Golly, Gee, Carrie's Gonna BUY A CD!

I haven't bought a CD in years. I download my music (cough, cough). I purchased a Diana Krall CD about 8 or 9 years ago, and when I actually spent over two years trying to download the album "Jack Jones Sings Michel Legrand" and came up with only three of the songs, I actually bought it, although I couldn't find it in a store; I purchased it off E-Bay. I am still trying to find a place to purchase one of the two albums recorded by Hula Joe & The Hutjumpers.

I don't listen to radio. And now that artists and the RIAA are going after public radio to finally start paying them royalties for the songs played, that will spell the end of radio as we know it.

Obviously, radio had it's importance for a good many years, and it was what drove popular music and sales. That's why so many "payola" scandals arose from radio and the music industry.

I stopped listening to it when radio stations were changing format every couple of months! You'd finally get a groove on with a station, and next thing you know, it's an all Spanish station, or a right wing talk show. When KZLA, the only country station in Los Angeles on FM radio just disappeared, which followed the earlier withdrawal of Los Angeles' only jazz station, it was the last straw for me.

At first, I just started streaming radio stations over the internet, but not from Los Angeles. I found it funny I could listen real time to stations in Hawai'i or NYC. Then somewhere around early 2000/2001, that changed, when the stations had to go dark (not stream) during commercial breaks, which made listening tough. Also, the lack of proper broadband space to actually deliver proper streams back then made the stations start and stop a lot during the "buffering" phase.

Then all the internet communication sites began offering music, like AOL and Yahoo. I started streaming music from Yahoo about two years ago, and was impressed that there was no buffering. I could actually listen to music from the net without any interruption, for hours at a time. When I checked Yahoo Music's catalogue, I just had to throw up my hands and admit defeat! I actually pay $36 a year to have access to the Yahoo Music catalogue and stream. At work, it is on all the time, with mostly jazz. At home, I play it a lot depending on the mood I am in, funky 70's disco/jazz/fusion or 80's head banging!

I watched the country music awards last month because I wanted to see Garth Brooks live. I ended up becoming a fan of the group Sugarland, after viewing their performance. They did a song that I YouTubed, but could not find on the internet. Finally, browsing their website, I realized the song hadn't even been released yet! Sugarland will be the third CD I will have purchased in the past 8 or 9 years.