How the Internet Changed Music

A Time magazine article on whether the internet has saved or killed the music industry. The conclusion seems to be that some people are taking advantage of the internet to download music instead of buying it, while for others they hear something on the internet and their interest is piqued and they go out and buy it.

I haven't bought any music in a long time. Probably close to 10 years. I do buy records, but I buy used vinyl records so I'm sure the recording industry doesn't really care about that. The music I download is either stuff I already have on record and want for my iPod, or music that I had before and lost the CDs.

I haven't bought a CD in even longer. Definitely over a decade. So, if the record labels want to say that I am killing their profits go ahead. I say make some decent music and maybe I'll consider buying it.

Downloading Music

From Modernhumorist.com

Apple News

Apple announced a new iPod or something today? I didn't even catch this in the news, I read it on a blog. I am very bored with Apple lately. Everyone I know (which is really just 1 person I ran into once) loves their iPhone even though I've heard not so good things about them, but the new iMacs seemed lackluster and once everyone has an iPod how are they going to keep selling them?

I know, I know... More and cheaper storage. I have a 15GB iPod and I can store about half of my MP3 library on it. A lot of the library is stuff I don't even like and have never and would never listen to. And a lot of it is 2-8 hour DJ sets, so it's a lot of music.

I think a 40 GB iPod would be about the most I would ever need. Maybe 60 GB. More than that? Who has that many MP3s that they actually listen to? I can see someone having more than 60 GB of music but listening to it all? Nope.

WiFi? The Firewire cable works just fine for me. It's probably faster than WiFi as well. I don't own any Apple stock but if I did I would have sold it after the iPhone news was released. I actually bought Apple at $18 a few years back, and sold it at $30 and then bought more at $90 and sold at $110 or something. If I'd kept the original stock I would have made a small fortune. But after I lost a large fortune in the dot-com crash I would rather take a profit than lose it all. So I set trailing stop-limits on most of my holdings. Better safe than sorry is my opinion, which means I should really be investing in bonds, which I am actually doing more and more.

Anyway, I digress. Apple seems boring. Maybe it's because I haven't been a Mac user in almost a decade now or maybe it's just me being cynical, but I think that Apple's time is up, and I would be shorting AAPL now.

Update - Apparently Jim Cramer disagrees with me. I would trust his opinion more than mine as far as financial markets and capital allocation are concerned, but I stand by my opinion. I'm not going to be buying AAPL but I'm not going to be shorting it either.

Update 2 - However it appears that the street agrees with me.