Shea: iTunes shouldn’t own your musical life

I have an iTunes gift card. It lives in my desk drawer where it has held residence for three… I have an iTunes gift card. It lives in my desk drawer where it has held residence for three years since I received it on my 18th birthday.

I’ve lost it three times and only noticed once. I’ve stepped on it, accidently kicked it under my bed and buried it under a layer of junky office supplies.

I don’t ignore and abuse this card because I don’t want it. In fact, I think it was a very thoughtful gift that I was excited to receive, and every time I stumble upon it during a search for some Post-its or a pencil sharpener, I pick it up and very seriously think, “I should really use this.”

I could get the new Vampire Weekend album or Laura Veirs’ album. Perhaps I could acquire some cool applications for my phone or a new movie — but I just don’t.

The problem isn’t in the card itself, but rather in the iTunes store where it’s meant to be redeemed. I have a negative physical reaction to opening the cluttered, busy and thoroughly overwhelming program.

In an age when trying to draw people back to legally obtaining music is already an uphill battle, iTunes has its work cut out for it.

It is constantly competing with hundreds of websites that not only offer the same product, but offer it at no cost. The only thing iTunes has in its favor is a slew of poorly enforced copyright laws.

With this in mind, Apple should be using every resource it has to get an edge over the competition — and to some extent, it does. The iTunes store has faster downloads and higher-quality videos despite some lagging in the program.

However, iTunes has clearly overlooked one crucial thing — web design.

This is the 21st century, and good web design is next to holiness, but iTunes has clearly ignored this. People like simple and easily navigable sites, not 40 album covers and movie posters broken into eight boxes with tiny labels. It is simply too much.

BitTorrent sites like The Pirate Bay draw people in with nothing but a basic search bar and a sweet-looking pirate ship logo. LimeWire has a similarly wonderfully dumbed down, simple site.As if downloading free music wasn’t already tempting enough.

My case here is that iTunes needs to step it up and make it easier to search for music, find new releases and use in general. Then maybe I’ll finally use my poor and abused gift card.