With the recent passing of Steve Jobs comes also the ten year anniversary of the iPod, and therefore more reflection on Apple and the impact the brand has had on our lives.
The blogosphere does not need another tribute to Jobs. However, I'd like the chance to acknowledge the role that Apple has played within the music industry. For without them, I don't know how we could have progressed so far in a decade.
It's not so much what Apple made, though we have to appreciate the tools they gave us. Every Gaymonkey album was produced on an Apple product - most creatives even beyond the music industry will have used one of the company's machines to generate their work. The hardware allowed us all to be producers and stretch the boundaries of our talents.
And the innovation that Jobs and his team drove through wasn't confined to the products themselves. With the iPod came iTunes - disrupting the fabric of the traditional distribution model of the industry. Now everyone could release their material and gain unlimited shelf space to sell their work. And do it internationally. The platform allowed our own label to have top 20 albums across Europe.
But what stands above this all is what sits at the heart of Jobs and Apple itself. The intention of the brand to think and do things differently.
It's this driving force that attracts the cult of Apple. The outsiders who want to identify themselves with a product that is like them. Who see themselves reflected in the vision of a business.
Gaymonkey was founded on the same principles. We believed that anything creative could be possible through the motivation of the artist. That to make it happen we could use the resources at our fingertips. That by thinking differently we could reach the goals we set ourselves - not the ones dictated to us by an industry that lacked the foresight of the new exciting digital era.
And as Gaymonkey shifts - to enable artists to achieve - the ethos we share with Apple still remains. Think different and make it happen. That's all we need to wake us up and keep us going.
Image from bangdoll on Flickr.
