Click to buy?

You may (or may not) have noticed that I’ve made it so that when you click the album art, you’ll be brought to a page where you can buy the album. I’ve done this because as you already know, supporting artists is something very important! I can’t force you to buy albums but if I tell you about one you like, the least I can do is a give you a link, helping you to take the next step. I feel I must stress this very clearly, DO NOT FEEL OBLIGED TO BUY FROM THIS PLACE. If you have a preferred shop then BY ALL MEANS, buy from there! These links are only there if you have no particular preference or can’t find the album elsewhere. The shop I link to is called Red Eye Records and I do so for the following reasons:

• This is the shop I go to to buy music so I don’t feel hypocritical by sending you there
• It stocks a wide variety of music, including the abstract international acts I talk about, as well as the unknown Sydney bands
• It has reasonable prices
• It exports to all over the world

However there are a few downsides

• I only ever use the physical shop which is located in Sydney and have never used it’s online store so can’t tell you how good it is
• It’s an online shop! Like any other online shop it caries the associated risks. It’s up to you whether you’re comfortable with this

While I feel obliged to give you that warning, I can’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be safe. The physical shop acts professionally so without a doubt the online section will be reliable also. The safety issue a universal issue and while internet shopping is pretty much always safe, you never know. Payment is by credit card though they do offer other options such as Direct deposit which is my personal preference.

The other main problem is it’s a bit ugly, being purely text based. This really annoys me as many other sites have easily visible album art and tracklistings. However it’s superior range means it’s about the only store that stocks what I talk about. The only other option would be JB Hi-fi who have a nice looking site and a large range though it falls a bit short. I’ll be pursuing this option but for now I’ll stick with Red Eye Records.

My eventual hope is that if people actually use this, I could ask to have a sub-page within whatever site I partner with which displays all the albums and artists I’ve talked about in one simple, organised area, making it nice and easy to buy. On top of this I could ask for a cut of the profits which could go back into the site (it won’t be long before this site starts losing me money) but this all depends on whether people use it or not.

In the near future I’ll be making a purchase to test it out but basically I just wanted to let you know that the option is there, should you choose to use it.