Digital Music Craziness Week continues! Those of you who just can't get your fill of iPod/iTunes rigamarole, why not go straight to the source and drink deep of musicky goodness? Apple has finally posted a QuickTime stream of Captain Steve's by-invitation-only Long Strange Trip last Monday; tune in and you, too, can feel like you're a member of the press or somebody who actually matters. If you can spare the hour, we heartily recommend sitting through it, because it packs all the punch of an Expo Stevenote: the concentrated burst of Reality Distortion energy; the obligatory cheap shot at Dell; even goofy onstage Phil Schiller antics. Granted, there was no "one more thing," but what with the July Expo getting nuked into oblivion, this is as close to a Stevenote as we're likely to absorb for some time.

Not full yet? Then slap your eyeballs all over the QuickTime version of the iTunes Music Store promo video, assuming you have a high enough tolerance for prattle that prolonged exposure to MTV veejays doesn't send you into foaming convulsions. (The fact that you can sit through one of our shows is a pretty good indicator that you can handle it.) Observe as big-name "recording artists" (AKA "musicians who actually make money") express their undying gratitude to Apple for providing yet another revenue stream. Wondering why Apple's stock is uncharacteristically higher following Monday's good news? It's just a guess, but we're betting that Wall Street figures that Apple stands to grab some serious mind share among cash-flush teens now that MTV and the major labels are contributing to the hype machine. Score!

Still not enough? Then be sure to check out all five AppleMusic TV commercials, featuring Switch-type "regular folks" performing a cappella as their fave tunes pump through their iPod earbuds. None of them is as laughably bad as that guy with the headphones you always see on the bus wailing along to "Oops I Did It Again" at the top of his lungs in what seems to be some sort of decimalized scale in the key of K-flat-flat-minor, but presumably that's not the effect Apple was going for anyway. All in all, the ads do a fairly nice job of portraying the personal joy of losing oneself in music; whether or not they'll actually get anyone to visit AppleMusic.com remains to be seen.

By the way, our collective Inner Pedant feels compelled to note that, while the "Baby Got Back" commercial is arguably the funniest of the batch, that particular song isn't even available at the iTunes Music Store-- nor is anything else from the Sir Mix-a-Lot oeuvre. We trust that this terrible oversight will be remedied post-haste.