I know, I realize I'm a little behind on this. That's been happening to me a lot lately. But everyone's gotta start somewhere, and for me it started--oh gee--I guess 10-15 years ago when Napster, Limewire, Kazza and the other old school pirating programs were all the rage but consequently getting shut down. Of course those sites had their problems, but because I was an early fan of pirating and still support the movement (oh RELAX, two or three Cease and Desist letters later, I'm essentially retired from the game), I wasn't super fond of iTunes, this big man on campus who in the wake of the chaos came flouncing in, demanding everybody's lunch money and giving tons of wedgies.
Well, in all honesty, as a 15 or 16-year-old at the time, I probably didn't think much of these issues, but I do know that it took me a long time to get on board with iTunes which, okay, I know full well has been a galvanizing force in music culture and one which many people obviously enjoy. But I also think it's an exclusive, at times confusing and monopolistic program with cumbersome processes.
When I discovered the Amazon Cloud Player just a month or so ago, I breathed a sigh of relief. Finally another big program to counter the vise grip iTunes has had on the industry's balls. I downloaded the app to my phone and immediately enjoyed the ease at which I can buy an album from Amazon and have it already there on my universally-accessible cloud player, which I then have the option to download automatically to my phone and/or computer so I can play it even when I don't have internet access. It's all so organized and pretty and easy to use. Ahhhh young love.
Not that iTunes doesn't have a similar feature now, but it still requires all that goddamn syncing and dragging bullshit that never seems to go smoothly for me, and I even have an iPhone. I'm pretty sure iTunes is still not compatible with Android. Also, I recently experienced the death of a computer, resulting in the loss of all my music. I'm actually not too upset by that because a lot of it was pirated anyway (I did try to keep the pirating to big name artists/bands that are no longer touring and/or alive), and I'm happy to have the incentive now to buy it all back and make a fresh start (everyone loves a nice tale of redemption). But if I had bought and lost that whole week's worth of music, I would be PISSED. Then again, I could be totally missing something here about the Cloud capabilities of iTunes, but at the core of it, I just don't care enough. I know there is another way.
One thing I am curious to explore is how easy and practical it is to transfer music not purchased from Amazon into the app (phone and PC). Amazon Cloud Player allows for up to 250 non-Amazon songs in your playlist (~20 albums) as well as an unlimited number of Amazon-purchased songs. That should do**.
*Really hot name for an actual human.
**Keeping in mind I will continue to support independent record stores as well as experiment with alternative music sources like Bandcamp.
This is me right now, like Freddie Mercury bodysurfing over a bunch of tripped out people in leotards:
xx
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