Oh, yes. I do. I do indeed. They merely annoyed me with their overpriced, over-hyped, under-performing products before, but now they've gone and decided to shut down Lala. Now where the fuck am I going to go to preview entire albums for free when Playlist hasn't got 'em? Come to depend on that, I have, since I have limited resources to spend on music and I can't tell what albums shall suit me best just from a song or two.
Fuckers.
Hey, Steve Jobs - this song's for you:
I guess Google will have to offer its own version...
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that the real problem here is the mainstream music industry. I've been saying for years (albeit somewhat incoherently) that web sites which collect Creative-Commons-licensed music (i.e. music not enslaved to the music industry) could be done much more effectively.
ReplyDeleteIf the range of freely-copyable music were easier to browse, then you wouldn't have to be dependent on a giant like Apple to make special deals with artists on mainstream labels. You could get your music without enabling the destructive practices of the giant media companies. (Sort of like buying locally-grown food using sustainable agricultural practices.)
(I realize those links are rather outdated, but my impression is that things haven't really changed. CD sales finally did start declining, but the media industry still insists on seeing every copy as a theft -- and radio is as bland as ever, if not more so.)
Mainstream music has done nothing but get less interesting for the last couple of decades. I think that's due to the music industry's efforts far more than the artists'. Courtney Love was right, they just sucked all the money away from the artists and contributed nothing beyond a distribution medium. With the modern Internet, they really should be redundant.
ReplyDelete