6.7 The iTunes Music Store Song

It would be depressing to end this chapter with such a bummer of a warning, so here's a little song parody that appeared on the Web shortly after the iTunes Music Store had its grand opening. It's attributed to filk master Scott Taylor.

NOTE

Filk songs are parodies of well-known tunes, or original compositions, with lyrics about computers, TV, movies, science fiction , fantasy, and other crunchy bites of the pop culture universe tossed in. It's a goofy and exuberant art form unto itself. (See http://dmoz.org/Arts/Music/Styles/Filk.)

6.7.1 iTunes Man

To the tune of "Piano Man" (Billy Joel)

  It's nine o'clock at the iTunes store,   A phenomenal crowd's logging on,   There's an old man on AOL,   Finding music from ages bygone.   He says, "Steve, can you play me a memory?   I'm not really sure how it goes,   But I typed in a track and got album names back!   And I'm not even wearing my clothes!"   Oh la da da diddy da da, la da diddy da da da.   Sell us a song, you're the iTunes man,   Sell us a song tonight.   Well, we're all in the mood for a melody,   And you've got the pricing just right.   Now Claude at Vivendi's a friend of mine,   And his business is selling CDs.   And he knows the solution for store distribution,   But he's worried about MP3s.   He says, "Steve I believe this is killing us,   All these pirates don't pay us a dime.   Well, I'm sure that you could be a billionaire,   If you could sell music online."   Oh la da da diddy da da, la da diddy da da da.   Sell us a song, you're the iTunes man,   Sell us a song tonight.   Well, we're all in the mood for a melody,   And you've got the pricing just right.   Now Paul is an iPod enthusiast,   Who listens to jazz with his wife.   And he's chatting with Maxine, who's still in the rap scene,   And probably will be for life.   And the waitress is downloading Dixie Chicks,   As the dial-up man slowly gets Stones.   Yes, they're sharing the bandwidth from Akamai,   But it's better than P2P clones.   Sell us a song, you're the iTunes man,   Sell us a song tonight.   Well, we're all in the mood for a melody,   And you've got the pricing just right.   It's a pretty good crowd for just Macintosh,   And the PC guys give me a smile.   'Cause they know that iTunes will be Windows-bound soon,   If they just can hold out for a while.   And the   AAC   sounds like originals,   And rights management isn't a pain,   And they sit at the screens of their iTunes machines,   And say, "Man, this is worse than cocaine!"   Sell us a song, you're the iTunes man,   Sell us a song tonight.   Well, we're all in the mood for a melody,   And you've got the pricing just right.