iTunes and Zeitgeist
Posted by Nav on June 6, 2007
As one of the six people on earth who uses a Sony MP3 player and its companion Sonicstage, I have often looked at iTunes with the sort of envy usually reserved for a male friend with an impossibly smart and hot girlfriend. But while almost everyone either thinks of iTunes as either ‘the thing you use to get stuff on an iPod’, or increasingly ubiquitous jukebox software, it’s good ole’ Walt Mossberg who has seen what iTunes actually is:
…iTunes is much more than a companion to the iPod, much more than a media playback program and even more than a front door to Apple’s online download service. It’s a sort of miniplatform hiding right within Windows that allows Apple and other companies to connect a host of hardware and software, and to create media-sharing networks without engaging with Windows itself or with Microsoft’s built-in Windows Media Player.
I’ve said this a hundred times already - but I’m no Walt Mossberg. It is, however, very true - iTunes is a platform, a model that renders one’s Windows and Microsoft experience obsolete or, worse, undesirable. It is a Trojan Horse of the smartest kind and has introduced millions of people to the world of Mac and its aesthetic and interface.
The one part that Mossberg hasn’t written about here is the connection between iTunes and zeitgeist. iTunes is a vital part of contemporary culture; among the many things it marks is the shift from the weary resignation of the 90’s to the ironic resignation of 00’s. We don’t say we live in ‘iPod culture’ for no reason. When you open up iTunes you also engage in a world of Macbooks, Starbucks lattes, irony and shoegazer rock. I realise that sounds like an enormous stretch - but self-identification and understanding contexts through brands is hardly a revolutionary idea: who are you today if not a conglomeration of the commodities you consume? The iPod-iTunes combo is so successful not just because it’s so good at what it does but, more importantly, because it has become a marker of one’s participation in the zeitgeist of the age. This also helps to explain the utter dominance of iPod-iTunes: even though there are other ecosystems that do certain things better - it feels better to live in what feels like the ‘contemporary’.
There’s much more to be said about this, but for now, you’ll have to roll with Mossberg.
Link to Mossberg Article and a Slew of Annoying, Poorly Written Headlines
