Well its been over a week since I last left a blog. Unfortunately Burton never replied to me which is somewhat disappointing. I would have that they would have at least sent me an e-mail response.

I just purchased my first few songs from Apple's iTunes music store. I downloaded iTunes for Windows. It actually works pretty nice. I might actually dump my MusicMatch Player for iTunes. The MusicMatch Player in my opinion has become a pretty bloated piece of software. And they are adding their own music web site which will not be compatible with my iPod. Don't get me wrong I have been an avid MusicMatch enthusiast for may years now, back when it was first and foremost a player.

The iTunes user interface is very simple and uncluttered. The buttons are very intuitive looking except maybe the visual effects button. Of course I don't know what I would use for a visual effect button either.

So keeping things short, I will be a new iTunes convert for the time being. I will continue to buy music from the iTunes website, I only hope that the AAC Protected format becomes more prevalent on the PC platform. I can't say that I would personally rip to an AAC format, as I believe that ripping to MP3 at 192K using VBR is a pretty good option, and by far the most widely accepted format for any time in the near future. Hopefully the industry will settle on one or two formats... (probably WMA and AAC??) Guess Microsoft and Apple have to each have their own formats just like operating systems.

The whole idea of purchasing music on the internet is pretty cool. The thought that I may no longer be able to buy a CD with Master quality sound is somewhat disturbing. I like to be able to have the actual CD, Album art and other miscellaneous inserts. The whole Industry that creates album art may be doomed in the future as all imaging goes digital, and album art becomes generic digital images.

I think musicians are in for a reality check as music will likely move toward sales of individual songs. No more creating 1 or 2 good songs on an album full of 12-15 other junkers. Spending $2 on 2 songs vs. $17.99 for 12 is going to really wreak havoc on the music industry. Of course production costs become literally $0 as you only need to distribute the music electronically to a couple of retail outlets which will be responsible for distribution to the masses via the net.

In fact what benefit will there be in the future for artists to even create albums? Why not just release every song as it is mastered in the studio. Why bother with an album, especially if consumers will only buy a couple of the songs.

This may be a benefit to us as consumers as musicians will now need to produce a much higher quality product (e.g. song) in order to make the same profits. If we think in terms of products and an artist only has 2 out of every 10 products being successful would you consider that a good artist? If McDonald's sold 2 out of every 10 cheeseburgers burnt would you continue to buy their products? I don't know maybe that's a bad comparison. Because today we still buy albums even if only one or two songs are good, and maybe that's just optimism that we will learn to like the rest since we made the investment.

So now lets say that the average consumer purchases 5 songs on average per album from an online music store. That would be $5 per album. Ok so why can't we just drop the price of CD's to say $10 in an effort that consumers would rather buy the album rather than a digital download? Should be a bargain in my book... And the musicians still make a fortune on some songs that probably aren't even worth a $1 a piece.

I think music companies will need to think twice about changing their business models to incorporate digital music as a medium for the future. In my opinion it will only cause more erosion of profit than is already being experienced.

In the long run what does this probably mean? Fewer artists who are paid less for fewer songs. And consumers will become more selective, purchasing only the best songs, opting to buy another artists top song over a favorite artists second or third best songs.

Ok maybe this doesn't make a lot of sense, but nobody is reading this anyways, and its my blog, and I have an opinion so there!