Fun with downloads

One of the composers I used to listen to a lot about 30 years ago is Joachim Raff[^]. Truth be told I only had one or two of his symphonies and I never got around to buying them on CD when I made that change.

But I never forgot his music, especially the 5th Symphony 'Lenore' and I have, of late, been regretting the lack of Raff in my collection.

You can imagine then, my delight at discovering that the entire 5th Symphony is available for download from MSN music for a mere 99 cents (plus tax). As proof that the business people behind MSN Music are just as much sticklers for 'business rules' as anyone else I note that the download consists of 6 tracks. One can purchase individual tracks for 99 cents each or one can purchase the entire album, for 99 cents! I wonder how many individual tracks from that particular album they've managed to sell?

So I shelled out the shekels last night at about 9:15 PM. The last time I bought an album as a download, three months ago, I was listening to it within about 2 minutes (gotta love unlimited broadband).

27 hours later I have 184 copies of the first movement of the symphony and it's stalled. Can I listen to any of those 184 copies? No sir I cannot. The license hasn't yet been downloaded; when I try I get sent to a screen that offers me the purchase of the track for the aforementioned 99 cents or gives me the option of saying I own the track. Since I've paid for it I reckon that options the one to choose. It then tries to download the license and stalls.

I suspect it may be WMP11 - that previous successful purchase was done through WMP10. However I don't feel, right now, like uninstalling WPM11, rebooting, installing WMP10, rebooting and trying again.