Two thoughts relevant to the issue:
Welcome to the monopoly economy. The defining factor is a narrow selection of services that all effectively serve a narrow slice of the same product without any defining difference. It is the "illusion of choice."
And second, this point highlights a bit of my pet-peeve. If you lose the convenience of *instantly* buying something, then artists and labels would have to make more adequate numbers of releases. I am old enough to remember buying international mail orders and posting letters for releases which might arrive two months later. Yet they always did. These days, I have instant payment options and can't find many releases 24hrs after they are posted (sold out).
Lastly, I have always been envious of the IBAN transfer system in Europe. Here, in the USA, transfers are charged exorbitant fees (i.e. minimum $15 each regardless of amount). Why more people don't utilize this in Europe is foreign to me. PayPal--as an American company--makes some sense when you weigh the options. While it is, I agree, immoral to hold moneys that can be transferred instantly for up to a week, it is still better than paying the fees associated with instant transfers.
Personally, I would be very happy to send Postal Money orders as I did in the 20th century, but I expect no one would have any stock to fulfill my orders because they all want to be superficially "underground."
