Musical Economy - Is it worth 99 cents?

I was chatting with a friend this weekend and telling him that I'd been listening to Steve Carlson and that I don't really mind that the player doesn't seem to have a way to turn off the repeat function because I tend to listen to the same album over and over and over again for whatever period of time before I switch to something else. He said this is one music-listening personality and that it's the one way in which he would compare me to one of his coworkers. He'd given said coworker a song to listen to, and the coworker listened to the same single song on repeat for the entire forty-hour workweek, driving my friend crazy.

I bring this up because I've recently become enamored of Old Crow Medicine Show's "Wagon Wheel." I heard it in a coffee shop last week, and both (a) recognized it as vaguely familiar and (b) remembered enough of the lyrics to look up what it was when I got home. I've been playing the video repeatedly because YouTube is a good way to listen to a song. (I have yet to actually watch the video all the way through. I can also swear that Seth Roberts [who I think is something of a crackpot, but sometimes an interesting one] had a post about listening to music on YouTube, but now I can't find it.) The difficulty, of course, is that I have to actually hit replay (unless YouTube has a secret continuous repeat feature I don't know about), which makes it a pain if I want to listen to it repeatedly while sitting somewhere other than at my computer. So the question I'm asking myself is: is it worth the 99 cents it would cost to buy it on Amazon or the iTunes Store? They are on Nettwerk, which is a non-RIAA label, so I have no ethical issues with buying their music, and I'm pretty sure I don't want their whole album, just the one song. It might mix in nicely into my iTunes Country folder (which also includes Jason Manns and Jensen Ackles' "Crazy Love," which is not country but which I wanted iTunes to shuffle in with Kane; if I ever buy one of Steve Carlson's CDs, I'll probably put it there too for the same reason).

And now I think I've talked myself into it. Off to the iTunes Store I go!

Thankfulness: November 12, 2008

Today I'm thankful for free sweet things. My apartment complex has donuts every Wednesday morning (which are really more like "free" since my rent goes to pay for them). I never used to remember it when I was working, but now I usually come back through the complex and past the rec room on my morning walk, so I've been stopping in every Wednesday for a donut. They're not fake grocery store donuts either. They're the real thing from the Donut Nook. (They also always have pizza. I found this totally mystifying until I started coming by at the same time as several of the junior high age boys in the complex.) This evening we were in yet another coffee shop where the guy behind the counter completely forgot about K's latte. After she reminded him and he finally brought it out, he offered her a free cookie, which she accepted. He brought out the cookie, and then came back with one for me: "It seemed rude not to bring you one too."