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email thisI don't usually make predictions, but here goes: my days of buying physical CDs are numbered if not over completely.
Apple released their online music service today and so far it is excellent. Yesterday I wandered by George's weblog and discovered a couple of great tracks from Nina Simone. Today I bought Nina's music straight from Apple, downloaded right into iTunes, and played it immediately. No wrestling with CD security seals, no ripping into my Mac, and no storing of jewel cases. If I only want a single track it costs a buck. Great job Apple.
Update: I bought a couple of tracks from DJ Shadow's The Private Press, which I pretty much discovered randomly. Turns out to be an old college friend of my buddy Pedraum. Small world.
For iTunes 4.0 users here are links to music I bought:
I really started buying music regularly in the eighties after I quit smoking. At the time I was spending a couple of bucks a day to feed the smoking habit so it only made sense to redirect it into another outlet. One new cassette a week, sometimes two, and even so I was saving money in the long run. Not to mention being somewhat healthier.
Speaking of smoking my brother just quit. It's been a couple of months but I bet it's still a bitch for him. We all started smoking when we were kids, not even teenagers yet. I remember us finding and trying to smoke an old and weather worn Chesterfield. We found it in a yellowed pack on the way home from school one day. Huddled behind a fence, in an out of the way alley, we struggled to light it (it was damp) and then to smoke it. Promptly followed by the obligatory coughing ourselves purple and hoarse. Nasty nasty.
Smoking didn't catch on right away, as you can imagine. Still, we kept trying. We'd smoke stolen Swisher Sweets on the way to the North Platte River for a day of fishing. We'd try puffs of some long skinny "female" cigarettes one of the guys stole from his mom. I'm not sure what it was that drove us but all of us seemed to have crater sized cravings. Smoking, drinking, stealing, candy, pinball, cheese enchiladas, kung fu...we just kept trying to fill it.
My smoking habit lasted from the early teens until I was twenty four. It was the hardest thing in the world to quit. People don't realize it but you have this split personality of sorts. Call it your inner conscienceness, id, or whatever, but there is a part of your brain that is pretty much separate from what you would consider you. Quit smoking and you'll find out what a nasty, sneaky bastard the other you really is. Nothing plays mind games quite like your own mind.
The worst trick was when my mind concocted a dream in which I not only bummed a cigarette from someone, but continued to do so over a period of dream days, until I felt guilty and obligated to buy a pack of my own. A non-smoker won't know this particular sequence, but it's more than familiar to anyone who has tried to quit. I woke up the next morning completly convinced that it had all happened and that I might as well go buy that pack right now. All day long was spent convincing myself that it never happened.
Chris has been smoking even longer and it's great that he managed to quit. No, it's absolutely fantastic. Hey, go buy yourself a cassette, bro!
Radio guys don't have to buy music. They also can't afford to buy music! Still having the smoking dreams...
Bummer. Any new twists on the dream?