that as the criterion for deciding what to do I’d never attempt anything stupid. Having lacked a project I could really sink my teeth into I decided that the only sensible thing to do in this situation was to set it up so that I could record the Triple J stream and listen to it later. When I say it like that it hardly sounds difficult at all, and indeed that stage took me all of about 10 minutes hunting on the Internet to come across Streamripper.

Realising there was still a good deal of Friday (and possibly Saturday!) left I decided that wasn’t enough. Recording the stream into an mp3 was kind of useful but it was still sitting on my HDD. Would it be great, I thought to myself, if instead of having to manually import it I could get it added to iTunes automatically? Hell, yeah! In fact it’d be better than great. It’d be frickin’ awesome. And if I owned an Apple laptop instead of an Acer one another five minutes probably would have seen the end of this story. One of those sleek Macbook Pros still alude me, however, so despite the hard work of ‘Doug’ and his ‘AppleScripts’ this was a road I was going to have to walk alone.

After having a look around it became clear that the best way to do this was with the assistance of Dircaster. Although not the best written piece of code it looked sturdy enough for what I wanted. But then I started to get ahead of myself (as I am want to do). When I imported the podcasts I wanted them to include all the neat sort of information and to be properly titled like they would be in a professional podcast. Since the Triple J stream doesn’t send information about the broadcast (like who the DJ is or what the name of the song playing back is) I’d have to add this by myself. I then started looking around for a way to edit the tag information of mp3s via the command line (since I wanted this to be something I could schedule Windows to do in the background it needed to be all command line-driven). It took me quite some time hunting with Google until I came across the rather simply named Tag.

After setting Tag up and working all the bugs out I imported my test track into iTunes only to discover, much to my frustration, none of the information had been imported across. Opening up the original mp3 in Winamp I could see the information there. Then I noticed the information was all in the ID3v1 field. Checking that Tag text file again I noticed that its ‘support for multiple standards’ was limited to ‘reading and removing’ ID3v2. Well what good was that? I may as well have been editing the data with Paint! My search commenced again without delay and eventually I found my way to metamp3. Hoorah! Here was what I was looking for: an ID3 editor that wrote ID3v2 tags.

Now as I mentioned above I really wanted this to be all done through the command line so I could write up a batch script that would automate the entire process. Unfortunately this meant handling the FTP transfer to my web server using Microsoft’s FTP program. After wrestling with it and its awful, awful, awful documentation I managed to get the file from point A (which is to say, my HDD) to point B (the web server) only to discover on retransfer back to my computer that it was all garbled. At this I threw my hands up in the air and decided to just download another FTP client.

However, no sooner had I done this than I realised this was all moot. The stream I wanted to record most of all was Richard Kingsmill’s 2007 programme: a three hour broadcast on Sunday evenings of the latest music. Three hours?! At 128 kbps?! Why didn’t I think about this first?! A file recorded in that quality was likely to be close to 180 MB or so. Not only would that take forever to both upload to my web server and then download back to my computer but it would exceed the storage space I have.

It was at this point that I could think of only one thing: shit. I’d spent hours on this already, far too long to give up. It had been my intention to avoid permanently running an HTTP server on my laptop but desperate times called for desperate measures. Still, there was one thing I knew. If I was going to run a web server all the time I sure as hell was going to make sure it was small. Eschewing the more popular Apache I decided to have a fling with the awkwardly named lighttpd. Only problem was that the web site hosting the Windows installation was down. For hours. (It’s back up now.) This wasn’t going to stop me, though. Searching around Google’s cache I discovered the files were mirrored.

I now thought I was near the end of the road. It was mid-afternoon by this point and having been working on this for a few hours I thought my quest had finally come to an end. I mean what could go wrong? Plenty could go wrong, it seems. The most major being that lighttp wouldn’t work. Or to be more specific, it wouldn’t work as a background process. It worked fine as if I ran it manually but I didn’t want to do this. I wanted it to be hidden so I could forget it was there. In the end I tried everything short of compiling the original source code myself. You can’t keep an idiot down, though, and I saw this for what it really was; not a reason to give up on such a pointless exercise, but as a hurdle, to be surmounted as one would surmount any hurdle: in short shorts (it was very hot yesterday).

In my search for a mirror of the Windows version of lighttpd I had come across a Hungarian version for Windows. Dismissing it as not worth my time I reconsidered, thinking perhaps I had been too harsh on the Hungarians. After all, plenty of good things had come out of Hungary. None that I can easily recall but, shit, if American Samoa can employ people to run its Office of Tourism (although evidently not a web designer) then Hungary must have produced something worth writing home about. Feeling a new found connection to my Hungarian brothers I dove into the WLMP Project. (Oh, and I note that the English version of WLMP now appears to be working.)

So, with my trusty Hungarian version of lighttpd working as it was supposed to (thank you Budapest!), with PHP already installed, with Dircaster… dircasting I was surely close to the finish line. Time to run a test version. Not that there’s anything that could go wrong. I mean it worked before. I hadn’t done anything special. Even the Hungarian version of lighttpd was working like it was supposed to. This was just going to be a quick once over before bed. Just fire it up, run that batch script and — and, oh, look… Dircaster doesn’t work anymore.

Yes, in spite of the fact that Dircaster had been working just fine up to this point it decided now it had had enough and it was throwing in the towel. A better programmer than I would probably have looked upon this as a challenge. I looked upon it with tears. Why couldn’t it just work? Why was this all so hard? I had a file that I wanted to import into iTunes as a podcast. Why can’t iTunes just periodically check a folder? Why must I be on a Mac to achieve this awesome feat? Why Steve, why?!?!

There were a lot of questions but I knew no answers would be forthcoming. No, there was only one way out and that was to fix the Dircaster script myself. Pushing the thought of sleep from my mind I fired up my trusty text editor and leapt into the fray, inserting debug statements everywhere to try and work out what was going wrong. Now while I hold a degree in computer science I don’t think it’s from a very good university so it didn’t surprise me that this rather simple bug took me all of about an hour to track down. To be fair to me, it was late, I was tired and it’s always difficult reading someone else’s code. To be honest, the code was very well documented and I am just not very good. Still, I did eventually find the solution and with a quick ‘delete’ it was done. (Having fixed this problem there was still another few alterations that I had to make but after having done that it finally worked.)

I went to bed knowing that in spite of a day that had otherwise been a complete write-off I could go to sleep knowing that on Monday I would be able to listen to the dulcet tones of Richard Kingsmill while I went to school: a joy I knew no one else on the train would be stupid enough to even bother attempting.