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The Transcendental Youth Review

For the last twenty years, John Darnielle has been entertaining and enthralling the world with his profoundly thoughtful lyrics and soulful singing and musical stylings. One of my former coworkers told me that all this would surely end once he had a child and he was quite disappointed last year when I mentioned that Darnielle and his wife had been blessed with a beautiful baby boy. I am here to let you know that his concerns were unfounded because there’s a new Mountain Goats record and it has really shattered all of my expectations.

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Spotify Apparently Does Not Need Your Money

When one thinks about the history of music distribution and consumption over the years it is a fascinating one. For the majority of the history of music the only way that one could hear music was to either have access to some kind of musical instrument (even if that instrument was the voice) or to be physically present for the playing of music. Recorded music came in the form of sheet music that was sold in stores and eventually wax cylinders that contained the beautiful music fans so longed to hear in the privacy of their own home. Skip ahead to the different formats of music and how many times The Beatles discography has been made available (quite a few) and we land on the present moment, where warehouses full of music can sit nicely on a few terabytes of hard drive space.

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Piping New Music: From Amazon to iTunes to Google Music to Spotify

Yesterday, it was announced that Spotify will tightly integrate with Facebook.  That’s great for sharing music, but if you want to buy music instead of just taste-testing on Spotify, then you should really check out the Amazon.com MP3 Store.

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Songs Telling Stories: Music of the Fiery Furnaces

It’s great when things go full circle in life. As an example, I enjoy frequenting a site called NYC Taper, a site created by a gentleman known by the same moniker, who goes to concerts and (with the permission of the artists) records their set, releasing it into the wild as it were on his site. He does not ask for money for this endeavor however he requests that if you download a high quality audio recording of a band that you try to visit the band’s site and support them by buying their albums or merchandise.

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Bye Bye Pandora and iTunes: The Spotify Review

I signed up for Spotify on Friday, and after only a few days of use, I’m ready to forsake my years with Pandora and iTunes.  Spotify covers those music services with ease and then beats them in the belly of the very beast in which they long to live: Customizability and Variety. With the $10.00USD a month Premium version of Spotify, I can stream high bit rate music and download 3,333 songs each to three separate portable devices like an iPad or an iPhone for non-streaming, offline, listening.  The Spotify library has more than 15,000,000 songs and using Spotify makes me feel as I did when I was using Rhapsody before I had to give up that music service in my move to Mac computers.

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