someone who's doing some things
Music streaming
So Apple’s new ‘Spotify killer’ service is here. I’ve decided to try it out to see how good it is. So far, I’m not sure I particularly get what all the fuss is about. However, One thing I’m not sure I quite like is the fact that everything is now in iTunes. My library and everything else all in one place. I’m not sure I’m going for that quite.
We’ll see how it goes, but for now I’m actually preferring Spotify a lot.
February was an interesting month for musical discovery. I ‘found’ some really good stuff, so I thought I’d post a round up of what I enjoyed in February. I might even keep doing it every month. Who knows.
Morning Phase by Beck: I really enjoyed this album. I only recently decided to listen to some Beck again and just listened to a bunch of albums culminating in this one which was excellect.
Sea Change by Beck: I listened to this before Morning Phase, and now that I think back I’m not sure which I prefer. Perhaps I’ll need to listen to them side by side.
The Eurythmics, Boxed: Whilst I haven’t actually finished listening to this as yet I do like a good boxed set to listen to and this one reminded me of a lot of their great tracks that I’d forgotten.
The Civil Wars: Not something I would normally listen to, but I quite enjoyed listening to an album or two of their material. I don’t think I’d go back to it in a hurry, but it was nice.
Stereolab: I’ve listened to a lot of them in Feb. Not entirely sure why, and they’re one of those acts that I enjoy but then can’t really remember what it is I’ve been listening to afterwards. Perhaps that’s ok.
Those are the highlights that spring to mind at the moment, and that probably means they’re the things I enjoyed the most. Maybe.
I listened to this on Spotify and was really impressed by how good it was. Very well produced synth pop music. In many ways what you’d expect from OMD. So I played it for a few days and now I’m starting to move on again. I’ve probably over listened to the Metroland remixes and had enough, for now anyway.
So i makes me wonder what is it that gets us to obsessively listen to something for a while, a few days usually in my case, and then move on. Of course, it could just be me, but I don’t think so. I do know that a few of my friends are like this too. It comes in cycles usually. I’ll listen to something intently for a while then put it down, then in a few months or years I’ll come back to it and rediscover just how good it is. I suppose that’s the thing with ‘pop’ music isn’t it.
I’ve been using Spotify for over a month now and it is really starting to fit into my listening process. It’s interesting to listen and subscribe to other people’s playlists, and a little strange too, almost like snooping in some ways.
I’ve also subscribed to some playlists from the Field Day festival, and again, that’s quite interesting too, and a good way to get to hear some of the acts that I’ve not listened to before.
So I start to wonder about the differences between owning and renting music and how my view of music ownership is changing.
I’ve had my 1 month free of using Spotify premium, and I’ve decided to keep it, for now anyway. I think that how I use it will evolve over time. I’m not sure that I’ve quite got it fitted into my listening patterns, but I think that’ll change and make more sense soon enough.
Using Spotify over the last few weeks has made me start to re-evaluate how I listen to music, or more specifically how I discover music. I’m quite intrigued by the idea of sharing playlists and collaborative playlists, and the whole concept of subscribing to a playlist. I think that I probably need to spend some more time getting used to this stuff before I go publishing and sharing my own playlists all over the place.
But listening is changing, probably in a good way, and I feel like I need to catch up and understand it better.
A friend told me about SongKick the other day and I found that there was a Spotify app for it too. It’s a really useful for finding shows for people in your music library, and the fact that it works inside Spotify makes it much more useful. I’ve already found a bunch of shows that I might go to now.
I suppose from that point of view it isn’t so great as actually it’s ending up costing me!
I was really pleased to hear that Spotify is finally arriving on the iPad. The iPhone version is fine, it does what it needs to, but I think that it could do a lot more and really needs an overhaul. Having said that, it’s good to see Spotify come to the iPad at last although I’d thought that they might bring Spotify apps into the iPad version from day 1. However, maybe that’ll just come later.
So, I’m getting to the end of my trial period and starting to wonder about whether to continue with the premium service or not. I have to admit that it’s very useful to have playlists on my iPhone. I haven’t particularly made use of SPAPPS so far, with the exception of the Last.fm app which is quite handy too.
So, is it worth the money? That’s the big question right.
I used to listen to Landscape when they had they’re massive hit “Einstein A-Go-Go”. They split up after their next album. A shame really. Then I’ve found a load of their stuff on Spotify. Some of it really good. One album, called “One”, has had me listening to it several times over now. So I shall listen to some more, but it sort of bothers me that I’m not entirely sure if the band I’m listening to is the same band who originally made “Einstein A-G0-Go”, or if it’s some other band called Landscape!
I’ve tried the usual things about looking them up on the internet, but I can’t find anything conclusive. I guess in the end it doesn’t really matter. It is just good music, I like it, that’s all.
I am Ashley Elsdon 