It is funny that these "collectors" of less than 100 cd's and twenty albums
they accumulated in high school and college have now decided they "need" a
huge collection of random songs to fill 30 GB on an iPod.  That they'd steal
12500 songs can't be surprising.  It's not like they even turn on their
stereo and turn some friends on to their finds.  It's just music on
headphones.  When they fire up the BBQ, it's strictly to the radio station
the old lady finds least offensive for her backyard (and in her defense, I
don't tend to play The Mono Men when the In Laws swing by).

I've never understood people for whom music isn't as important as other
things.  Like food.  It's always been more than what some guy on a radio
thought I should buy to me, and I'm sure most of you feel similarly.  those
people lost interest after college or high school.  They're going to lose
interest again.

But I just worked on a box that has over 150 500 GB (that's right -
500) drives that spin at 7200 RPM (real fast for that capacity).  This
customer doesn't use it for music storage, but the thing I think about is
that iTunes has got to be thinking that sooner or later their content
providers are going to call "catalog!" on their stuff.  I've walked past
disk arrays that are ten years old in the last week - while that's not the
average, those arrays full of music will perform every bit as well as any
other array over a dial up or basic broadband connection.  I'd bet most
indie music winds up on those old storage arrays anyway.  The iTunes cut
shouldn't be the same from servers and storage that aren't being hammered by
Gwen Stafani's latest video.

I don't really know that the singles audience is ever going to care how much
those songs cost.  I've seen those singles at Best Buy with the single A and
B side and an extra remix for 6.99.  That's nuts.  Are the people that are
stealing 30GB of single tracks really that savvy?  Or are they downloading
whole albums?  If they are the ones that download whole albums, will they
really keep it up after they fill that drive?  They quit listening to new
music once, I bet they do it again.  I can think of several people that will
change their ISP, emails, and even credit cards and they'll lose their iPod
and when they find out it's gonna be in the 100's just to replace it to
listen to while they jog, they won't get back on the bandwagon.

But the kids, they're here to stay.  They shouldn't be paying the same price
for Dark Side of the Moon, which has recouped every cost ever possibly
conceived, when it's sitting on mid tier storage at best.  Labels or artists
should be able to determine what type of storage and speed they will get.
Because that's really where iTunes has their cash wrapped up outside of
marketing.  And if Jaimie is right about 500 downloads, then there's no
reason for that to be on top tier storage and there's no reason he should
have to pay for it (which means WE shouldn't, either).

Plus, I'm no audiophile but I guarantee that every cd made since 1990 or so
that has a mass produced counterpart blows the vinyl away.  A 1983 pressing
of the previously mentioned DSotM is NOT an audiophile experience.  Where
cd's past 1990 or so have generally had great care on that master tape and
they are definitely better than the average major label counterpart on vinyl
in previous decades.  It's too bad SACD didn't take off - wow.  But the
iTunes 128 bit or Sirius or XM feeds - man - they aren't even quite FM
quality and if those are the people that are stealing songs, I think they're
the same ones that had an old Radio Shack cassette recorder in 1977 with a
condenser mic and hoped that it would make an okay recording from a radio
show played over the speakers with the cassette deck on the coffee table and
a very quiet person to flip the tape.  It doesn't work by the way, cuz that
was me.  I think most of them are probably people that wouldn't buy music
unless it could be downloaded anyway.  Is this what the customer is going to
become?

Yuck.  I hope I don't have to join that crowd.

Rick


On 5/23/07, Lee Elliott <blelliott01@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Exactly my point Lee - people want the Monty Python Instant Record
> > Collection -  and they want it now!  And here is me with my CD
> > collection built up over 20 years ... if only I had waited I could have
> > gotten it all for free!  :-)
>
> Ya - used to be "Wow - that's an impressive music collection!" - now
> it's "Wow - bet you feel stupid spending all that money..."
>
> --
> Lee Elliott
>