I have sympathy for some of Lowery's points, but I also get the feeling that he and the NPR intern are talking past each other, with Lowery facetiously asking how hard it is to type in an iTunes password and the intern basically saying the whole concept of music ownership is increasingly moot to her and her generation, as hard as that is for many to get their heads around.
I've increasingly wrestled with the point of "obtaining" music (paid or otherwise) as the marginal utility of doing so gets smaller and smaller every day. I want to support my favorite artists, but when the transaction comes down to "I don't even want this thing, but this economic transaction is actually about something else" that's not really sustainable. I do still buy downloads because, I guess, i can listen when the subway goes underground and there's no internet connection? But Spotify allows you to synch playlists offline, so there goes that line of reasoning, right?
In any case, it's been fun reading endless pages of people being self-righteous about their music collections!