Joe Purdy
A song used in a Kia commercial caught my ear last night. "Guess I can't get it right today.... guess I'm going to give up." It was a simple folksy song with a high, rough voice I had not heard before. After a Google or two, I quickly discovered Joe Purdy. Looking up his name in iTunes I found his many songs and albums, but three of the songs were very popular with a high number of downloads. It turns out those three songs have something in common:
"Can't Get It Right Today" - KIA Commercial
"San Jose" - TV Show: Gray's Anatomy
"Wash Away (Reprise)" - TV Show: Lost
Amazing what a little exposure on television can do for you.
Meanwhile, I discovered I could listen to all of his albums on his website (at least for now) so I put on the headphones and have already listened to three of the albums as I work on Fiveforks Wiki. I'll likely buy two or three of these mellow and relaxing albums.
Oh... and I finally watched the Kia commercial to understand why they chose this song. You go so long between fill-ups you might forget what side the gas tank is on. Pretty funny idea.
Note: There is no broadcast radio in any of this story.
This week I bought the song "New Soul" by Yael Naim because that was way cheaper than buying the Macbook Air that the song advertises. Jobs picked the song himself. It's neat that some computer company CEO can pick a song and make an obscure French-Israeli singer a million dollars. I also bought Feist's "1234" when it was used to advertise my new 3G nano.
Lately I've been buying things from Amazon because they offer very high quality MP3's without copy protection and usually for the same price as iTunes. The Amazon downloader even automatically enters them into your iTunes library once you download them.
Claire picked "New Soul" as one of her iTunes birthday songs, also liking it on the Mac Air commercial. I'm burning all purchased iTunes songs to a read-write CD and reimporting as unprotected mp3s. Keeping originals off-line on backup CDs.