Time to Spotify

The other day a friend of mine, much more internet-savvy than me, demonstrated yet another way to spend hours online instead of doing real life stuff: Spotify. 

It's wonderfully simple idea - like all the best ones, I suppose - based on the sharing, caring ethos of the more marvellous regions of the internet. If you want to listen to a piece of music, why should you have to pay to own it on CD or even download it from iTunes?

Let's face it, only a few of us listen over and over again to the same album the way we used to do when you could still buy records in Woolworths. Spotify is perfect at serving that desire, so common in music listening: the immediate need to listen to one particular track (or album) in full, just once. If you don't own it, or can't find it on your shelves then before Spotify, you'd have to buy it again if you wanted to hear it.

Now a whole world of musical treats is just a quick search away - All for free. All Spotify asks in return is that you tolerate a 20 second advert for another piece of music at 5 song intervals. That's roughly 2 adverts per album. Not a high price to pay for the privilege of listening to all of Hunky Dory by David Bowie without actually owning it, as I did this evening.

I should mention at this point that I've no idea whether Spotify is old news or not. It's possible that I'm crowing about an application that's about as cutting edge as paper. I recall the actions of my grandfather in 1983 when he took delivery of a Freezer. He went door to door in his street to tell his neighbours about the brand new, life-changing aparatus sat in his kitchen only to discover that everyone had a freezer in 1983. And more than one television in the house, in some cases.

So there it is. I am becoming my own Grandad.

At least there's no need to spend my pension on music anymore.

Time to Spotify, and spend the surplus on Central Heating.