I miss my music

At the risk of sounding too much like a hipster, I have always enjoyed discovering music outside the mainstream. Now this isn't because I like to appear to have some sort of private insider knowledge that I can flaunt, I just like discovering something new that I can enjoy. I never understood the mentality of people who only listen to the radio station that plays only the songs they listened to as a teenager. What is the point of listening to music if you can't discover? I love finding new music and a love sharing it with others. Years ago I had an odd mix tape given to me by someone (and more is the pity that the era of sharing mix tapes is a fading idea) of music that was primarily from albums that were more popular in Europe than in the United States. The music was fantastic and I used to listen to this mix tape so many times that when it eventually broke I found myself disappointed to know that I'd have an almost impossible chore ahead of me in trying to replace it. Most music stores I could access did not carry any of these bands.  Fast forward more years than I care to admit to.

It is now the day of the internet and instant gratification. I found myself humming some old familiar songs and I decided to revisit some of them. I began searching Youtube for some of them just so I could hear these songs once again. Then I ran into a problem with one specific band.

The band in question was pretty popular in Europe but not so much in the USA. Oddly enough I found a few songs from them and their videos that played here, but not the one song I wanted to hear. I kept running into "not available in your region." I even found the video in question on the Brazil and German mirror sites for MTV but the entire band was absent from the USA site. This was getting silly. People get upset about the Great Firewall of China or finding out about Egypt or parts of the Middle East censoring the Internet and here I was, in the United States, getting boxed in myself. I wasn't trying to watch anything profane or subversive. I wasn't trying to infringe upon the copyright of the band. Heck, this video was apparently legally available for public viewing all across the globe . . . except in my country.  How is this sort of service protecting anyone? Are hordes of Youtube viewers really in danger of destabilizing the world as we know by doing something radical like, I don't know, listening to a song that is relatively obscure in their country and possibly start a new market for it? What's worse, it's not only a more or less pointless distinction to make as to where my computer is located, it's also a fairly easy distinction to fake.  Do these people realize that all it takes is a five second search to find an appropriate proxy that gives an acceptable location. This is the 21st century, people. On the Internet no one can tell which country you are from . . . or if you're even human. Actually, I have my doubts about some of you, but that's a post for another time.