Spotify
I currently have over 152 GB of music on my PC. Approximately 26,000 songs or pieces of music. These are in MP3, Flac and other formats. The files have been sourced from various CDs that I have owned over the years and subsequently “ripped”. Others have been bought from Amazon or other similar sources. In the past I have copied music from friends’ collections and vice versa. The files are mainly categorised by artist or name which is sufficient for me to be able to trawl through them to find what I want. I use foobar2000 as my music player of choice, mainly because it is updated by its developer, plays all major file formats and has no adverts. The interface is verging on the spartan but I prefer this minimalist approach, as I do not require an excess of features.
For the last decade or so, this has been my default music set up. As I spend a lot of time in my office, at my desk, this is how I’ve mainly listened to music. A few years ago I ditched the ageing desktop speakers that were attached to my PC and bought a good quality soundbar. It has been a great improvement. I also have a pair of Sony WH-CH520 Wireless Bluetooth Headphones for those occasions when I need to keep the noise down, or for when I’m travelling. However, several things happened in the last year or so which made me question the status quo. The first was Mrs P buying a new car. It didn’t come with a CD player. The second occurred at one of my son’s barbecues. A playlist was collated within minutes with many guests contributing via their existing streaming music accounts. This ensured that there was an equitable representation of all kinds of music, negating any arguments.
Hence, when I received an email offering a 3 month free trial of Spotify last Christmas, I jumped at the chance. Needless to say the flexibility of the platform, along with its substantive music catalogue made it pretty much a no brainer. I lived through the album era and although I like sleeve art, I’ve always found records an inconvenience and never bought into the culture of reverence for them. Similarly, I feel the same way about CDs. So when the MP3 format started to gain traction in the earlier 2000s I quickly adopted it as it had the advantages of superior storage and easy access. Hence, streaming music services are a logical progression. Spotify is convenient and offers easy access. It’s on my PC, phone, smartspeaker. We can also access it when out or in the car.
Setting aside the practical benefits of its accessibility, the other major appeal of Spotify is collating and sharing playlists. Playlists are an excellent means of curating music for specific moods and occasions. As I have an organisational streak to begin with, creating bespoke lists of songs is something I can happily do for hours. I also find sharing other peoples playlists a very useful means of discovering new songs and artists. I can do this with friends and celebrities alike. I recently accessed a list of songs curated by film director Edgar Wright and it was very much to my tastes. However, if you still like to listen to a specific album in order the tracks appear, you can still do this. Spotify will also try and recommend comparable artists based upon your listening history. It’s not a perfect system but it can be quite creative in its choices at times.
The obvious downside to using a streaming service, as opposed to playing the music I already have stored, is the cost. However, I can justify that by the increased accessibility I now enjoy. Another issue that happens from time to time, is not being able to find a specific track. Spotify doesn’t claim to be a definitive music source but it does allow you to add files locally. I have also experienced a few glitches from time to time. Specific songs added to a playlist will sometimes default to alternative versions or mixes for no discernable reason. Material will sometimes be greyed out and unplayable. Presumably due to copyright issues. However, these are minor complaints. So far Spotify justifies its cost by its convenience and so I am happy to endure the expenditure. There are wider issues to consider such as the cultural shift away from “owning” music, to just “renting” it but that is a discussion for another blog post.
