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Steve Jobs Awarded Posthumous Grammy
An anonymous reader writes "Recognizing Steve Jobs's immense contribution to music, he was the recipient of the Grammy Trustees Award at the Grammy's this past Sunday. The award is handed out annually to 'individuals who, during their careers in music, have made significant contributions, other than performance, to the field of recording.'"
Eddy Cue, head of iTunes, accepted the Grammy in place of Jobs.
What about Bit-Torrent, Napster, Limewire, etc? I've got no doubt they've done more to spread the joy of music, especially those who couldn't afford it...
Like Steve Jobs and Apple or not ... but if you can't see that iTunes totally changed how a huge number of people get and access their music, it's probably because you refuse to.
iTunes was the first widespread way that people could legally buy (or rip) digital music, and quickly managed to sell billions of songs. And the iPod radically changed how people accessed their music -- yes, there had been MP3 players, but in terms of making it widely usable by non-tech people. nothing else made quite the same impact. And, the iTunes software itself gives a nice, consistent way of dealing with this stuff. And, it also lets yo handle other media types through the exact same interface, and doesn't even require you to know what an MP3 is to use it.
Other than Napster (which got shut down because it was largely being used to pirate songs), name me one way you can get digital music that has had anywhere near the impact of iTunes?
And, yes, I will admit I've had iPods and iTunes since about 2001. But my mother-in-law is making noises about getting an iPod -- because even she understands what it is and what it's for. Do you think she'd know WTF a Zune is? I highly doubt it. And, at the time I chose to go the iPod/iTunes route, Windows Media Player was absolute crap -- I haven't touched it since, so I have no idea what it's like now.
Sure, there are players out there which have some features that a few hard-core geeks want ... but quite honestly, I have only ever known one person who needed Ogg Vorbis support and I can't think of any other features that might be missing from the iPod. (Well, I hear people whine you can't easily copy songs off the iPod, but that's because Apple didn't want to get sued by the music industry, and because iTunes keeps extra information about songs in its database)
I can see exactly why they gave him this award. I mean, if Paris Hilton could use an iPod, how hard could it be? Geeks don't like easy to use devices, but the rest of the consumer world does.
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