A few weeks back, Leonard Cohen’s new album was pre-announced and I went to the “Leonard Cohen Global Store” to buy it. They had a special offer of an extra free track available for download immediatelyif you pre-ordered the MP3s. Which I duly did.

Unsurprisingly, I couldn’t find a link to download the free track anywhere but I wasn’t that bothered and waited for the album to be released.

I was very disappointed to realise that the Global Store is just a front for Sony Music. So unlike Louis CK, Lenny is only getting a tiny fraction of the money I paid. Given his huge global fan-base I hope he switches to the direct model for the next album and makes the money he is due.

Finally on Monday the album was released and I was sent a link.

The link let me download the free track. No amount of clicking would show me the album. This was followed by to-and-froing of emails with Sony where they were straight-up about the fact that the store was broken. Eventually I was sent a link to this:

Yep, I had to click one song at a time. Also, check out the fantastic layout in Chrome. I was surprised I didn’t see a “Best viewed in Internet Explorer 5 or Netscape Navigator 2.0″ in the footer.

So it took a week to download something legally or I could have spent 2 minutes being naughty. Actually the ideal for everyone would be that I pay the money and then I go to a dodgy site to get what I need.

Sony, EMI and the other dinosaurs need to spend less money hiring lawyers and more money hiring developers, UX designers and people who understand 21st century business models. Otherwise they will be gone the way of the East India Company in the next 3 years. Tick tock.