Awesome Thingy of the Day: Jun 13, 2007

So you went through your Napster phase nearly 10 years ago and amassed 10,000 mp3's (some of which you still haven't listened to). But a few years later you realized that those songs were so, like, dated or something so you downloaded and figured out how to use Limewire, or Bearshare, or one of the other million P2P apps. So then you had 30,000 mp3's (and now hadn't heard half of them!) Then a few more years pass - you get into torrents and amass a collection of 100,000 mp3's. By now your friends are all asking "Where do get all these tunes, dude?" When you answer, you realize you do so with a little bit of embarrasement. When they ask how many you have, you come to terms with the fact that, yes, you feel guilty for having the equilivant of 10,000 cd's on your drive that you've paid exactly nothing for.

Wanting to be intellectually honest, you realize that keeping those mp3's doesn't gel with your other views of whatever it is you've said you stand for. "Well", you think to yourself, "it's not like I listen to even half of them. And even when I do, the songs all kinda just run together. Ya know, I think I actually loved music more when I had like 10 cd's." You actually had to save up for 2 weeks just to buy one cd back then. Armed with this newfound conviction, you say goodbye to all of the mp3's you don't actually have the physical disc for, which turns out to be a Kenny G Christmas cd that you won at your dad's company Christmas party, and Target's "New Rock Favorites" release that they gave you when you bought that replacement for your lost remote control 3 years ago. After listening to those 20 songs a few times, you realize that they aren't really fulfilling you in the way you were envisioning when you took that moral stand of yours. A light bulb goes off in your head; you click 'shuffle' in hopes of mixing the songs up enough to tolerate, but the music still stinks.

So what's a mother to do? Go back to your old ways of criminal disenlightenment? Nawh, that's just not an option. How about buying 10,000 cd's you really like? You're already pretty sure there aren't more than a few hundred you actually like enough to buy. Oh yeah, you don't have $100,000, either. So you click this cool blog you just found - "Awesome Thingy of the Day" - and start reading this post. "Wierd", you slowly and silently respond. "How'd this guy know all this stuff about me?" Reading on, you see that he talks about a cool piece of software called "Clickster" which he describes as a simple way to locate the rumored millions of free mp3's out there. You read that it's not P2P software - it actually downloads from fixed URL's on secure sites This gives you a subtle sense of security as you let out a sincere "Cool!", even though there is no one near enough to hear. "This is like sooo what I need right now!" But instead of slipping into your old ways by downloading every single band at once (and thus preventing your entire neighborhood from doing anything on the web for the next three days), you decide to check out just one band at a time, reeeeeally paying attention to the songs as if you had to save two weeks to get em. You get the first band, who has a name that you can't really remember, and think, "they're okay; not bad, not great", but curiously, you find a new, deeper satisfaction in the process you've just gone through. You realize that your mind is subconciously 'lighter' in some unidentifiable, yet totally tangible way. Could it be because of the new way you're approaching your music collection? As you ponder the question, you download another band who is purported to sound like that one band you totally dug in school. You press play and... voila! You like it! What??? This song is free! How in the world...???