I love buying songs from the iTunes store even through I know they’re messing with my medial forebrain pleasure circuits. Quite simply, the folks at Apple have taken the lesson of cocaine and applied it to music. Pleasure with a fast onset, like smoked cocaine, is more addictive that pleasure with a slow onset, like chewed coca leaf. When I purchase a song on iTunes, it starts playing on my computer’s speakers within a minute or so. Sweet, rapid reward. But do they send the billing statement right away? Nope. It’s all done electronically, so the billing statement could arrive by email in a few minutes. However, the clever folks at Apple don’t want that to happen. They wait 3 days to send the bill. This interval weakens the association between a negative stimulus (the realization that you had to pay money for those downloaded songs) and the act of purchasing, making it more likely that I’ll readily buy more songs in the future. Rapid pleasure and delayed pain: a great marketing strategy. Like buying crack on credit.
