iTunes: The Middle-Man Who Would Be King

I'm okay with purchasing my music. I'm okay with the idea of musicians getting paid for their work. In theory, I was okay with iTunes being the venue for my music purchasing.

Of course, I was decidedly unhappy about their DRM copy protection. The music belongs to the artists, not iTunes, so why should they get to say how you use it? You should be able to do with an iTunes song anything you could by ripping the song from the album.

I didn't make too much of a fuss about this, I guess, since I buy CDs from my favorite artists, and only really used iTunes to buy single songs from artists whose CDs I wouldn't be willing to purchase in their entirety. Or, I bought vinyl, and a lot of current artists who release on vinyl include a full album download (from a non-iTunes third party). So all around, pretty decent deal.

I didn't boycott iTunes because of their ridiculous DRM policies, but I wasn't thrilled about it. So I was thrilled when they recently made the switch to DRM-free downloads. The policy change wasn't backwards-compatible, so to speak, but it was a step in the right direction. I was proud of Apple for taking a step outside of their "self-important proprietary software comfort zone".

So imagine my surprise when I go to download the one song I wanted from Eve 6's self-titled album, a discovery I made on my main resource for music, Pandora. The track, Inside Out, is apparently the most popular track on the album. This earned it a heftier price tag - $1.29 for a single song!

What the hell, iTunes?!

Just when we thought we could be proud that Apple was relaxing their arrogant iron fists, they pound us with something even more absurd.

I'm okay with artists being paid for their music. I'm not okay with third-party middle men profiteering on the popularity of items that they don't even own.

I'm not sure what I'm personally going to do about this. I will definitely be Googling* other options for music purchasing, listening, and management software.

As for the music industry and iTunes in particular, I know what I think they should do about this. It's time to take a page from the book of Radiohead and let the artists, and possibly even the customers, set the prices for what really is an arbitrary commodity.

I would prefer to cut out the middle-man, but if you've seen Firefly, you know that most of the world is middle-men, and they don't like being cut out. I'm sure Apple is no exception, though at the moment they remind me more of the Alliance than any of the Firefly crew's backwater contacts.

*Google... there's an example of how to do business. Sure, if Apple is the fearsome, paranoid dictator of the internet, then Google is its Big Brother. But damn if we don't love our transparent, open-source friendly Big Brother.