…it’s just you against your tattered libido. The bank and the mortician, forever, man
I jumped on the MP3 bandwagon pretty early. By late 2001 I had stopped buying CD’s and had most of my music collection “ripped” to MP3. At the time Apple was touting iTunes ability to copy your music CD’s and create your own mix CDs.
MP3 players weren’t common then. What you got was the convenience of having all of your music together in one place. No swapping CDs. You could create playlists of all your music for various occasions or moods.
If memory serves I ran a really long cable from the computer to my home stereo for the “full effect.”
From there I tried various MP3 players. What Steve Jobs said at the launch of the iPod in 2001 was true. None of them were very good. That changed when the iPod hit the scene. I got mine in early 2002. Man it was impressive for sure. being able to carry 5 Gigs worth of music in your pocket and get an entire work day of listening out of it? Really cool!
I had most of the iPod models as they came through. All had their pluses and minuses for sure. My favorite has always been the original iPod Nano. What a fantastic bit of tech it was.
The advent of the smartphone signaled the end of the MP3 player. Some continue to hang on but its time has passed.
I had not been a fan of music subscription services. I have 30 Gigs worth of music and growing. I carry it on my iPhone. It connects to my stereo at home, my car, my headphones at work. Why pay monthly for music?
All that changed when I picked up an Amazon Echo in early 2018. The Echos all have Amazon Music available through “Alexa.” After a couple of weeks I was hooked. Being able to just ask for certain genres or bands, specific albums or songs… I was hooked.
Amazon music is a great service and works well with Alexa. I had no real complaints about its functionality… save one. The catalog. In Canada it’s very small and you quickly run into things that “Alexa” can’t find. It gets frustrating.
Enter Spotify. For $10 bucks a month you can get Spotify and access to over 20 million songs. Setting up an account is easy and within a couple of minutes your browsing through their catalog. Integration with the Echo is simple as well. Just launch the Echo app on your smartphone and add your account details into the services tab.
Now you can access all of songs in that enormous catalog just by asking Alexa.
I guess if I had to find a negative, I do wish that Spotify did more to help you find new music that fits your taste. They do create playlists for you based on your listening habits but most of them just contain songs I have already listened to or songs from the same album or band. As I get older I find it harder to keep up with new music and it would be great for Spotify to suggest new music based on my listening habits as well.
Overall I don’t think you can go wrong the Spotify as a service. They have an app for every device. A large catalog of music and integration with Amazon Echo.
For $10 a month… Go, Go now. I’ll be here when you get back.
NoShade's 