Sountrack of my Life

So I was tagged by Toast with this labor intensive meme he got from Furious. Normally, I shy away from blogging anytime it starts to resemble work in any way, as you may have gathered from the frequency of my posts, but this time, I'm kind of bored, so I'll give this a shot.

Basically, you start at the year of your birth, and pick the best album for each year. Unlike some of these other guys, I'm not even going to try to remember what I may have liked at the time, I'm just going to go with what I think now. So here we go:

1972 - Eagles - Eagles. Just because I had to pick something to get this thing started. Wow, what a crappy year for music.

1973 - Aerosmith - Aerosmith. Again, just because I have to pick something, if I didn't know they 80s and 90s would go much better, I'd quit about now.

1974 - Endless Summer - Beach Boys Apparently, the 70s had less good music than I originally thought. I'm really glad I was not yet old enough to care.

1975 - A Night at the Opera - Queen. How did people actually survive the 70s?

1976 - Hotel California - The Eagles I really don't like The Eagles as much as it may seem at this point.

1977 - The Stranger - Billy Joel. Finally found one that I didn't feel like I was just picking because I had to.

1978 - Van Halen - Van Halen. Getting slightly easier now. Unfortunately, while I expect there will be more good choices soon, that also means I have to choose between them.

1979 - Off the Wall - Michael Jackson. Whatever happened to this guy?

1980 - Back in Black - AC/DC. I'm not a huge AC/DC fan, but this one belongs on here.

1981 - I Love Rock 'n' Roll - Joan Jett & the Blackhearts. Ok, so I said I wasn't going to try to remember what I liked at the time, but for 1981, I couldn't find anything I liked more than a song or two on, but I had this back then and really liked it, though it does absolutely nothing for me now.

1982 - Thriller – Michael Jackson. Can't go wrong with the best selling album of all time.

1983 - Madonna - Madonna. I bought this on cassette at a gas station on some long trip we went on when I was a kid.

1984 - Purple Rain - Prince and the Revolution. Who doesn't love Prince?

1985 - Radio - LL Cool J. See, he has been here for years.

1986 - Licensed to Ill - The Beastie Boys. This was an easy one. I believe I can still recite the entire album from memory. Anyway, I didn't even look at the rest of the list for this year.

1987 - Appetite for Destruction - Guns N' Roses.

1988 - TIE: ...And Justice for All - Metallica and Straight Outta Compton - N.W.A. and Eazy-Duz-It - Eazy-E. How can I pick between those three?

1989 - As Nasty As They Wanna Be - 2 Live Crew.

1990 - Mama Said Knock You Out - LL Cool J. Don't call it a comeback.

1991 - Metallica ("The Black Album") - Metallica.

1992 - The Predator - Ice Cube. And I won't choke like the Buffalo Bills...

1993 - Doggystyle - Snoop Doggy Dogg.

1994 - Dookie - Green Day. Not much I liked to pick from here.

1995 - Jagged Little Pill - Alanis Morissette.

1996 - Load - Metallica.

1997 - Big Willie Style - Will Smith.

1998 - Greatest Hits Live - Journey. I've tried to avoid greatest hits or compilations so far, but I couldn't come up with anything else, and I'm running out of meme steam.

1999 - Hooray for Boobies - The Bloodhound Gang. I picked this one because you were supposed to stick your tongue through the CD to make it look like a boobie.

2000 - The Marshall Mathers LP - Eminem.

Ok, that's all I can do. I don't listen to much music these days, especially anything new, and everything I see on the recent pages is barely recognizable at best. So the meme has beaten me, I give up.

Apple - Thoughts on Music

I haven't talked much here about DRM, since it really seems pretty simple to me (i.e. it doesn't work and never will), and would ulimately just turn into a rant. But with someone like Steve Jobs weighing in, I thought I should mention it. It's good that someone who may actually have some influence seems to recognize that it doesn't work.

In 2006, under 2 billion DRM-protected songs were sold worldwide by online stores, while over 20 billion songs were sold completely DRM-free and unprotected on CDs by the music companies themselves. The music companies sell the vast majority of their music DRM-free, and show no signs of changing this behavior, since the overwhelming majority of their revenues depend on selling CDs which must play in CD players that support no DRM system.

So if the music companies are selling over 90 percent of their music DRM-free, what benefits do they get from selling the remaining small percentage of their music encumbered with a DRM system? There appear to be none. If anything, the technical expertise and overhead required to create, operate and update a DRM system has limited the number of participants selling DRM protected music. If such requirements were removed, the music industry might experience an influx of new companies willing to invest in innovative new stores and players. This can only be seen as a positive by the music companies.

emphaiss mine

So, the gist seems to be that DRM sucks and that Apple uses it only because they are forced to by the music companies. I'd love to hear a response to Jobs' points from someone on the other side. But I'm sure we won't, since there really isn't any resonable position.

One thing that did bug me about Jobs' letter, though, was when he described the existing course, where it seems that he doesn't think DRM is such a big issue, and I think he misses the point a little bit.

Some have argued that once a consumer purchases a body of music from one of the proprietary music stores, they are forever locked into only using music players from that one company.
[snip]
Through the end of 2006, customers purchased a total of 90 million iPods and 2 billion songs from the iTunes store. On average, that’s 22 songs purchased from the iTunes store for each iPod ever sold.

Today’s most popular iPod holds 1000 songs, and research tells us that the average iPod is nearly full. This means that only 22 out of 1000 songs, or under 3% of the music on the average iPod, is purchased from the iTunes store and protected with a DRM. The remaining 97% of the music is unprotected and playable on any player that can play the open formats. It’s hard to believe that just 3% of the music on the average iPod is enough to lock users into buying only iPods in the future. And since 97% of the music on the average iPod was not purchased from the iTunes store, iPod users are clearly not locked into the iTunes store to acquire their music.

Sure, the average iPod today only has 3% DRM music on it, but what about tomorrow? People are only just now starting to buy their music online. Most people who invest in an iPod in the first place probably already have a vast library of CDs that they want to rip and put on it. However, if they start buying music from iTunes, why would they want to continue buying CDs? At some point that 3% is going to get to be a number that is significant, and will sway the consumer's decision. So, while Jobs may be correct right now that it isn't a big issue, when he's talking about continuing on the current course, he's talking about the future, and future where more people get more music online must be considered in the argument. Also, I would bet that there are quite a few iPods with no music from the iTunes store on them, which would skew those numbers a bit.

Anyway, the bottom line with DRM is that it doesn't in anyway affect music piracy. Just go look for illegal versions of any song you want and see how hard a time you have finding them. All it does is hamper legitimate customers' use of their rightly acquired media.