Succumbing to the digital music revolution

Make it easy for them, and they will come...

Anyone who reads this blog regularly should already know that I'm not all that comfortable with the idea of having my music a mouse click away instead of on a CD. Not only do I like having artwork, and song lyrics, and entire albums instead of a random collection of mp3 files that have no connection with each other, but I'm also far from happy with the lack of security of tenure. I've yet to have a CD spontaneously stop working, whereas the world is littered with dead computers.

And even if a CD does die, at least I can still see it and don't have to try and remember exactly what it is I need to replace.

So I'm inherently sceptical about buying any of my music in digital format. But those smart, smart people at Apple have been luring me in.

iTunes wasn't available in Australia until about October 2005, and initially there was nothing from one of the world's biggest record companies, Sony BMG. We shall bypass the discussion about the stupidity of carving up the world into separate markets in this day and age when I can use the internet to buy a CD from a store in Denmark if I'm so minded, and save that for another day.

My initial use of iTunes (and a still a major use) is simply as a search/preview mechanism. The quality of the 30 second clips that are available is pretty high, and they download quickly. It's becoming one of my preferred methods of 'music research'. For instance, it's giving me a chance to sample the 13 Joni Mitchell albums I don't already own and marvel at how different some of them are from the 3 I already do.

On one of my iTunes ventures, I noticed that there was a 'free download of the week' - and just as importantly, it was for an Australian singer I was mildly interested in. So I "purchased" it. Note that this is how iTunes describes it, even though no money changes hands. What they're doing is letting me dip my toes in the water.

It must have worked, because I was sufficiently happy with my free download to do the same again a couple of weeks later (PS Jason Mraz is very clever, but perhaps he's too aware of his own cleverness).

Then I discovered podcasts. I'd heard about them, but it hadn't occured to me until recently that I didn't have to have an iPod to use a podcast. iTunes would do the trick, and as I already said the sound quality is quite good, even through my relatively small computer speakers. It's certainly seems better than just about any other audio format I've used on my computer.

Today, I took the next step. I bought a song.

The incentive for breaching the taboo was an exclusive track. One of my favourite Australian bands called 'Something for Kate' are soon to release a new album, and they've just put out a single. For one week only, there's an exclusive extra track available on the single at iTunes. A cover version of The Cure's Close to Me.

If you knew anything about Something for Kate, you'd recognise this is a great choice of song for them. I listened to the 30-second preview a couple of days ago and it did nothing to ruin that notion. And of course, the one great benefit of online music is that I didn't have to buy the rest of the single - if I'm so minded, I can go and buy the CD to get the rest.

So about an hour ago I shelled out a trivial A$1.69 for the one exclusive track. It seems plenty of other people have had the same idea - Close to Me is right near the top of downloaded tracks for the band, and the 'single' is on the Australian topsellers list for today.

I now think the reason why iTunes has been such a massive success and dominates the digital music market is because of the ease of use. It hasn't taken me very long at all to grasp the basics of navigating around the store, which is seamlessly integrated into the program itself. Moving between the store, things I've already 'purchased' and podcasts I've downloaded is pretty darn easy. If I'd wanted to, I could have let iTunes handle all the other music on my computer as well. Things like good-quality previews, digital booklets and exclusive tracks only enhance the experience. Apple weren't stupid enough to think they didn't have to put effort in to attract paying customers.

Well done to them for reassuring this luddite that there's value in their product, although I still want to know what's going to happen to my purchased songs if the machine I'm writing this on decides to go up in smoke before I have a playlist worthy of placing on CD.