First thoughts:
- Why the hell does this look like OS X when it's running on Windows? I'm sure Jobs strokes himself whenever he sees the burnt chrome effect, but frankly it looks like arse against my carefully chosen WindowBlinds skin. If I wanted Windows to look like a Mac, I could... but I don't. Stop it.
- Who's fruitcake idea was it to have the previews stop if you navigate away from the page you picked them on? I realise most are only 30 seconds, but I can easily be wanting to move on before it's finished. Plus, it would be really useful to queue them up as I'm moving around.
- The previews leave a lot to be desired. The one second preview of the Scissor Sisters' “A Message From Ms. Matronic” seems somewhat shorter than is useful really - even in light of the track being 31 seconds long (and, in all honesty, who's going splash out 79p for it anyway? You might as well give it away) On the other hand, previews don't seem to scale up past 30 seconds, even for long tracks like Genesis's Supper's Ready. Perhaps the worse example is the preview of Steve Hackett's Dance on a Volcano which showcases 30 seconds of the very very very quiet intro. If there was any noise around - like, say, a pin dropping - you'd be wondering if it wasn't broken
But on to the meat of the issue: could I buy from the US iTunes shop? Well - sort of... maybe... if I had a US-addressed credit card I could. Odd thing though was I couldn't set up an account on the Irish iTunes without an Irish based card either. Moreover, the songs on iTunes.ie are somewhat cheaper (10p or so) due to the current exchange rate between the Euro and the Pound.
Be interesting to find out if this was entirely legal under the EU's laws.