Media on main street
4 08 2008Devon Copley in Brooklyn
My wife and I took a little break from the steamy city this weekend and headed out to Cape Cod. This morning found the two of us sipping coffee and gazing out at the ships in the bay at the Dunkin’ Donuts in Onset, MA. I had thought I’d be leaving the issues of internet content distribution behind for a couple of days, but I was wrong…
An older man, maybe 60, was at the counter. He had removed his white iEarbuds to order his breakfast from the teen girl at the till, and I couldn’t help overhearing their conversation. They were talking about a song, trying to figure out who played it. “Chuck Berry, I think,” the man said.
“Chuck Berry?” the girl asked.
“Yeah, I wish I had that song.”
“You should go on Limewire and get it,” she suggested. “That’s what me and all my friends do.”
The man hadn’t heard of it. “Limewire?”
“Yeah. Where do you get your music?”
“iTunes,” he said, waving his iPod. “It’s great.”
The girl laughed. “But Limewire is free!”
“Free?” the man asked. “So they’re not paying the musicians anything, right?”
I didn’t manage to hear how the conversation ended…
