We don’t often write about our musical preferences, and certainly don’t spend a lot of time tracking all the new content that flows into the iTunes catalog. There are, after all, “over five million songs” there now. But it seems like some of them have disappeared.
Above, you see the cover of a Maroon 5 EP called She Will Be Loved that I downloaded in part from the iTunes Store last year. I’d provide the URL and link, but when I click on the iTunes Store arrow, I get this message: it’s not available any more.
That’s seriously odd, considering that one of Maroon 5’s songs, “This Love,” was apparently the Store’s “most downloaded song” at some point in time. That’s when I notice that the band’s entire, 4x+ platinum album, Songs About Jane, is gone from the Store too, except for four key songs and edited or remixed versions. And the Kanye West remix of This Love, the special track I downloaded from iTunes, is entirely gone as well.
The semi-good news is that iTunes is selling a brand new, absolutely excellent track called Makes Me Wonder. Well, sort of.
iTunes has the video for Makes Me Wonder, which I surprised myself by paying $1.99 to download tonight after catching a lower-resolution version for free on YouTube. To me, a decent quality version of the video was worth buying. But iTunes Store users without 5G iPods are already noting the absence of a music only single, posting comments like, “where’s the 99 cent song we can play on our non-video iPods?”
Great question. And where are the rest of the band’s prior album-style releases? Could this have anything to do with the band’s affiliation with Universal Music Group—responsible for posting the video clip to YouTube, snagging a Zune royalty deal from Microsoft, and apparent thorn in Apple’s side? Perhaps someone out there knows the full story, or wants to sleuth it out if it hasn’t been documented already.
Update April 24, 2007: Songs About Jane has returned to the Store, along with a pre-order for the band’s new album.
