So I finally bit the bullet and did the thing that I’ve naturally avoided ever since the glory days of Audio Galaxy allowed me to indiscriminately devour music by the bucket load with no fear of consequence or moral qualms (a bit like sex in your twenties and food in your thirties): I’ve signed up for a premium subscription music service.
Spotify Premium costs £10 per month and for that extortionate sum (0.3287p per day) I basically have a music library of several million high quality tracks to enjoy at my leisure.
I can broadcast them over my amp (thanks to Airfoil and Apple Airport Express), listen to them offline and – best of all – download them to my iPhone and listen to them on the bus/tube/hansom cab. Joy! And I don’t ever have to go through the moral torture of actually having to buy an Elton John song just because I have a sudden and inexplicable hankering to listen to Rocket Man at 2am after 12 bottles of Diamond White.
Now, consider iTunes’ original music store offering: 79p per track, Fisher Price 128kbps bit rate, and most humiliating of all, crippling DRM that effectively meant that you had to beg Apple like a domineering parent every time you wanted to play your tune on a new machine. Suddenly that money seems like 0.3287p well spent!
So what’s my point? I love Apple and regularly use iTunes by choice (ahem), even though the latest version crippled smart playlists on my iPhone and sent me into paroxysms of rage on the number 30 bus – sorry to the poor middle aged woman whose ears burned under my withering tirade of abuse at an inanimate object.
I also have indulged in the morally bankrupt ‘grey market’ music services like allofmp3.com, trying not to care as my money was syphoned into lining the pockets of shady Eastern European men with too many vowels in their names.
None of this really satisfies. iTunes because it ripped the punter off (sorry Steve, it did), allofmp3 because it ripped the artists off (and probably helped finance more than one military coup). P2P was never really an option because I’m thoroughly anal about consistency of track quality, like to listen to whole albums and largely because I’m not cool enough to be invited to the exclusive networks.
Spotify by default becomes my choice – it keeps music fresh, allows you to listen to stuff you wouldn’t normally listen to, expand your musical horizons and amazingly keeps its nose clean and above the law (which is a good thing, for all its asinine stupidity and heavy handedness in regard to copyright and licensing).
We need to cherish initiatives like this – if they don’t flourish then either the pirates and freetards win and the internet gets locked down and more 15 year old girls from Idaho get $150,000 fines for listening to Beyonce (which come to think of it might not be such a bad idea). Or, the record labels get to carry on dictating terms and implementing archaic distribution models and revenue streams at the cost of choice and to the detriment of, well just about everyone.
So here’s a taste of the democratic web – digital music for all, served up as it should be, with no strings, no footprint, no hidden locks – while you pay you can have it, when you stop you can’t. Is that a problem for TV license holders? Or for club memberships, private library card renewals, football season tickets, home internet connections, car rentals, hotel rooms etc etc?
Freedom’s never free – now where did I put that 0.3287 pence coin for the meter?
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