One of the major benefits of the iTunes Music Store is supposed to be the ability to buy any single (in the inventory) without having to buy the whole CD. But this really isn’t the case. In my extensive perusal over this last week, I have found that many “top singles” can not be bought without buying the entire CD. For instance, try buying Don McClean’s legendary hit ‘American Pie’ as a .99 single – no dice. You must buy the entire album. Also try buying the Eagle hit ‘Hotel California’ – available on a few different cd’s – same thing. You must buy the full cd. I have found easily a dozen or more instances of this.

One of the major benefits of the iTunes Music Store is supposed to be the ability to buy any single (in the inventory) without having to buy the whole CD. But this really isn’t the case. In my extensive perusal over this last week, I have found that many “top singles” can not be bought without buying the entire CD. For instance, try buying Don McClean’s legendary hit ‘American Pie’ as a .99 single – no dice. You must buy the entire album. Also try buying the Eagle hit ‘Hotel California’ – available on a few different cd’s – same thing. You must buy the full cd. I have found easily a dozen or more instances of this.

Now, I understand why this is, the artists don’t want you to buy just the popular single and not the rest of the cd – but these are some of the best songs produced. Isn’t it just THIS REASON people want to buy only a single tune from a CD? Isn’t this why people turn to P2P systems? To avoid buying the entire Madonna CD?

Hopefully Steve Jobs will work this out but he should have been a little more clear up front. Yes, it would have been less “impactful” to say we’ve got 200K songs available for individual purchase, except for some of the very best, most popular tunes – but it would have been the truth.

All in all I love the store and have bought a half dozen tunes so far and am currently plotting future purchases. It’s a definite success thus far and I hope it does Apple very well.