Spotify and its Discontents

[richardfinegold]

There are always people calling on us all to reduce clutter - I just saw somewhere that the average UK household has four thousand quid's worth of unwanted items - but I rather like it, and since I live by myself, I have no-one nagging me to get rid of stuff. In particular I have a lifetime's accumulation of LPs, about eight thousand in all, which is why I live alone in a four bedroom house: every wall that can bear the weight has shelves of discs. I still buy LPs when I can find anything worth buying, but that is very rare these days. I also buy CDs at a steady rate, mostly on the recommendation of Gramophone magazine, but sometimes as a result of what I hear on R3. At the moment I am working through several bargain boxes of CDs that, per disc, are astonishingly cheap. Three boxes of Mercurys, the complete Toscanini, the complete commercial Callas, the complete Columbia (Sony) Boulez, the complete Messiaen and two boxes of Decca, one mono and one stereo. This may seem like over indulgence, but at about two quid a disc I couldnt resist. All these are recordings issued several times before, on LP and then CD. This is the companies' last attempt to squeeze a bit more revenue out of them before the younger generation takes over and abandons CDs in favour of downloads.

That list amounts to getting on for five hundred discs, which would form a decent core collection, even without all the others I have. Last time a friend of mine visited she said "you dont need any more records!" but she doesnt understand the collecting urge ...

I have an angel for a wife, who loves Classical Music and understands the collecting thing, but I don't wish to test those limits. I have been burning many discs to a hard drive and doing the "Mac&Dac" thing for a while, and while I may have to ultimately put most of the CDs there, it just isn't the same.
As I recuperate, when I was able to finally ascend the stairs to my listening room and gaze at he CDs on my shelves, my wife who was observing me said it looked like I had been reunited with long lost friends.

[gradus]

RFG,you must be very clear-headed about your choice of listening, I finds that racks of LPs and CDs distract me - Lord alone knows how I'd get on with two rooms full - and I can never decide what to play. I use Spotify premium but find the search system very irritating. On the occasions I've complained I've received replies from people who obviously haven't got the faintest idea what I'm going on about. On balance though the convenience of the service wins. Wish it was $10 per month here.

[umslopogaas]

#14 jonathan, I want to pursue this conversation, because I havent any idea if I have as many as fifteen thousand tropical sea shells, but I do have a lot and they have been in my loft for many decades, unloved since I collected them back in the nineteen seventies/eighties. What are your particular specialities, cowries, cones, murex, mitres, terebras, whatever? It is a very rare thing to find another shell collector in this modern age.

[Dave2002]

Has the Spotify interface - even on Mac OS X - got even worse recently? I've been trying to make playlists - apparently successfully, yet I can't move anything around. I'm sure it used to work. This is getting painful.


PS: This page seems to have been helfpul - https://support.spotify.com/us/learn...ion-of-spotify

I deleted as much evidence of Spotify as I could, then reinstalled, hopefully from the origin site, and now I can move things around in the playlists. Let's hope that lasts.

[Roehre]

RFG,you must be very clear-headed about your choice of listening, I find that racks of LPs and CDs distract me - Lord alone knows how I'd get on with two rooms full - and I can never decide what to play. ....

In a similar situation as RFG, there are some listening strategies, like picking a CD with a work which you've got in your head by chance or just read about, picking a CD from the recently bought ones, or pick one just at random , or follow a "program" of some kind e.g. like SC symphonies year by year, or works by one composer, or a couple of works from different eras. I agree that unprepared just walking into a room with a wall or two full of LPs or CDs is too overwelming to make swiftly a choice.

[richardfinegold]

Has the Spotify interface - even on Mac OS X - got even worse recently? I've been trying to make playlists - apparently successfully, yet I can't move anything around. I'm sure it used to work. This is getting painful.


PS: This page seems to have been helfpul - https://support.spotify.com/us/learn...ion-of-spotify

I deleted as much evidence of Spotify as I could, then reinstalled, hopefully from the origin site, and now I can move things around in the playlists. Let's hope that lasts.

I think it has. Like I said, it's aimed at 12 year olds