In preparation for the release of new GreenDay CD today, I fired up the old iTunes store last night because I heard there were bonus and exclusive track available if you pre-ordered it. Sure enough there was. There were two bonus tracks (that can still be purchased separately) and 2 additional bonus tracks that were only for people that pre-ordered. They were two covers of Who songs. Not that I’m a big fan of the Who, but getting 4 bonus tracks for free was appealing. So, I clicked on “purchase album”. Nothing happened. I clicked again, same thing. I figured maybe the page wasn’t loading, so I hit the “home” button to back to the main iTunes Store page. The featured ad was still there, touting the inclusion of said bonus material, so I clicked on it again. Nothing. What the hell was going on? I tried another tactic, I searched for GreenDay in the search box. I found the artist, then found the album. It still said exclusive/bonus/preorder, so I clicked “purchase album” again. Then I got an error. Not a normal error either. A big, giant red exclamation point saying simply that “The iTunes store has had an unexpected error: please try again later”. What the hell?

So I quit iTunes, restart, and try it again. Same thing. Then I realize something. It’s 11:04pm, central time. Midnight on the East Coast. It’s no longer the 14th, it’s now the 15th. Since it’s the 15th, I can’t actually pre-order something that’s been released. I go back to the iTunes store, search by artist, find the CD and this time select the regular, non-bonus CD. It starts to walk me through the purchase process and I nearly loose it.

The iTunes store had updated the CDs status from “preorder” to “purchase” while I was looking at it, eliminating the version of the CD I was trying to buy. I can’t buy a CD with pre-order only songs if I’m not technically pre-ordering it. The only problem is, they left all the ads, albums and descriptions up. I checked back at a little after midnight (central) and they were still up. The big “pre-order” button was still featured on the homepage.

So, fuck the iTunes store. You know what I did? I went to Target, my go-to for everything these day. They opened at 8am, had the album displayed in a big “new releases” rack, complete with a deluxe 2-CD edition featuring not only the bonus songs but an entire bonus 6-track Live CD, for $9.99! So, fuck iTunes. Fuck it and it’s pre-ordering bullshit right in it’s $14.99 face. Midnight on the east coast is NOT midnight to ME. If I was waiting at a store for a “midnight” release, I’d have to wait one hour longer than my east coast counterparts, that’s just how it is. Just because it’s the 15th in one time zone doesn’t mean it is in all the others. What if I was on the west coast, that would have been 8pm. That should have left plenty of time to preorder it if I was living in Cupertino. If we’re going to ignore timezones so completely, why couldn’t I “buy” the full release at 6pm? That would be midnight in Europe. Asshats.

Luckily, the only things I missed out on were the two Who cover tracks, which, to no ones surprise, are now floating around on a torrent raft in the middle a certain notorious body of pirate waters. Double fuck you iTunes, complete and total fail. Ha!