Rob Reid: The $8 Billion iPod and the RIAA's 'Depressing' Fines
minute of music. Today's iPod Classic, with its 160GB capacity, can hold 53,333 three-minute songs, which at $150,000 a pop is precisely $8 billion (incidentally, Apple markets the iPod classic as having room for just 40,000 songs, but by my math, that's selling it short).
Finally, the 75,000 jobs figure was a joke. But you knew that.
And as for alien music liabilities ... well, that happens to be major area of interest for me. Random House is publishing my first novel in July (it's called Year Zero). It's about a vast alien civilization that's so into American pop music that it inadvertently commits the biggest copyright infringement since the Big Bang. Every smidgen of wealth throughout universe is suddenly owed to our record labels ... and we humans don't know it yet. Hilarity ensues.
Rob Reid is the founder of Listen.com and Rhapsody, and is the author of three books, including the upcoming novel Year Zero. You can contact him on Twitter at @rob_reid.
