The Pet Rock For The Digital Age

MacRumors is reporting that there’s a ten-minute “silent” song that’s selling like hotcakes on iTunes, rising in the ranks of the charts. Why would anyone pay $0.99 for a music file comprised of simply nothing more than the absence of sound? A number of vehicles, including those with CarPlay, have an annoying habit of playing the very first track in the music library on the connected iDevice when using a USB connection. This is in alphabetical order so it’s the same song every time. It’s easy to see how that could be annoying. So, there’s a track on iTunes is aptly named “A a a a a Very Good Song” and credited to Samir Mezrahi. Those who’ve purchased it can now enjoy silence until they can get their audio situation under control and begin playing what they really wanted to hear.

Of course, the more frugal and potentially less lazy types could always edit an existing audio file (or make one from scratch) by reducing the levels to zero using a free audio editor and rename the file appropriately all by themselves. For free. In, like, a minute. Again, the question – who would pay for an audio file with no actual audio? Who would buy a pet rock (those of a certain age will remember this)? A lot of people it seems and yep, probably the very same people.