Current music:

Autolux - Robots In The Garden

BEWARE MY LOGIKS
I saw this wonderful gem from the blog-o-sphere earlier today. The gist of it argues two things: subscription music services are superior to anything else, and Apple is stupid for having taken so long to come to this realization.

The proposed idea is that Apple would jack up iPod prices slightly to include a year's worth of all-you-can-download music from iTunes. Each additional year, you pay some premium (who knows what that amount might be) to keep your accrued musics; if you don't, the musics go away. Given that Steve seems to be the type who likes owning music (and thus assumes everyone using his products agree), the last part of that hypothetical might be wrong.

Back to my initial point: said blog post says this would be a godsend. It wouldn't be, and here's why.

Yeah, Apple's got the DRM, which they're gradually (very much so, in fact) phasing out. It's not in their best interest to abandon it, but they aren't exactly embracing it either. And with respect to managing a library: one, it's not difficult, two: iTunes does a lot of that for you, and three: if you want to enjoy music and care about it to any degree but can't muster the 5 minutes it takes to rip an album and check its tags, then you don't deserve to listen to it. Further, if you buy it from the iTunes store, that part is already done for you.

The only part of managing a music library that's tough is managing its size. If you get tired of what you've got, then that's because you have continually disappointing taste in music.



I hate to break it to you, but music subscription services won't create phenomenal new mixes for you. They'll make it easier to grab whatever junk has just been released. If you want a fantastic automatic DJ-ing device, invent a time machine and go back five years and pick up a Rio Karma. Been there, done that.

I'm not against a music subscription service on principle, but as I told Chris last night, I'd probably spend an week going through iTunes and picking up whatever old gems I wanted, and then completely neglect it. This model only makes complete sense if you're continually excited by new releases and otherwise don't care about what you're listening to. Over the past year, I can count the number of new releases on one hand that have been exciting. Since neither iTunes nor the record industry nor a subscription model are posed to make smaller, more unique acts more accessible, I fail to see what all the fuss is about.