I did not truly understand how the iPod has become a cultural phenomenon until tonight. After dinner nine of us had a half hour discussion about music which centered upon the iPod. Almost everyone at the table owned one, and the ones who didn’t either planned to purchase one or were seriously considering it. People talked about the music they had — mostly ripped from their own CDs — and how they wanted to share it with each other. People recalled specific songs and artists, tested each other on music trivia, and promised to open their libraries to each other. This truly is the future of music.
Of course the discussion then shifted to the best ways to get around Apple’s DRM in order to get the music to other people. Since no one had really bought anything from the iTunes Music Store all they really had to worry about was getting non-restricted music from one iPod to another, and there was near universal disdain for (and deep misunderstandings of) how the iPod synchronizes with a computer, and in specific how such synchronization is only one way, and with only one computer.
If I want a song from Anthony, I can’t hook my iPod up to his computer to get it — doing so will erase every song on my iPod and synchronize it with all of his music, and then when I take it back to my computer it will delete all of his music and give me back mine. There isn’t any easy way to pick and choose, to copy back and forth, in short, to share, to designate the music as ours. And it is a simple fact that one of the best things about experiencing music is being able to share that experience with others.
The feature everyone universally wanted was a way to synchronize specific songs, albums, and playlists directly from one iPod to another, “like how you can share things on Palm Pilots,” according to one of the conversation participants. This would be a killer feature, and it is one, I explained, that the recording industry would never allow.
This is, after all, the recording industry’s worst nightmare. Grown adults, discussing their love of music, and talking about sharing the music they have legally acquired. The sheer audacity of people to think they own something and can copy it for their friends! In the context of current copyright law and the current music distribution scheme, the record companies are correct. We don’t own the music, we shouldn’t be sharing it, people are not being “fairly” compensated when we do, at least not immediately, through the sale of a CD. And yet this is how people crave to experience their music. The community aspect, the sharing aspect, the sampling aspect are vital to creating strong musical connections.
And in most industries, in most circumstances, in most times, when the consumer wants something badly, the market adapts to give it to them, to serve their needs, and to make a profit in the process. But not this industry, not this circumstance, and not this time. Instead, technology is increasingly being needlessly locked down, restricted, encrypted, complicated — all in a misguided attempt to preserve existing business models.
But the world is changing, technology is changing, and people are changing. We’ve always shared music with our friends. Tape players let us make copies. CD burners let us make exact duplicates. Portable music players let us convert something we had that was not very portable into something incredibly portable, something easily sharable. And the internet allowed us to expand our communal scope to a vast degree.
The world has changed, and the only thing that hasn’t changed is the content industry itself. But when I see nine grown adults sitting around a table recalling old life memories through music, discussing their love for a piece of technology that really, really works for them, and then complaining about the stupid and needless restrictions put in place by the content industry to thwart their ability to do something that comes naturally, I am increasingly hopeful that we will win this fight. In the end, the will of the people will win out over the greed of the corporations.
But what we need is education. What we need is for the random guy on the street to realize that the reason why the iPod can’t do everything they want it to do is not because Apple is stupid or the feature just hasn’t been implemented yet, but because a higher power, the power that locks up our culture and wants to charge us every time we want to get our hands on it, has decreed that there is only one correct way to listen to our music, and it is there way. Once people understand who is the real culprit here, only then things will start to change for the better.
I obsessed over it for weeks, possibly months, figuring out all the specs, reading up on all of the subsystems and busses and add-ons. I loved that computer. I haven’t had such excitement and passion for a computer since.
I specced it out, I compared models, I read the literature, I decided which one I wanted, and finally I made the purchase, and I couldn’t be happier. Every hour I reload the FedEx tracking page and bang on my desk because it is still in New Jersey. It would have been more efficient to have driven down to New York City to get it myself, and if I was more adventurous (and thought of it) I might just have done it. Come on camera, get here!