It's nearly 4.00am. I came to bed around midnight with my macbook in hand, some Safari windows open with articles put aside from today's tweets - my regular way of catching up on some reading before I sleep. Whilst reading, I tend to open up some music on myspace or Spotify. Tonight I started with myspace, having read a piece on The Field at www.drownedinsound.com (excellent music, by the way, and I've basketed the album).
On my phone I keep a rolling notebook of tracks or albums or artists I want to hear. Usually the notes come from magazine reviews or articles, but sometimes from friends or elsewhere. The list used to be huge. I could never whittle it down - trying to find the records to hear was often too difficult - I might find a snippet of a track, but that's never enough to make me commit to buy. I flirted with limewire, but found that lumbering and erratic and still a lot of work for not enough reward. Myspace has always been great, but of course you can only do one band at a time and the player often sticks. Regardless, the list always grew longer - I'd find new bands quicker than I could listen to the ones I already had written down.
Spotify has changed everything for me. Since I got hold of it (this year? last year? It seems like I've lived with it forever) I can find and dump about half the bands straight into a rolling playlist that sits with me as I work. I listen to far more than I've ever done - finding more albums by a new band than I thought existed, or listening to albums in full rather than rushed snippets. I sit with some music longer, rather than flicking and moving on. It's brilliant. And get this - whilst I'm exploring, all the bands are getting paid. How perfect is that?
My list is shrinking. I can listen faster than I'm adding, even though I'm listening to more, for longer. I'm still buying records too, of course, because I want the vinyl in my hands and the mp3 download code so the album can go onto my ipod, but Spotify is helping me discover more new music than ever before. I love it.
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