Napster vs. iTunes

Electronically delivered music is something I'm adjusting to.  As a self-labeled music snob I'm still mourning the downfall of the album. 

Music in an electronic form is something I tolerate only because I don't (yet) have a surround sound system hooked up to a turntable.  (My uncle does, and the best Christmas present I received last year was curling up with a glass of good wine after the rest of the family had gone and listening to The Rolling Stones Let it Bleed album on vinyl.  From the beginning riff of Gimme Shelter to the fadeout of You Can't Always Get What You Want, I had chills.)  An electronic track goes in your ears, but the sound is canned, perfected, too bright.  Vinyl picks you up and hurls you back through time, taking you with it to the studio or onstage.  You feel the energy, the rhythm thumps in your chest until you can't tell the music from your heartbeat.  But I digress.

Despite my Luddite tendencies, I've reluctantly come over to electronic music to pick up some tracks because it's easier.  I have a song in my head, and two minutes later it's on my computer or iPhone.  I use iTunes, and have since before procuring the phone, and am likely to stay with them.

I'm old enough to remember Napster in its original incarnation, when it was free file-sharing, and resented it then.  "How can you dislike something free?," you ask.  At the time, and still, some of my favorite artists were not insanely wealthy rock stars but new-ish, struggling bands whose members didn't live luxuriously and who owed their labels plenty in recoupable debt.  One hit does not always bring a windfall.  One of my favorite bands, Semisonic, is somewhat known for their ubiquitous 1998 hit, "Closing Time," but it didn't make them rich.  Drummer Jacob Slichter wrote an eye-opening book, So You Wanna Be a Rock & Roll Star about their years before and after Closing Time.  It isn't all fortune and partying.  I didn't really mind Napster happening to bands like Green Day and Matchbox Twenty, it didn't hurt them, but I felt some righteous anger at what amounted to theft from nearly-starving artists.

I could be accused of holding a grudge, but today's Napster isn't much better for me.  I like to download music and listen to it on several devices: my work computer, my laptop, my iPhone, and even burned on CDs to listen to in the car.  (Yes, I still do this.)  Paying a subscription fee, when I'll sometimes go weeks without downloading, and only being able to listen on a computer with its heinous sound quality aren't features that appeal to me.

iTunes does charge per track, but it's mine.  All mine, to use how I like.  iTunes also rips the rare CD I buy from my favorite artists, adds them to the queue and allows me to transfer the entire album or just a track or two.  I get mine, my favorite bands you've never heard of get theirs.  And that's as good as it gets, without being on vinyl!