I Never Owned Any Music To Begin With

When an NPR Music intern admitted to paying for almost none of the 11,000 songs in her iTunes library, David Lowery, of Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven fame and lecturer for the University of Georgia's music business program, took it as an opportunity to explain the ethics of a sustainable music industry, and the debate went viral. Here's the initial blog post, with links to the professor's response and NPR's coverage of the debate below.

A few days before my internship at All Songs Considered started, Bob Boilen posted an article titled “I Just Deleted All My Music” on this blog. The post is about entrusting his huge personal music library to the cloud. Though this seemed like a bold step to many people who responded to the article, to me, it didn't seem so bold at all.

I never went through the transition from physical to digital. I'm almost 21, and since I first began to love music I've been spoiled by the Internet.

I am an avid music listener, concertgoer, and college radio DJ. My world is music-centric. I've only bought 15 CDs in my lifetime. Yet, my entire iTunes library exceeds 11,000 songs.

David Lowery's response and NPR's coverage.