RIP iTunes. Long live Spotify!
About 6 weeks ago I started using Spotify. At first I was somewhat skeptical. The app didn’t seem to have much depth, lacked some of the nice browsing features I’d come to depend on in iTunes and generally seemed a bit basic. At face value, I just couldn’t see Spotify having much more depth, or use, than Lastfm. I.e. it was a nice service, but wasn’t going to replace “the CD” or my well groomed iTunes collection.
6 weeks has now passed, and not only has my opinion of the service changed, I’ve found it’s completely replaced iTunes and, to some degree, my iPod. I now spend my days listening to tracks from Spotify, irrelevant whether have them locally. I’ve found it not only gives me easier access to greater artist collections than I ever had but also as a great resource to other, related artists collections. Consequently I’ve found my musical tastes extending further than before, listening to artists that I may never have bothered with, as, quite simply, I would have had to splash out my hard cash for the CD, that I may, or may not, have liked.
Looking back, I think my initial reluctance was the idea of essentially denouncing my ownership of my music. To release that association with the physical copy, that somehow, for me at least, verifies and validates my interest in that artist. That somehow, moving to an online collection, invalidated my previous music collection. Once that barrier had started to crumble, I found myself more and more accepting of the service.
I now even use it instead of my iPod at home. From what was previously my library of music, something I took everywhere. It’s now been reduced to a secondary back-up for when I don’t have a Wi-Fi connection to plug the laptop into.
The next steps for me will be when Spotify break to service away from the desktop app. When they deliver music directly to your iPhone (like LastFm does at the moment), or introduce a channel for WiFi radios, to play you playlist music straight from the library, remotes for music centres that allow remote searching from the hardware (or some crazy idea like that).
Spotify no doubt raises many serious questions about the future of the music industry, in it’s current state. But, I don’t believe it means extinction, just an evolution in the current model to something, potentially, infinitely more beneficial and accommodating to artists.
http://open.spotify.com/user/pauljamescampbell/playlist/0N5UhPUuBFx3MblsauOiEn
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