Downlonding Music..... The Legal Way

I received an update from HMV.com.au today about their new launch of Digital music and being mildy interested I thought I would check out what was available. Insterested more in the quality of the Music and the price point I followed my nose into the site.

Sign up was easy enough and adding credit to your account was fairly simple (strange how taking you money off you is always fast and reliable). I plugged in my details and paid for enough credit to get one song (Just under $2). I browsed around looking for a few songs that I'd heard recently without much success... although I could have got Delta or Britney without moving off the front page. Eventually I found a track by Joss Stone that I'd heard a while ago and was fairly fond of but had never got around to buying the album. I click on the buy button and then things started to get a little hairy....

Initially you are presented with a page to download a Music Manager for Windows Media Player. Not really intested in some other add on I looked for the cancel button only to be informed that without the manager I would be unable to buy music from their site (Nicely informed after I'd paid my credit, which you have to do inorder to get an account...)
I proceded with the download only to discover the Plug-in was unsigned and subsiquently blocked by Internet Explorer. I lowered my security settings allowing the file to download only to hit an error with the Windows 16-bit Subsystem (how or why a Windows Media Player Plug in is using the 16-bit sub system I have no idea but apparently it does)
Not to be put off I went and looked at the help site found a trouble shooting tool to check my compatability with the plug in only to be given a clean bill of health.

Stone walled I emailed the support site and will await a reply.

Ironically I could have downloaded an illegal copy faster than this. Something that Music Download sites will need to address if they plan on changing the culture of Downloading music.