I stopped listening to the radio due to crappy overplayed selections, but I still like to catch up on what songs are popular just to see what's out there.I do this via the Apple iTunes store by clicking "See All" on the "Top Songs" tab to preview the top 100 or so popular songs. (I like this better than the radio as it's more accurate which songs are actually popular, rather than which labels have the most pull). SIDENOTE: They used to allow seeing the top songs in each genre but I haven't bothered to figure out how to do that since a not so recent upgrade.
This feature is one of my favorites in iTunes as it indirectly shows music trends.
This is how I find new pop songs to add to my collection. I'm not even going to try and deny that I don't listen to pop music because I do. I just don't like A LOT of it that has come out in the last couple.. ok who am I kidding, last 10 years.
As I was going through the list hitting the play preview button for each song I stumbled upon the current #50 "Drop the World" by Lil Wayne & Eminem. The song is marked EXPLICIT. I hit play and listened to exactly 30 seconds of curse words. The repertoire consisted of everything from the N word (Nigger, or Nigga), Motherfucker, Shit, Bullshit, Fucken, and Bitch. The song itself is not the problem here, the problem is that I just very recently read an article how Steve Jobs is trying to uphold some moral police standards on Apple products and restricts any applications featuring pornography.
A TechCrunch article quotes him
You know, there’s a porn store for Android. You can download nothing but porn. You can download porn, your kids can download porn. That’s a place we don’t want to go – so we’re not going to go there.
So Mr. Jobs, you don't want to go there with pornography because of the kids? Oh really? Trust me I agree with you that children should not be exposed to porn, I'm sure countless studies have been done on the subject, where early exposure may lead to adult promiscuity, but if you're going to administer policing on content please be consistent.
iTunes is FULL of songs and videos that are just a smidge away from the gates of Gomorrah* itself. If you're so incredibly concerned about the children, why not make it just a tiny bit harder to download explicit content and be fair in which content is allowed. Do you realize how easy it is for kids to use their parents credit cards to purchase things. What kind of verification do you use to make sure the explicit content is not being downloaded to a child's iTunes account?
Let's end the hypocrisy.
*Please note I'm using Gomorrah as an overall metaphor for sexual content, and not specific to homosexuality as it is often misused.
I'm actually not surprised at this. So many Americans have this big issue with sex and pornography, but foul language in music? Feh! Watch them do the hand wavey thing as little Timmy stocks up on 50 Cent. It doesn't matter, he'll be okay because he doesn't have porn!
ReplyDeletePersonally, I'm with the late George Carlin on this: I'd rather catch my child (when/if I have one) watching a film with two people making love rather than two people trying to kill one another.