You know what really frosts my flakes? Digital music.
Now don’t get me wrong. We’ve come a long way from scratchy 45s spinning on a phonograph.
But, back then, when you bought a record, it was yours. You could play it anytime you wanted as many times as you wanted.
No logins. No subscriptions. No “terms of service” written by a team of lawyers.
If you wanted a playlist, you stacked a few records on top of each other and hoped gravity did its job.
Then along came the Apple iPod. “Carry a thousand songs in your pocket,” they said.
And we did. We loaded up our CDs, built these massive music libraries, and turned our old CD collections into very expensive drink coasters.
Then one day…poof.
A software update, sync error or whatever they called it, meant suddenly half your music was gone.
“Sorry, that file isn’t authorized.” Authorized? I bought the thing!
So what do they tell you to do? Buy it again, this time from Apple.
Fast forward to today, and now you don’t even own the music. You rent it by paying every month for the privilege of listening to songs you already paid for — twice.
And just when you finally find that one song you love, it disappears. Gone.
Because some company somewhere lost the rights to carry it. Like a thief sneaking into your house and stealing only your favorite album.
And we’re all just supposed to shrug and say, “Oh, well, that’s technology.”
No, that’s nonsense.
I’m Grandpa Grumpy and I don’t need a subscription to be annoyed.