La La Love Ya, Don't Mean Maybe

I suppose I was silly to think that Apple purchasing LaLa was anything but a pure power grab by the increasingly control-freak-ish Steve Jobs & Co. For the uninitiated, this is what LaLa is (was) and this is what will shortly become of it.

I'm no scientist, but it seems to me that in the modern digital piracy era, there is going to be a certain segment of the population that will always try to steal content, and those on the other end of the spectrum who will scrupulously pay for everything. Those in between (the majority, I suspect) will go whichever way the market pushes them. Services like LaLa offer reasonable ways to legally try-before-you-buy, for those of us struggling to reconcile the still-too-inflated costs of digital downloads with the desire to support our favorite artists and compensate them for their work so they can continue to create.

Apple, record companies, and their fellow keepers of the keys to the digital kingdom would do well to consider the effect their attempted ever-tightening grasp has on this silent majority. The fact of the matter is that the Internet is not going to be un-invented, music/movies/etc. are not going to be un-digitized, and certain people will always find ways to get things for free. The solution, as far as I can see, is to make it easy and cost-efficient for people to purchase digital art for their private use. If this happens, I would guess that the proportion of people finding their online entertainment via legal channels would expand dramatically. But if Apple & company continue have their way, I guess we'll never know.

And I guess I'll have to find a new way to embed killer jams for you, too. [Sigh.] All things must pass, my little popelings.

P.S. - I suspect that Grooveshark, considerably more dubious in its legal status, will soon follow.

P.P.S. - I will continue to recommend Amazon MP3 as a more reasonably-priced alternative to iTunes.