Yesterday it hit me, how much I depend on the iTunes music store to buy new music. Being a big fan of Thievery Corporation, I could not wait for their new album, The Outernationalist. It was not available on iTunes so I decided to visit the Virgin MegaStore in San Francisco. What struck me as odd was how few people were in the store. I remember a few months ago, you would go to the store and it would be packed with people. People just buying music all the time. All I could see were empty aisles and store packed with really crappy merchandise like Ben Sherman shirts, boom-boxes ugly enough to make me shudder, and CD-MP3 players.

Walking through the store, I realized why I had become dependent on the iTunes store. Quick search means not have to walk the aisles looking for an album, only to discover that it is not in pop, but in the dance music section, two flights up. Or getting detailed information on the group, samples to make my mind before plunking down the hard-earned dollars. Or the fact that CDs cost almost $4 bucks more than full albums in digital formats. The irony of the situation was that the Apple store which is bang opposite the Virgin store was full of people, most drawn to the iPod display. Made me think twice, perhaps digital music is the new and the only way of buying music, while Virgin is so hideously analog!

Buy Outernational Sound