In my quick breakfast browse of the news this morning, I came across an article on the BBC about Spotify, a service that is trying to change the way we interact with music.

Instead of paying for and downloading music, you can listen to any track/album/genre you want (that is on their system) for free. The catch is that you have to hear an ad every 20 minutes. That is something I can definitely deal with to be able to hear the music I want.

Spotify is an experiment. Instead of asking “who owns the music?” they completely circumvent the issue by putting it in the public domain, much like a radio station. But the idea is that, in order to hear the music, you have to listen to it through spotify, and therefore will hear the ads.*

I see this as a very democratic technology development, and plan on supporting it as much as I can (read: not subscribing, but listening!). They seem to have a growing classical collection too, though I haven’t wandered around it too much yet (this is just my morning breakfast break after all).

I should note that I am still a big fan of Pandora, even though it’s difficult to get here in the UK. Pandora is a very different idea than Spotify, though, and I believe both can live well together. Pandora focuses on introducing people to new music like the music they already know, which I find an invaluable service, and one of the most useful sites on the internet. But when I want to listen a particular song or artist, I’ll be checking Spotify first from now on.

In the quest to continually reduce my expenses so that I can, well, feed myself, Spotify looks like it will my tummy full and my ears happy. Yum yum.

* There is the option to pay a daily/monthly subscription of £0.99/£9.99 (in the UK) for ad-free content

[techie note: Spotify appears to run a version of Wordpress, the same free software that powers this site. I approve.]

[UPDATE: looks like the free version is only available in some European countries at the moment. People in the US will either need to pay or wait.  Ah well, you still have Pandora to keep you happy.]

I’m not sure if I believe in fate, higher powers, and the like, but occasionally, it seems very obvious that something is trying to help me out.

Such is the case at the moment with gmail. Apparently it has been down for a little bit, and after trying myriad ways to pull it back up, I must finally accept that this is, for all intents and purposes, an omen that my thesis is where my focus needs to be.

Of course, the more astute of you will wonder why I’m taking the time to post this. It’s called meta-procrastination.

Ok, back to writing. . .