How I Became a Reformed Music Downloader

July 4, 2004

Disclaimer: Hopefully I won’t be taken to court by the RIAA for this post. Come on ya’ll… I’m reformed… cut me some slack.

In a time long past, I spent hundreds of dollars a year on music. First records, then tapes, and eventually CDs. I had a better music collection than some small music stores. Before I was old enough to get a job, I spent almost every cent of the allowance my parents gave me on music… or things to listen to music with. And then one day something horrible happened. I had my ENTIRE music collection in my car (I’d spent the night before playing music at a party). Without thinking about it, I let my brother take my car to the mall and he left the doors unlocked. Needless to say, someone in Texas acquired a really good music collection for free that day.

I was crushed. All that music gone. All that money down the drain. And I almost didn’t recover from it.

I stopped buying music. I was so at a loss for where to even begin replacing all that I’d lost. Eventually I’d pick up a CD here or there. But the music-craze was over for me.

Enter Napster.

When I first heard about Napster, I almost didn’t believe it. I didn’t even know what an MP3 was, let alone that you could get them for FREE off the Internet. Back in those early Napster days, no one thought about the legality of music downloading. I was no different. I was in heaven! I could start replacing those lost tunes quickly and cheaply one song at a time. And that’s what I did. At final count I had about 300 songs… not a huge collection, but decent sized for someone with only a dial-up connection.

And again, the unspeakable happened. I got a lovely virus and ended up with an empty harddrive. No files. No papers from my psychology degree that I’d be archiving. No songs. It was all gone. I began to think that someone out in Silicon Valley hated me… that I was being punished for something. And honestly, I think I was more put off about loosing my songs (that I could get again) than I was about loosing all the writing I’d done (that was gone forever).

So after yet another format and reinstall of my Gateway, I started the slow process of downloading music again. This time I knew it was illegal, but I didn’t care. And this time I had a plan. I went out and dropped almost $400 for a Creative Jukebox MP3 player. It was a big, bulky thing with a less-than-user-friendly interface. But it had a big enough harddrive to hold my 300 or so songs. I downloaded songs and moved them immediately to the Jukebox. My computer had to be reformatted a couple more times after that, but it was no big deal because I had all my music on that Creative Jukebox.

Until it’s harddrive failed. And again… back to zero.

This time I got the hint. It was a cosmic sign that I was not supposed to be downloading music from the Internet. And it really sucked too… I’d just had DSL set up on my phone line to make it easier!

Now comes the reformation: my eMac. Yes, folks, I left the PC world behind for the Mac (and haven’t looked back). Along with the eMac came iTunes and the iTunes Music Store. At first a curiosity, iTMS slowly began to eat up more and more of my time. Just browsing, no buying. Listening to previews. Seeing what new albums had come out. But at the same time, I wasn’t downloading music illegally, either. I was just listening to the few CDs I’d picked up since the theft of my music collection. I imported a couple songs into iTunes from my CDs, but that was about it. As iTMS began to receive more press, I started reading about how quick and easy it was to use… how great the songs sounded… and how much “good Karma” one could get by actually buying the songs they listen to.

So I bought a song. And then another. And then another. And before I knew it, I was buying a couple of songs a night from the iTunes Music Store. And the press was right! It was quick, it was easy, and the songs sounded great! They came with cover art and everything. Hell, I even went out and bought an iPod to put my newly purchased music on. But then the REALLY amazing thing happened:

I started to feel good about myself. Oh yeah… you heard that right. I started to feel good about myself for buying music off the ‘Net.

And I started spreading my good feelings. I told friends, co-workers, family… anyone who’d listen about how great iTMS was and how I could go to sleep at night knowing that every song on my computer was not only legal, but that the artists I was listening to were getting something for their work.

And so I’m reformed. In almost a 180 back to the good ‘ol days before the music collection theft, I legally own every song on my computer and iPod.

And Steve Jobs was right… I feel the good Karma ;)

Category Posted in Personal, Technology