Changing the Way We Hear Business

A couple years ago I griped about how it's so hard to take the plunge and buy an album. I don't really care to waste $14 on something that's got one good track and the rest of it makes me want to use it as a coaster. If only there was a way to hear the other tracks on an album without the awkwardness of standing in a bookstore with those gigantic headphones, pretending to be so engrossed in the album artwork because there's nowhere else to look. Fast forward slightly to one afternoon when I was killing time on my computer and saw AOL was having a "listening party," the gist being, they were featuring a couple albums about to be released and by featuring, I mean you could hear the whole thing for free. Nice. I actually bought one of the albums I heard that day. It was Rock Kills Kid. Good stuff, slightly negative at times but otherwise fun to listen to. Anyway, I figured that was a pretty good way to promote and for people like me who are always trying to keep the music machine going, it was the perfect tool in expanding the collection.

The reason I bring this up is because technology is blowing my mind. NBC announced just recently that it was pulling its shows off of iTunes to put them on their web site. Now, what is true of all three major networks, is a person can watch whatever they want whenever they want and don't after to pay more than about a 1.5 minutes of attention to commercials. It's no longer a novelty trick of ABC, that's just the way things are. I think it's great and along similar lines, being able to visit a band's website or myspace and hear multiple tracks has been a major blessing, especially in writing this blog. Fans can come from odd places, going off of recommendations, or whim and maybe they like what they hear. The result? CDs, merch, and maybe I want to catch them when they come to my town.


It's no secret that the world has gone digital. Everyone's seen the charts. Downloads are up, everyone else is praying to their higher authority for salvation. I'm just hoping that no one is going to screw things up. As dopey as it sounds, I'd be pretty ticked if I was losing money because some idiot is too cheap to pay 99 cents. That's all I'm saying. Sure, I still love the feeling of personally engaging in my epic CD shrink wrap battles, but I won't blindly buy a CD without some kind of insurance that I'll like it,so hearing album cuts prior to purchase has become important to me. We're moving to a pretty cool direction with this kind of accessibility (and the way I see it, culture sharing). Let's just all try to behave ourselves, okay? Please?