Spotified

I'm now on Spotify and I'm conflicted. To be honest I'm not at all sure if one should talk of being 'on' the 'app', but the thing suddenly popped up out of nowhere on the bar-thing at the bottom of my laptop for work and I decided to listen to something on it - the app, that is, not the bar. At first I was a bit worried it might end up costing me money, but there didn't appear to be any charges involved and I seemed to remember Fifi telling me a while back that you could get the thing for free, so I recklessly plunged in.

Must say, I was also a bit concerned about the fact that I'm aware that a lot of folk I admire regard pretty much all the streaming services for music, and especially Spotify, as a wholly reprehensible business model in terms of the lack of cash going in the direction of the music-makers themselves. But my integrity rapidly crumbled when I realised I had instant access to stuff I'd never been able to get hold of as a youngster but had always wanted to listen to up close. So I went ahead and have listened to the following over the last few days: The Kinks' Preservation, Act 1; Peter Hammill's Over; and Anthony Phillips's The Geese and the Ghost, which is now playing.

All very nice indeed, but, for reasons I can't quite pin down, listening to them through streaming isn't as deeply satisfying as actually 'possessing' these albums on CD (or vinyl, if I still had a turntable.) This reinforces something obvious but puzzling I've been wrestling with for some time: The music I paid what felt like big money for when I was younger seems so much more valuable, somehow, than the music that is now so freely available that I feel a tad overwhelmed by it all.

This is stupid of me, but real. And I sense I need to do something to square the circle on this one.