DocBug

Of course you can also fill it with songs from CDs you buy, but generally CDs cost a little more than 99 cents a song. And if you don't want to put every song on from the CD, your per song costs are quite a bit more.

The thing is that this factoid is not as meaningful as it sounds. The iPod just holds music, and there's no significance in how its price compares to the price of the music you buy. I'm looking at my CD shelf unit, which probably cost about $40, and is holding maybe 200-250 CD's, probably about $4000 worth. Is there any cosmic significance in the fact that I could buy a shelf for only $40 that would cost 100 times that to fill with music? I don't think so. And the same is true for the iPod.

True as far as it goes, and I wasn't trying to imply that the bottle should be as expensive as the wine. However, I do think the cost of music sneaks up on us when we buy our music in dollar or $14.99 chunks, or at least it's snuck up on me. I've been thinking how it'd be nice to upgrade my 10G iPod to one that would hold my entire collection, but decided it would be too expensive. And yet here I am with a (not especially large) music collection that has cost more than a new car — and most of that I built up while I was still a poor grad student!

I don't begrudge what my collection has cost me; it's mostly CDs I bought at gigs from unsigned bands. But it does seem a little odd that I'm still worrying about the cost of the razor when the blades cost twenty times more. (And as Ernest Miller points out, that perceived price difference may have larger psychological effects down the road...)