Subject: An Open Letter to Steve Jobs
RE: MP3 Addiction

Steve,

You should know that for the past few years, I've been consumed by a sickness: an addiction, really. This sickness consumed my free time, distracted me when I really should have been doing other things, and maxed out countless hard drives in my macs over the years. The sickness that I'm referring to is Audius Downloaditis, or as its more commonly known, MP3 addiction.

Over the years, I've tried numerous medications: Napster, Kazaa, and Limewire, all of which had little or no effect. I continued to spend hours downloading, testing (and often deleting), renaming and storing my stolen audio tracks. My friends tried to help, lending me their CD collections to rip in exchange for burning custom mix CDs, but still to no avail. It seemed my infection of pirated audio would continue to grow until my demise.

Then, a coworker told me about a new feature in the latest version of iTunes that caught my attention. A music store that gives you access to free 30 second previews, album art, and high-quality downloadable audio tracks at just $0.99 a piece. After hurriedly downloading and installing the new software, I treated myself with 7 fabulous audio tracks. I transferred them to my iPod, and almost immediately I could feel the MP3 fever start to let loose its grasp on me.

No More MP3 Addiction
"I'd like to thank you for developing a great tool that has me well on the way to recovery," writes recovering MP3 addict John Vargo on his conversion to iTunes 4 and the iTunes Music Store. "My treatment continues, as I have a lot of MP3 tracks (almost 8,000 songs) to replace with pristine quality AAC-encoded audio." [May 6]