(or call ‘em what you will)
Listening to music is super important to me and also my kids and my wife - so music-listening plays a huge part in our family and our all day life. We all listen to different styles of music so I guess together we pretty much cover every genre that there is, which is really cool since I like all kinds of different music and am this way introduced to stuff I wouldn’t normally get into.
I’m a vinyl and tape cassette person, probably since that’s how I discovered music and through what I began to incorporate it into my life. I didn't quite fancy the CD when it came but I accepted it and moved along with it, but when streaming came along I loved it. I was able to dive into all different kinds of music, stuff that I’d never would have explored otherwise, and it was all available for me to devour right there and add that my whole record collection was there easily accessible, everywhere I went, only a click or two away.
Yeah yeah, of course I’m aware of the unfair economic side of music streaming but isn’t that the general story of an artist all through history? If I remember it correctly there were the exact same discussions and protests when the CD came, the artists got an even smaller piece of the earnings than before. For me it’s politics and of course I think it’s all totally wrong and sad that the artist, the creators and the performers, don't get paid for their art and what they create but I mean it’s always been like that, it’s nothing new, there are millions examples long before music streaming and the CD, so nothing has really changed. I believe this has a lot to do with the fact that art really doesn’t ever go well along with business, they are very hard to combine, and I think artistic persons are very seldom business persons.
Anyway me and my family have been using Spotify for a long time but for political reasons, and a bit due to the sound quality rap going on everywhere around me, I decided it was time for us to move elsewhere. After extensive testing and trying out some of the bigger music streaming services I decided to go with Apple Music, a lot because we’re pretty deeply integrated in the Apple universe. But after a month with Apple Music we all found it very buggy, with lots of dysfunctions, poor synching when using and logged in on multiple Apple machines, unstable, not near as user friendly as you’d expect it to be, slow (when I push play I expect it to play instantly) and I really need it to function flawlessly through, not only my studio/work-space systems but our Sonos system, through our Sony entertainment system and in the car, which only Spotify seems to do satisfactorily. Then I discovered that several albums that are on Spotify were missing in Apple Music. I don’t listen to playlists or single songs, I listen to albums and not too rarely pretty unknown albums by 1980s heavy metal/hard rock bands not many have even heard of.
And the sound quality rap? Well, each their own but for me when I listen to what I listen to 75%, which is 1970s, 80s and some early 90s hard rock/heavy metal, the sound in so-called “lossless” (or even more lossless) in my ears doesn't sound good at all. Of course I’ve tried various streaming services through many different systems and no I don’t like it, to me it sounds artificial, cramped and cold. Ok, classical music, jazzy stuff, modern pop/dance music and electronic music, like industrial music for instance, sounds ok in “lossless” but rock with soul pre 2000s? Not in my ears. And no I do not agree that Tidal, Qobuz and Apple Music etc sounds better than Spotify. (I believe it might just be merchandise.) But are they politically more correct, more fair? Well so they say, but since listening to music is so important for me, and my family and also the usability, I need it to work - Back to Spotify for us.
What sounds good or not is very individual so whatever sounds good to you is good for you. For me I can say, after way too much time spent and a way too deep dive into this, right now it’s primarily vinyl and secondary, in everyday life for me the most applicable, Spotify.
And here's me on Spotify for ya:
