iTunes Man

This entry was published at least two years ago (originally posted on May 6, 2003). Since that time the information may have become outdated or my beliefs may have changed (in general, assume a more open and liberal current viewpoint). A fuller disclaimer is available.

(by Scott Taylor, with apologies to Billy Joel, sung to the tune of ‘Piano Man’)

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 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.

Its 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.

(found on /.)