Giving in to the Apple vortex

For a Christmas present this year, I asked for an iTunes gift card.

I have never received nor bought an iTunes gift card and have probably only bought 3 songs on iTunes (maximum) in the 6+ years I've had an iPod. Why? Because I never had to. There were always "other" ways of getting the music I wanted onto my iPod without paying out of pocket. Now it's not even worth it to take that route, partially because those routes are shut down. 


Ok, so I'm lazy and would rather out the $.99 per song off a Christmas gift iTunes gift card than bother poisoning my computer with viruses and illegal torrents. What about the rest of the music consumption population? There has to be more passengers in this Lazy Boat than just me, so why hasn't iTunes taken recent torrent shut-downs as a marketing technique? In the "Store" and "Gift" sections on the Apple website, iTunes gift cards are a tiny little link on the side bar. I get that that's probably not Apple's major revenue, but I think it'd be great marketing to feature little slogans like "Do it legally" or something clever to promote the potentially higher number of music buyers on iTunes now that many websites and softwares have been shut down.


Also, who really cares if the Beatles are on iTunes? They had their own Rock Band game before iTunes, that's more shocking to me.