Yesterday as I crossed the Atlantic, my Sennheisers performed their customary task of improving the quality of life at 35,000 feet with predictable verve.
With my iPod set to ‘random’, I was struck by how much new music I was hearing. Upon arrival at home, I promptly pommeled my occasional guests with an unsolicited—but cheerfully endured—Name-That-Tune contest. In due course I was able to stumble to an early bed-time bearing the satisfaction of having stumped Lucas on an extraordinary number of tunes in the admittedly broad ‘alternative’ category.
How does a middle-aged traveling man pull off such a stunning victory, this in the company of college-age Bastions of Coolness who seem most of the time to know everyone and everything whilst I creep around in the dank margins of Civilization?
It’s all in knowing the freebies.
Too many of my friends remain unaware that the iTunes store offers three free music downloads per week, to say nothing of the movie trailers and TV-show sneak previews that lie in wait.
Usually classed as Single of the Week, Discovery Download, and Canción de la Semana, these are typically high-quality tunes from recognized or up-and-coming artists. I would normally gush that it’s amazing how quickly these tunes add up in my iTunes library, but then one of you would make the irrefutable observation that it’s not actually amazing, it’s just math.
OK, then. But I still have more free music than you do. Until now. Which is my motive here: to get my friends up to speed on a great freebie.
This cornucopia of gratis sound occasionally tosses in a classical piece for the Remnant of us who still know that Baroque is not something bad that happens to your car. But that works less well, since you’re usually getting, say, just the second movement of a composition that really requires three or four. This is hardly a gripe, but while I’m drifting in the direction of ingratitude, let me also say for the record that the occasional download barks like a dog. Yet such canines are quite the exception in a veritable herd of well-hummed beasts. Or something.
Free music. It would be boorish to say more.
Canter Bridge 