Gadgetopia

Pandora vs. CDs : Jeremy Zawodny discusses something I’ve talked about before: when you have something readily available at all times, the desire to actually own that thing goes way down.

Jeremy is talking about Pandora:

I feel like an idiot for the thousands of dollars I spent on CDs years ago, not to mention all the time and effort that went into digitizing that library multiple times (my own code, iTunes, WinAmp, etc.).

Here’s what I said two years ago:

But, somewhere along the line, I got over [ownership]. I started enjoying Rhapsody and Napster and came to the conclusion that “having instant, unfettered access to” and “owning” were essentially the same thing. My $10 a month was a fee I paid someone else to store, manage, and take responsibility for my stuff.

And then I went further:

[…] I’ve gone from wanting to own everything to wanting to own nothing and actually being stressed out by the thought of ownership. Weird how that works.