The iTunes store is the comforting and remarkable sight of the music business, or parts of it, taking the opportunity to quietly admit that its products are overpriced. (They will deny this if questioned directly, however.) For ninety-nine cents I can buy a song I want. That sounds and feels fair to me, and the immediate satisfaction of purchasing a song you want and hearing it play within seconds has a positively opiate radiance to it. Selection at the iTunes store is pretty poor at present; I’ve talked to people in the music business this week who report that everybody’s scrambling all at once to make their songs available, and I’d guess that Apple, in keeping with company tradition, is ill-prepared to meet consumer demand. The whole project may wind up another another casualty of Apple’s we’ve-got-our-customer-base-so-you-Windows-users-can-all-get-bent strategy. (There’ll be a Windows version available sometime later this year. There should have been one available yesterday.) But once you’ve experienced the crack-pipe-hittin’ thrill of buying a thirty-three minute Fela Kuti song for ninety-nine lousy cents, all those concerns will evaporate into the thick cloud that forms above your head as the steam is forced, cartoon-like, out through your ears from your boiling brain.
