I try to stay reasonably late twentieth century with my technology. But until recently I was stuck in music hell—no iPod, lousy NYC radio reception, no cable TV music channels, no satellite radio, and one cheap-o five-disk CD-changer on a tiny desktop stereo. I just couldn’t find time to load my piles of CDs onto the computer and was baffled by file formats, software, and listening gadgets.
Then it happened! I felt a light poke in the keister while riding in a cab. It turned out to be a low-end, discontinued model iPod with no identifying marks that would help me return it to its previous owner. The world was telling me something. So I installed iTunes, bought a cable, bought and set up a half-terabyte external drive for the PC, and over the holidays I ripped all my CDs in one fell swoop. Friends laughed, but I was proud. And my little hand-me-down iPod, a gift from the universe, has my phone and email address scratched on the back.
Now I’m like the rest of the world, with (according to iTunes software) approximately fourteen days, nine hours, twenty-three minutes, and four seconds of music on my hard drive. And in keeping with the rest of the world, after the first few days of novelty, I was tired of all the music I owned (except Dylan). It’s the iPod-era equivalent of the old cable TV conundrum: two hundred channels and nothing to watch. There was a reason all those CDs had been gathering dust in my room. At least now they’re gathering dust in my basement, and only taking up space on my drive.
I care about music, but I want music novelty. I don’t want to own more hard media, don’t want to rip off artists by pirating, and I also don’t want to buy mp4s that I may only listen to three or four times.
Streaming media was the answer and has become my main source of listening pleasure.
Internet-based free or fee-based music services have been around for years but were pretty clunky. Now they’ve improved dramatically and are well worth exploring.
PREVIOUS PAGE
