When Bunnies Attack

The Record Industry’s Decline (Rolling Stone)

I think in the past two years I have bought maybe 3 CDs. Three. However, I think I’ve probably purchased several hundred songs, music videos, and TV shows through iTunes. Why did this happen? Simple:

The record companies pissed me off and I swore never again to buy a CD.*
(Unless I couldn’t find it on iTunes.)

I buy music and video media all the time. I am an honest customer of The System. I don’t pirate. I don’t mass-distribute via peer-to-peer networks. I don’t even steal lyrics. But I feel like an enemy of the state when it comes to walking into a record store. I mean, I get past the physical security mechanisms, I stand in front of racks of CDs to find the one I want, then when I take it home I have to break through the stupid CD wrapper, then there’s the two or three super-sticky labels which keep the CD case shut, then there’s the FBI warnings all over, and THEN I put the stupid CD in my player and it won’t play. Oh, wait. That’s because they’re trying to use a non-standard CD format so that people can’t rip it off in CD-ROM drives, but now you’ve just rendered the CD unplayable. And it gets better. I pop the CD into my computer and instantly it tries to start installing software onto my computer to “assist” me in playing it, nevermind that it’ll monitor your every move and consume system resources, and it might even try to “phone home” once in a while.

I repeat: I am a legitimate customer. I don’t need this s##t.

So I stopped buying CDs altogether. Instead, I turned to iTunes. I bought an iPod. 60GB, nice big screen, decent headphones bundled with it. I click onto the iTunes store, I do a quick search, and in about 3 minutes the entire album is downloaded. I play on my computer, I play on my iPod, I even play in my car. I take it to work, I load it onto my iTunes-playing Motorola SLVR phone and I go jogging. I’ve consumed music albums, podcasts, audiobooks, music videos, and TV shows. It’s easy, I have multiple backups, and it’s very very portable. F##k the CD. I’ve got my solution.

I find it no wonder why the music industry is suffering. I am not amazed to hear brick-and-mortar stores closing—I’m a little misty-eyed, but it was more of a pain to go there anyways.

The kicker: I hope what happened to the music industry happens to DVDs. Give me all my content as a download and I’ll be happy to never buy a DVD again as well.