With my paper sitting at a respectable 75% complete – well, it would be respectable if it weren’t due in a few hours – I’m busy searching for more ways to procrastinate.  It’s not really that difficult when you’re computer has Internet access, iTunes, and you’ve got room on your credit card to purchase music.

I have to listen to something when I’m writing.  Sitting in silence is far too distracting.  If I were to fall back on reading Web comics (checkout Save Hiatus and HijiNKS Ensue) or watching Dr. Horrible (downloaded via iTunes natch) or The Guild, I’d never get any writing done.

We’re not huge audiophiles in this family.  However, we both have iPods stocked with our favourite music for travel, school, and work purposes.  While Drew seems content to limit himself to the number of songs he can fit on his 4GB mini and 2GB nano, I’m happily filling my 20GB classic.  Hey, I never said they were new iPods!  We may be early adopters for many technologies but we tend to limit future upgrading to necessity instead of desire.  Or at least that’s what I like to try and tell myself.

Between the two of us we’ve probably purchased 40 CDs in the last decade.  That works out to about 2 CDs a person each year.  Ooh.  Big spenders.  Usually we purchase CDs for artists we love (thus explaining my complete U2 collection) or greatest hits compilations.  After transferring the CD contents into our iTunes so we can listen to them while working on papers or on our iPods, the CDs then move into the trucks and live out their lives in plastic cases between station flipping on the radio.

While procastinating today I decided to head to iTunes and find a copy of Spamalot. I added the Broadway recording to my shopping cart and then got a little distracted and downloaded some Simon and Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, BB King, Apocolyptica, David Bowie, Macy Gray, Stan Rogers and Snow Patrol.  My music tastes are nothing if not eclectic.  As I was paying for my purchases, I realized that I’ve downloaded (and thus paid) close to 600 songs from iTunes since January.  Me, who rarely purchases CDs, has happily paid to support a number of musicians and artists over the past 8 months.  Sure, most music executives would likely scoff at the total $$ amount I’ve spent on music this year.  600$ really isn’t a huge amount in the grand scheme of musical commerce.  Assuming I spent 50% of that amount buying music through iTunes in the past 2-3 years (a pretty decent estimate me thinks) I think I’ve moved into an important evolutionary phase when it comes to purchasing music.  Where in the past I might spend 20-30$ a year on CDs, now I’m spending 10-20x that amount.  And I don’t mind.  I get to pick and choose artists and songs based on what I enjoy listening to – as opposed to walking away from a CD on a store shelf because I don’t want to pay $15 for a CD containing only only one or two songs I enjoy.

The recording industry has been focusing on how many people pirate music for years.  They estimate the financial damages to artists.  This becomes the foundation for crazy new digital rights management copyright proposals.  I’m willing to acknowledge that there’s lots of music sharing happening over the Interweeb.  But I’d be interested to see the numbers associated with music purchases that are facilitated through services such as iTunes.  I’d be even more interested to find out how many of iTunes customers were like me; infrequent purchasers of CDs whose music spending has skyrocketed since the advent of pick and choose song selection and a la carte buying options.

Enough burbling about music.  Break time is over and I need to get back to my paper.  Wish me luck.  And don’t forget to buy Season 1 of The Guild and all three episodes of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog (available via iTunes).  Great Web TV – and Felicia Day – need to be supported too!

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