It’s been a minute since I’ve bought digital music online. Here’s the bullshit I had to go through to buy an album this afternoon:

1. Apple’s Music app (the replacement for iTunes) in its normal state, does not have a visible link or menu item for the iTunes Store. It can be made visible in the Preferences. Why is this?
2. The only visible way to see new music is to sign up for a subscription plan, which I refuse to do. I have enough subscriptions.
3. So I went to Amazon, where the only visible link is a subscription shill as well. I refuse to do this too. Surely there must be a better way.
4. A couple of searches later, I found a CNET article on how to buy and download new music. CNET still exists?
5. This contained a link to a page on Amazon that was not immediately available from my Prime account. Thanks.
6. From here I found my album. I purchased and downloaded it in MP3 format.
7. Now, to get it on my iPhone. I imported it into Apple Music, figuring it would sync. It did not.
8. Another search told me to AirDrop the files to my phone. I did this, and it only put the files in my iCloud Files folder without importing them. I deleted them. The fuck?
9. More searching revealed that I needed to connect my phone via a cable to my computer. How very 2005 of them.
10. I did this, the first time I’ve connected this phone to my computer ever. I had to tell each machine to trust the other, and wait for the handshake.
11. Then I went through Ye Olde Sync screen to manually select the music and load it on my phone. How can this still be the way?

I am aghast at the state of things. I figured surely these days there would be a quicker, easier way that didn’t involve yet another subscription, but this is The State Of Things, I guess.