Ben Sloot

Until this morning, I hadn’t bought an album of music in the past decade.

The timeframe may be a bit longer. I was an early adopter in Spotify… I wish I was an early investor. Before being a full-time music streamer, I bought singles from iTunes. There was a significant amount of time swashbucklin’ on Napster, Limewire and other P2P networks in college.

This morning, I conducted a futile search for the Rockstar soundtrack while riding a wave of nostalgia fueled by a memory of one of my old roommates.

I assumed both movie and soundtrack were lost in the annals of history when I couldn’t find the soundtrack on Spotify. I found songs from the fictitious Steel Dragon (the titular band) on various user created cover and (tribute band!) playlists, but nothing with the full throttle professional performance which made the movie so memorable.

Do you remember iTunes? Did you know you can still find music on iTunes?

Once a staple of my music consumption and now relegated to a glorified ringtone marketplace, I’d forgotten the iTunes catalog under the Cupertino umbrella. Is iTunes the 2022 vinyl store equivalent? Well I’m Jack Black.

Apple came through in a big way… Somebody priced the 14 song, hour-long album for impulse and I pulled the trigger. There is a broader lesson:

Don’t forget all the tools in your tool bag, tool-bag.

For anybody looking: Rockstar Soundtrack on Apple Music, and I’ve deleted my other music so when something randomly plays when I connect my phone to a new Bluetooth speaker this album blares.