I love iTunes

OK, I hate to admit it for a couple reasons. First, I am a big fan of try before you buy when it comes to music. My apologies to my musician friends, but here's how I usually roll...

1) I find your music for free and spend some time with it.
2) If I find myself listening to it fairly often, or at least not erasing it to gain disk space, I buy your shit.

I would rather not have to buy it first, and be stuck with it if it sucks... which it does sometimes. So I find a torrent and the rest is history.

Next, my main device is not an iPod. I had one, I wasn't impressed with the quality, so I bought a Zen. Yes, I still have a Shuffle for working out, but that's not the point. If I buy music, I should be able to put it on any player I want.

But you know what? There are times when you want to hear a song, and you want it now. Tonight I was watching a show on rouge waves, and they mentioned the Edmund Fitzgerald. I don't know why, but ever since I was a little kid the Gordon Lightfoot tribute to that ship has been a special song to me. Yes, the ghey is strong with this one.... Anyway, I have the TV open in one window on my display, and while I'm watching I open up iTunes and buy "The Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald". When the commercial kicked in on the History Channel, I clicked on the song I had just purchased. For a moment, I was that little boy who heard that song on the radio about the dying sailors (fellas it's been good to know ya') and spent years wondering WTF went on there. Was it as good as I remembered? Oh hell no. Was that experience worth 99 cents to me? You bet your ass it was.

BTW, ripping your iTunes songs to mp3 is easy as long as you don't upgrade to iTunes 7.0.2. Ask me how if you don't know.