iTunes Passes Wal-Mart As Top U.S. Music Provider

Providing further evidence that the digital medium has overtaken physical CDs, an independent study found that iTunes passed Wal-Mart in music sales during the months of January and February, making Apple's service the largest music provider in the U.S. It was the first time in iTunes history that they topped the sales charts. The study was announced the same day iTunes learned they'd have to compete against a new MySpace music service, which may effect numbers in the coming months. The impending new albums from Madonna, Mariah Carey and other marquee acts could shift the scales back to the physical product over the coming months.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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