Used iTunes

The other day I went into a used record store and I haven’t been in one in over a year. I always go over to the bargain bin to find a used CD. As I searched through the titles everything that was on the shelf had a copyright date of before 2002. Most of the listings looked like the same ones I saw there a year before. I suddenly released I haven’t recently been in a record store because I just download song here and there online. You can’t resell used iTunes.

In the past if you bought a record and a month later decided it wasn’t that great, you could take into a used record store and get a couple of bucks. Now if you download a record and decide you don’t like it, what are your options? The fact of the matter is before the purchase you can preview the song online endlessly. After you buy a digital song, there is no way of easily knowing you didn’t make a copy of it.

Has digital downloads caused the end of the used music era?