I received an iTunes gift card for Christmas. After using about half the amount for long-anticipated Led Zeppelin tunes, and was unsure of what to buy next. The other evening, I was watching a Simpsons repeat, ‘Round Springfield, where Lisa meets Bleeding Gums Murphy for the last time. The episode featured Carole King’s song Jazzman, and I realized what I really needed was a dose of 70’s pop songs.
Yeah. I know.
What I found irritating is that so many oldies have been re-recorded, and it’s difficult to find the original versions on iTunes. I’m not sure about any other source, but it helped me narrow down my choices. I wanted the songs as I remembered them as a kid. I didn’t want some new slick version.
The thing I originally loved about iTunes was the ability to pick and choose the songs I wanted, without having to buy entire CDs. But it has it’s limitations like anything else. The aforementioned Zeppelin songs only recently became available for download, Zep being among the last holdouts for downloadable music. There are other artists who’s music is unavailable from iTunes.
Another limitation is Digital Rights Management or DRM which makes it impossible to play iTunes downloads on any of our CD players. The DRM prevents you from converting the file format from Protected AAC to MP3 or any other audio format. Recently Amazon.com offers DRM free music. I may be buying more of my music from Amazon now.
The song I would love to find, but haven’t been able to, is the version of Hallelujah by Rufus Wainwright.
His version of this hauntingly beautiful song is my favorite. And I can’t find a download of it anywhere. It is available on a soundtrack album, but I don’t want to have to buy the whole album just to get this song. Yes, I have been spoiled.
Still, I have acquired quite a nice selection of music from iTunes and Amazon. I can create playlists, and change them around. I am my own radio station. Heh.
Now I just need an iPod. Maybe next Christmas.
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Update January 27th:
Thanks to my wonderful niece Belynda, I now have Wainwright’s Hallelujah.
Well, dang it all anyway! I had no idea that’s why none of my downloaded music from iTunes won’t play on my CD player. I’ll stop worrying about it.
And, yeah I get it. Sometimes, the music of my childhood/teen years is as comforting as a big plate of Mac n Cheese.
I didn’t realise that’s why I couldn’t convert iTunes stuff either!
I confess that until I got an iPod, I couldn’t really see the point, because I don’t listen to music while I’m out and about - I like to hear what’s going on around me.
But what I did was get a cheap but good docking station with speakers for the kitchen so I just stick the iPod in there and play my 70s music (yeah!) while I’m doing housework. I also splashed out for a high quality Bose docking station for the living room which I use ditto. It means I don’t need all those CDs taking up space, and I no longer have a big hi-fi system also taking up space. All my music fits on one tiny machine and two slightly bigger docking stations plus my computer. So there’s one minimalist part of my house. (Loads more scope to make a mess elsewhere though!)
BTW, you can burn the songs to a CD to play in the player, quality won’t be as good as a CD, but at least you can play ‘em. Just move songs to a playlist, then select “Burn Disc in the lower right hand corner. iTunes will tell you if you exceed the length of the CD and will let you put another disc in. (You just can not play the songs in the compressed format by moving files over using finder.)