Today's blog post by venture capitalist Fred Wilson ( @avc ) titled "Anatomy of a Pirate" got me thinking about my music listening habits over the last 15 years. Over the last 15 years my music listening habits have plummeted. I used to listen to and buy a lot of music. So what happened? Well, for one thing, the music deleivery system changed. Innovation in the industry was also stiffled. I remember IBM and Blockbuster were stopped from doing some music related innovation decades ago.

What about the artists? There has been a lot of good music over the last 15 years. I bought some. Most of it I missed. Radio changed for one thing but so did the delivery of music to the public. Fred mentions how messed up some of it is.

Recently I started listening a lot again. I heard an amazing song on the radio and I used the Verizon SongID app on my feature phone to e-mail me the artist. Thanks to @amazonmp3 and a $5 payment I am the proud owner of Grace Potter and the Nocturnals ( @GracePotter ) latest and it is awesome. I listen to it twice a day. While at Amazon I bought Cage the Elephant and for the 4th time in my life, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. Why the drought? Maybe its the quality of the music. Maybe it was the DRM that made it a pain to buy music and to add it to all your devices. Amazon MP3's are DRM free, you just copy the music to your devices and listen.

What I think really kept my flame for music going was the indie artists I have been listening too over the last couple of years. People like Natalie Gelman and bands like McMule. People who love music and love to play music.

Disclaimer: I gave $25 to Natalie Gelman to help fund the recording of her current album via her fan funded album project.