Every time I buy a song from iTunes, a little part of me dies. No, not because I'm fueling the music industry's chokehold on artists who create music and pour their lives into it only to get 12 cents to the dollar for each purchase. Okay, maybe I lied, that does bother me quite a bit. The thing that really gets me, though, is buying a song which at one instance of time is out and about in the netherworld of the interweb and the next instant, after a minute of downloading and readjusting itself to its new foreign environment, resides in my iTunes library. I don't ever pick up the CD in my hand and hear the cellophane crinkle. I can't break open the annoying sticker on the case and pull the CD out for its first breath of life. I can't pull out the album liner and pore over every detail of artwork, pictures, and (hopefully) lyrics. No color. No life. Just another transaction across ethernet cables.
iTunes is convenient and fast and really great for those amazing songs on less-than-stellar albums. Also, iTunes gift cards seem to be popular gifts, which I refuse to complain about. If you give me one, it'll take me three months to use it, not because I don't like anything, but because I'll be straining over the decision of what to get. This is where I feel the most torn. I have a convenient amount of money in my account, which will purchase me an album that I've been looking at for a long time. Why haven't I bought it yet? It's not that I don't want it, and I don't really have much else I'm even considering buying, but the fact that I don't get to hold it in my hands and possess the CD, which is really dumb since the only time I use the CD's is to import them into iTunes and in my car, makes me hesitate to buy it. It's all about the music, though, right? That's what I tell myself, and I'd really like to believe it, but it's not completely true. That's what I get for being a visual person. Maybe this is why the idea of records intrigues me; a giant piece of machinery devoted only to playing music, which comes in the form of an enormous disc with an equally large casing and cover artwork, would absolutely complete the aesthetic experience for me. No, I'm not a hipster. I just think it would be really cool.
I think I was born in the wrong decade.
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Jon, I am totally with you. It made me so ecstatic when an artist released a single (to support EDGE OUTREACH) on a record (and digitally to follow the trends). But, it made me want to buy one so bad. Just to hold it in my hands. 4 of the 5 most recent CD's I purchased I had to go buy them at a store....while $10 sits "conveniently" in my iTunes account.
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