Feelings of Abandonment

I'm most assuredly an iTunes harlot.

A few years ago, I was whining to my boss at work that I needed a bigger hard drive on my computer because I kept running out of disk space. Ever the financially conscious, he came in, pushed me out of chair, and began looking at my C: drive.

"What's this folder that's taking up 35 GB got in it?" he asked. One look at the contents and he had his answer: I needed additional disk space for work applications and documents because I owned nearly the entire Neil Diamond catalog plus about 2.9 million other music files no one else would be caught dead with.

Needless to say, later that day, I bought a package of bandaids for my bruised ego as well as my own external hard drive. I then spent 2 hours transferring the contents of that precious music folder to the new disk.

Did I mention I'm an iTunes harlot?

So a few months ago, one of my co-workers started bragging all up on this application called Spotify. I couldn't be bothered with entertaining his rants because I was too busy making playlists and trying to figure out ways to get people around me to like the same kind of music I like.

Then, after one particularly long day filled with the same Barry Manilow Christmas music I've been listening to for 15 years, I caved.

I installed Spotify.

I immediately went to Preferences and cleared every setting that would broadcast to the world every song I had listened to. (Yes, you may thank me for this with gift cards. I prefer Best Buy.)

I searched for something I didn't have on my computer. (Such stuff actually exists.)

I clicked Play.

And I wept.

And I searched, played, and wept some more.

And then I discovered the beauty of creating a Spotify playlist, which I can share with any of my Facebook friends who also have Spotify. Are you kidding me with this stuff? I can share my favorite music with anyone, and I don't have to actually give them the song file?!? And they can choose to listen to it only if they want? (And let's be honest, who doesn't want?!?)

I am now a Spotify harlot.

I haven't used iTunes for longer than 3 minutes in almost 2 months. That external hard drive of music has an inch of dust on it. I feel kind of bad, but not bad enough to give up listening to every Abba album ever produced. And nowhere else can you hear Bob Rivers' "You Don't Smell Like Flowers."

Seriously, people.