While cleaning under the sofa I found a dusty $15 iTunes gift card and thought I'd better redeem it soon, considering Apple plans to change the way its music download store operates. Little did I know that doing so would take a full Saturday morning in front of the computer. First I had to download the iTunes app on my PC and my phone. Then I had to obtain an Apple ID, figure out (mostly by trial and error) how to download songs to my PC, and then finally to transfer all the music onto my Android phone. Finding an app to actually play the music was another struggle.
All the while I was painfully conscious that this would take the Young Relative literally seconds, with a few mouse clicks and much eye-rolling at the sad ignorance of people born pre-Internet.
The easy and fun part of the process was finding great music to purchase: iTunes has everything. I remember spending months in the 1990s searching obscure record shops for a jazz album by John Coltrane and Duke Ellington that contained the sublime "In a Sentimental Mood" -- and now I can listen to it while running errands.
The $15 was spent in no time, at $1.29 a song (well, OK, 99 cents for some less popular items like my guilty pleasure "Who Do You Think You Are" by Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods). Among my other first-day downloads were current rap/country hit "Old Town Road" (misconstrued lyric: "Take my horse to the hotel room"); Bob Marley's live version of "No Woman, No Cry," Ella Fitzgerald's magnificent "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" (which is playing as I'm typing; heavenly) and Luciano Pavarotti singing "Nessun Dorma."
Prediction: iTunes will be a regular line item on my credit card statement from now on.
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