Online/Digital Music

A few things have been perculating in the recesses of my brain over the last few days and I figured I might as well blog them before they become larger distractions when I am actually trying to work.

iTunes, eMusic and other minuscule/majuscule words associated with online music. I must say, I am really not impressed these days. I have a fair amount of downloaded music that I purchased over the last few years and ignoring a few problems here and there (iTunes not letting me burn certain CD's!!) I have been relatively satisfied. Two weeks ago, my usually net savvy daughter caved into a friend's request to check out a site that she had a bad feeling about - sure enough within minutes, my laptop was filled with bugs, worms, trojans and other malicious pains in the backside. So I had to wipe my entire computer - the first time since I bought it in 2002. I THOUGHT I saved everything I had to, including my music but when I went to reload it from my memory key, the file was not there.

No problem I thought. As far as the hard copies that I actually own, altough time consuming, I can simply reload them. I figured I would be able to go to my eMusic account and re-download the tunes i bought in some sort of 'purchase history'. Same for iTunes. Instead, when I logged into my accounts and tried to access the music I had purchased, I got a message that said something like "Purchases can only be downloaded one time. It is your responsibility to make back up copies of the music you purchase .. blah blah blah". I have to say - I was/am furious. I don't know how many times I've tried to burn a CD that I received a pop up that reminded me that this music could not be copied, distributed blah blah blah... (p.s. not all songs on my laptop's iTunes was on my ipod...)

So now I sit here, missing a good half of my library that I already paid for. I have tried hard to play by the rules for my music, but I just feel that I have no other choice but to perhaps find another way to get it back. I mean, I've already paid for it. I don't want to have to pay for it twice.

Now, the rational side of my brain is arguing back that if I had bought the physical tape, record or cd and lost or ruined it, the company would not be liable to replace it free of cost - but somehow, this feels different. In a way, I feel duped. I feel that I bought into the idea that digital is better, that my computer will keep everything neatly stored away. I know that we, as users of technology, are encouraged to make backups of everything - just in case - but for some strange reason, I cannot imagine making 1,015 back ups for my hard copies if I had bought them from the store...