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What's uncontroversial about that? The iTunes Store did make (legal) digital music mainstream. That's not to say it was the first store of its kind, but it was
by Osmium 12y ago
What's uncontroversial about that? The iTunes Store did make (legal) digital music mainstream. That's not to say it was the first store of its kind, but it was certainly the first to have widespread success.
- izzydata 12y agoCDs are digital music, everyone was listening to digital music before apple did anything. People were using walkmans long before the iPod. The point is trying to credit apple for "digital" music as opposed to "analog" music. That is just absurd. Credit them from making a business out of selling digital music, but not for making digital music popular.
- Osmium 12y agoCompletely fair point – I was reading "digital" in this context as something ephemeral, like a computer file (mp3s etc.), rather than a physical object such as CD, even though as you say CDs are digital too.
- jmelloy 12y agoI don't think anybody realistically considers a CD "digital".
- __david__ 12y agoOf course they do, in general—there's nothing analog about CDs. But in this context it clearly meant "digital downloads".
- coralreef 12y agoOr maybe "digital" means "mp3 delivered over internet" in this instance.
- chc 12y agoYou're being pedantic. The author was clearly not talking about media formats like CDs, which store music digitally as an implementation detail but are still a physical object that you buy just like records and tapes. It seems pretty clear that the author is talking about music whose primary form is purely digital, like MP3s that you could download on your computer and transfer to your iPod. Put another way: Anybody can tell you what a CD looks like — round, shiny, flat, about yea wide — but nobody knows what an MP3 looks like, because it is a purely digital format. The difference of physicality is the salient part here.
- sscalia 12y agoHow's the autism spectrum treating you? "CDS ARE DIGITAL MUSIC!!!"