For instance, I’ve been working at very small startups since around 2007 (after I decided pro photography wasn’t the career for me). And at one point in 2008 I explored working for a more established, profitable and growing technology company. I interviewed with them for the position of Software Architect which would have been a leadership position in the company, reporting directly to the CTO and taking over direction of two product development teams. It would have been an opportunity for me to shape the future of the company and how they used technology to achieve their goals.

The email I just noticed was the offer letter.

I had completely forgotten about this company and the offer they made me, so when I opened the email to take a peek, it really gave me a weird feeling. The kind of feeling that isn’t quite regret for turning it down, but certainly wasn’t the “I’m glad I didn’t accept that” feeling. It was a very good offer, for a position which I would have enjoyed. But when I talked to my boss at the time about it, he didn’t particularly try to dissuade me from accepting, but rather posed an interesting question:

“Is this one of those once-in-a-lifetime opportunities? If so, you should take it. If not, then why change jobs when another similar or better offer could come along in the future?”

I pondered on it for a day, and then turned down the offer.

About 3 months later, the startup I was working for at the time went out of business. I went to work for another startup, and that one too went into hibernation mode late last year. Whereas the company who made me that offer is still going strong. If I had taken the offer, I would probably still be working there. I would have significantly more money in the bank. I would probably be working fewer hours every week. And I would probably own a swank loft in downtown LA.

But I wouldn’t have met many of my current good friends. I wouldn’t have probably been able to spend two months working from Berlin, a trip which introduced me to my girlfriend. I wouldn’t have created a few cool products which are getting used around the world. And I wouldn’t be working with a group of crazy guys right now, trying to disrupt the entire music industry. No way to say whether my life would have been “better”, but it surely would have been much different. It’s interesting looking back.

There are probably a ton more forgotten moments and life events hidden away within my 12,390 sent and 102,189 received messages. I can’t wait for the rest of this email export to finish so I can do some analytics on them.

Sure, I owned some actual CDs but those were from my pre-Internet2-connection days at Tech. Looking back, I didn’t think anybody saw downloading music as “illegal”. The excuses for downloading music instead of buying it – “I don’t want all the whole album, just one track”, “$16 CDs are way overpriced and I’m not going to pay that much” – were more like explanations since there wasn’t anything wrong with it. Certainly it wasn’t like pirating software – that was bad and even though everyone did it, pirating a $600 copy of Photoshop just felt different than downloading a song.

So what changed? I discovered the value of Intellectual Property and I realized why copyright law was kind of a big deal… thanks to photography.

Before 2003 I was a photo hobbyist. I took pictures for fun, for myself and for the GT newspaper and yearbook. Towards the end of 2003 I crossed the line between hobbyist and semi-professional photographer. That is to say, I started getting paid and making real money from my pictures. In 2004 and 2005 more than half of my (admittedly meager) income was derived from picture sales. When Georgia Tech went to the Final Four in spring 2004 I was there, and I made several thousand dollars from pictures I made at that event.

I licensed a single picture from the Final Four for more than $1000 to be used on the cover of a commemorative DVD. Suddenly, the intangible protection of copyright had value to me. Lots of value.

Now, in 2006, I don’t do nearly as much photography and I have a “real” job that pays the bills. But I still license my pictures from time to time and I now buy all my music too. iTunes solved the “I only want one track off the album” complaint rather perfectly. Want just 1/10th of the album? Fine, that’ll be $1. Not unreasonable at all. Of course, if you don’t have an iPod, you’re SOL. (More about DRM and formats next time)

In fact it’s so easy to buy music from iTunes that you can end up spending way more than you realize. Looking at my account information I was trying to figure out how much I’ve spent on music through iTunes. (They very intelligently don’t display a running total of your purchases, but instead only list 15 purchases at a time which doesn’t look frightening at all.) After pulling out the calculator and manually adding up 6 (six!) pages of iTunes purchases, I got the grand total of $489 since 6/04. How many songs did that get me? 617. Most of those purchases were albums instead of single songs – sometime I’ll lament the loss of The Album – and even if an album is 12 or 14 songs, it still costs $10. So, on iTunes I’ve paid about $0.80 per song. That’s .80 dollars, not .80 cents.

I enjoy paying for my music now. Yes, I ENJOY paying for my music. I value it more, listen to it more and only buy music that I actually like instead of doing the grab-bag thing.

So, that is why I pay for music. Stay tuned for Part 2 (DRM, digital ownership).

For a good independent music download
site, go check out Magnatune.

Magnatune is a record company with the motto “We are not evil” (sound familiar?). Basically, they have mostly new and independent artists and when you buy an album you pick how much you want to pay, starting at $5 and going up to $18. Half of all sales go directly to the artist. And you can download uncompressed, non-DRM’d WAV files if you want. Oh, and they encourage you to give the songs you bought to 3 other people. No, you won’t find Audioslave on their site, but they do have some good stuff (I bought albums by Utopia Banished and Nova Express). Rock on.