I’ve just come across the Rickie Lee Jones MP3 store. Rickie Lee Jones is the singer/songwriter who brought us the sexy, sublime Chuck E’s in Love back in 1979. Now she’s the biggest artist on sale at Great Big Island, where you can buy both CDs and MP3s. The percentages are not stated, but it seems that the musicians get a much larger slice of the profits that they would from iTunes or other legal download sites.

I like the idea, especially as there is no troublesome DRM to contend with. However I would much prefer files without the lossy compression of MP3, especially since these are a barely adequate 128K. Robert Fripp’s download store can do it; why not Great Big Island?