I just finished reading a very interesting book called The Perfect Thing – How the iPod shuffles Commerce Culture and Coolness by Steven Levy. For anyone who owns an iPod (or two, or three) and is even remotely interested in how the iPod came to be, should definitely read this book. Levy goes into great detail discussing the many events, conversations, technological advances and pivotal moments in key people’s lives that happened at the turn of the century that paved the way to the creation of the iPod. Not just that but he goes on about how the iPod has created a culture, a society of music lovers, embracing their music in a way never before possible, and with ease. With the iPod it’s not just about listening to your favorite bands, but it’s about the emotion evoked by shuffling your iPod and allowing the iPod to mix and match songs randomly creating and making any mood which it seems fit for that moment.
Interestingly enough, the order of the chapters in the book are also based on this shuffle theory, and are randomly placed in the book when its bound. So no two books will start out with or end with the same chapter. Hey, that’s different. Even still, the book I had seemed to follow a perfect pattern of telling the tail that is the history and revolution of the iPod. The whole book was utterly fascinating, I loved hearing the story of how Apple approached the music companies with the idea to sell music, via the iTunes Music Store, and how at the time file sharing was so common-place, people could get music for free, why on earth would they pay for it? The music companies were suing everyone who even thought about using their content in a way that they believed violated their rights as content owners. And now Apple had a plan to legally sell their music, but it took some heavy convincing still that this was a good idea for the music companies. Now after a billion downloads and counting, now the music industry is upset that Apple literally owns the download market (since when was downloading songs from Wal*Mart cool anyway?). Can those guys ever be happy?
Anyway, Levy does a great job with this book, and now every time I pick up my iPod and go for a drive, I think about how this little wonder-of-a-piece of hardware and software was developed and created and how it has changed the way I listen to music. I still prefer to listen to a CD at home or buy a CD at a real store over iTunes, but it doesn’t stop me from enjoying my music on my iPod in the car, on the computer, or at work and being able to shuffle all songs for the ultimate mix that plays only the good songs, and won’t repeat a tune for months. Do I have gripes about the iPod? Sure I do, but for me it’s the best portable music player available and even though I could care less about being cool (there’s an entire chapter in this book devoted to why the iPod is the definition of cool), it’s more about functionality, ease of use as well as the seamless integration with iTunes and its ability to organize the plethora of songs I have stored on my hard drive.
