Found this article written by Amy X. Wang and appearing on qz.com:

Apple’s iTunes is 13 years old today and its still awful

As a young man, I never would could have conceived of the idea of having my entire musical catalogue at my fingertips.  Further, it was unimaginable in those days that pretty much any and all albums/songs would be available to you from the comfort of your home and in a matter of seconds via legal (and for those who do it -not me!- illegal) downloading.

To the youngsters out there: Yes, there was a time back in the “good old days” when you wanted a certain album or song you had to drive to your nearest record store and scour the bins for the record(s) you were interested in.  And if the store didn’t have them, you had to special order it and wait a week or so to get your hands on it.

I’ve mentioned before how when I first got into David Bowie I was delighted to find (this was circa 1985 or so) a cassette copy of The Man Who Sold The World.  At that time, this was simply not a very easy album to find.  Nirvana didn’t even exist and therefore hadn’t done their “unplugged” cover of the song which brought it a large wave of attention.  “Bigger” David Bowie albums such as Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, Young Americans, Heroes, and Scary Monsters were readily accessible but it was hit and miss finding some of the earlier stuff.

Anyway, this all changed with the arrival of the MP3 file and, to a big extent, iTunes and, more specifically, the iTunes store.  It allowed users to buy their album via the internet and, suddenly, you no longer had to trudge your way to a store with the hopes of finding something that wasn’t there.  Since the arrival of the iTunes store you also have Amazon.com which also features pretty much every bit of music available for purchase.

Thing is, and as the above article states, iTunes is an awful program.  Considering how much money it’s made for Apple, it is truly bizarre the company, which lives on a reputation for creating truly great products, nonetheless hasn’t been able to make it any better after all these years.

While I do use the program now and again to listen to music, I much prefer using other programs such as the Amazon music app or whatever the current Windows music player is.

But as the article notes, this may all be becoming irrelevant and the days of iTunes still existing may be coming to an end as streaming music appears to be the preferred means of listening to music to the younger generations versus actual music ownership.

For an older fart like me, it feels odd to not want to actually “own” things but the new generation is doing just that.  Instead of buying albums, they stream their music.  Instead of buying movies, they check out what’s available on netflix or “rent” a film via a movie service.  I suppose someone out there is trying to do the same for books as well.

On a tangential note, I read how some Hotels are catering to younger generations by offering “bare bones” hotel rooms with larger lobby/social gathering areas.  As so much of what they use is available on their smartphones, some in the younger generations no longer need Hotel rooms to have a large amount of things within them for their use.  They’re content with the minimum, which the older crowd may not be.

It’s a changing world out there, but you knew that already, right?