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I finally bought my first album from iTunes.

In my new car I have XM radio built in and received a three-month subscription when we bought the thing. I love some of the stations, especially the latin jazz and groove stations. But one day, while listening in the car, I heard this really beautiful ensemble, cool soulful percussion, driving rythmns, wailing saxophone. Really great stuff. All I could see on the display was the creator of the album, a guy named Manu Katche. Then, after that, I heard this great jamming thing by Herbie Hancock, one of my true inspirations.

I made mental notes to Google these guys and their albums when I got to work. Then I thought to check iTunes to see if perhaps that had something I could listen to as well. I was hugely impressed with their catalogue; enough so that I decided I would type in the debit card and try buying something from them. I was surprised how easy the process was; I entered my iPod login information, then added all my debit card numbers, and shortly was downloading the entire Herbie Hancock album I had heard for the first time just minutes ago. The sound quality is excellent and it loaded right into the iPod automatically.

The downside, and one which I assume others have written about, is that I can play this music on only five machines. I don’t really care about that. If I can play it on my laptop or home machine or iPod I am happy. I plan to buy one of those Bose iPod stations soon, and that should give me everything I would care about (those Bose stations are truly amazing!).

I love that I can find albums by people like Bill Frisell and Jack DeJohnette and Jan Garbarek on something so pedestrian as iTunes. I love that I can download the albums for 10 bucks. And I think it is just brilliant how Apple revolutionized the music industry while not even being a player in that space.