With my ipod, albums have become a back up tool. In the last year, I've found that after loading an album onto the ipod, it gets tossed into an ever growing pile of red and white and olive green albums near my CD stand. I rarely spin disks on my stereo anymore because I have my ipod wired to it, so the disks and covers and plastic have become, basically, useless. I could put them on ebay or sell them to a second hand store and fund the purchase of new music and books, but... well, if my ipod fucks up or goes missing, I'll have to spent weeks downloading and burning and thousands repurchasing what is about fifteen years worth of music. And if record executives raid me and scream, "You didn't pay for that Patti Smith album, did you?" I'll have nothing to prove that I did, indeed, pay ten bucks for it.
