Mike Doughty "Song For The 10th Anniversary Of iTunes"

Here's a "I Looked At The Internet Today So You Don't Have To" feature (subtitled: "I Looked At Jesse Barnett's Facebook Feed Today So You Don't Have To").

It's hard to believe iTunes as been around for 10 years.

Why it seems like just yesterday that I was helping Barbara set up iTunes on her laptop.

She brings the moment up frequently.

I was talking about how easy it was to use, and how the 99 cent threshold made it really attractive to just go ahead and buy something.

She was excited, because during the Lunch Hour, she'd often have a very specific thought ("So-and-So just passed away?  I want to play this certain track"), but would realize that the song was something from her CD collection back at her house.  Or that she didn't know if she or the station owned it at all.

Now she had most any song she could imagine, right at her fingertips.

I said, "Pretty soon though, you'll find yourself saying, 'Oh, that CD is out in my car?  I'll just by the track I need on iTunes rather than walk out to the parking lot.'"

At the time, she laughed at the utter absurdity of the idea.

But it wasn't too much later that she admitted to the reality---that often it was easier to spend 99 cents, then search for the needle in the haystack that is our messy station.  And every time she buys something that she probably already has somewhere, she reminds me of that first conversation.

Who among us has not grabbed a song on iTunes as an impulse purchase?

For its 10th anniversary, Mike Doughty wrote this really fun song about drunken iTunes splurging . . .