Community Corner

Spotify Is The Future of Music

Music subscription service is paving the way for how we will all soon be listening to music.

We haven’t talked about Spotify yet. I believe it’s the “next thing,” the way we will all be listening to music in the next few years.

Spotify is a music subscription service. It runs off an app, not a website, unlike its competitors (Rhapsody, etc.). You can get it for free, with ads, or you can pay a monthly subscription and get it without adds. For a premium subscription, you get better fidelity and the ability to stream music on your smart phone and other devices.

And that’s the key word – stream. Because the future of music is not purchasing individual files, or albums, or songs. The future of music, as I see it, is streaming those songs. You don’t own them, you subscribe to a service which then delivers them to you, either on your computer, or your phone, or your tablet.

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With a subscription-based service, you no longer are confined to listening to music you own – you now have access to millions of songs. You can try out a song or an album by artists you don’t know, but may be curious about. I’m not a Lady Gaga fan, but I’ve been listening a little to her stuff, and it’s growing on me. I wouldn’t purchase her albums on iTunes, because my money goes to buying stuff I already know I like. Where’s the adventure in that? Where’s the growth? Still, I can’t afford to invest money and time in music I may or may not like. With Spotify, I can try it all.

This fall, Apple will roll out its cloud based service, which will attempt to compete with Spotify. Since Spotify got there first, perhaps having its foot in the door early will allow it to compete with Apple, which has become the dominate musical force.

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I hope you give a look at Spotify, and perhaps sign up for the service. The more I use it, the more I like it.

I also bit the bullet and signed up again with XM-Sirius Satellite Radio. The Bob Dylan Theme Time Radio Hour is going to have its very own station, so that pretty much drove me back. I just can’t take the offerings on KFOG or NPR any more. At least with satellite radio, I can dial in to specific genres and, depending on my mood, listen to music I already love, or explore artists I don’t know yet. My choice.

That’s the model emerging from the ditigal age, folks. Your choice. Not some music executive, or programming manager. Your choice. Music you want, when you want it. We’re in a golden age. Let’s enjoy it.

WEATHER:

Mostly cloudy in the morning then becoming sunny. Patchy fog in the morning. Highs near 80. Southwest winds 5 to 15 mph increasing to 15 to 20 mph in the afternoon.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
1873 - Indian Wars: whilst protecting a railroad survey party in Montana, the United States 7th Cavalry, under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer clashes for the first time with the Sioux near the Tongue River; only one man on each side is killed.

1892 - The father and stepmother of Lizzie Borden are found murdered in their Fall River, Massachusetts home.

1944 - The Holocaust: a tip from a Dutch informer leads the Gestapo to a sealed-off area in an Amsterdam warehouse where they find and arrest Jewish diarist Anne Frank, her family, and four others.

1958 - The Billboard Hot 100 is founded.

1964 - American civil rights movement: civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney are found dead in Mississippi after disappearing on June 21.

1964 - Gulf of Tonkin Incident: U.S. destroyers USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy report coming under attack in the Gulf of Tonkin.

1977 - US President Jimmy Carter signs legislation creating the United States Department of Energy.

1987 - The Federal Communications Commission rescinds the Fairness Doctrine which had required radio and television stations to present controversial issues "fairly".

1993 - A federal judge sentences LAPD officers Stacey Koon and Laurence Powell to 30 months in prison for violating motorist Rodney King's civil rights.

2010 - California's Proposition 8, the ballot initiative prohibiting same-sex marriage passed by the state's voters in 2008, is overturned by Judge Vaughn Walker in the case Perry v. Schwarzenegger.


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