Alas, another great music resource has left us. CDNow.com, the once great internet CD superstore and information warehouse, has sold itself out. CDNow is now running their opperations through the once-competitor Amazon's e-business site.

Why does this matter? Because CDNow was the most complete, relatively accurate, well organized source for any and all information about any CD's which were anything more than obscure. For the past 4 years, CDNow was my one-stop resource for CD track listing, track times, sound clips, release dates, discography information, artist / producer information, and (snide) reviews. Also, the highly linked database nature of the site let me find an artist on a CD and see whatelse that artist had done, browse by record label, or search by title, artist, album, and more.

Oh, and you could buy CD's there too. Which I did all of three times in 4 years. Which is why I guess they went under. Um, sorry CDNow.

So, what's left? I turn back to the CDDB only to see that the elegant pure-text, fully searchable, fast, complete interface of when I last visited 4 years ago has been replaced by yet another mainstream-whoring, Amazon-click-through-linking, still-can't-find-the-producer-of-the-Tribe-Called-Quest-album-I-heard-on-the-way-home-like-I-could-on-CDNow, essentially useless interface.

So, what resource do we discography-hunters, band-influence-researchers, and new-music-seekers have? Please tell me there's something out there that compaired to the ever unchanging, ever easy, ever rock solid interface of my 4 year relationship with CDNow. Oh, and maybe I'll buy some stuff through them instead of supporting my favorite local record store (which, by the way, can get anything from CDNow, and more, in less time... which is why I shop there).