#oneaday Day 739: I’m Flickin’ Me Net

I mentioned it briefly yesterday, but I feel some good, old-fashioned enthusing about Netflix is in order. I know, I know, you American types have been enjoying its streamtastic charms for a very long time now, and us Brits have been watching enviously for the whole time (and occasionally trying to do clever things to see if we can get signed up) — but now, we have it too.

And it’s awesome.

As I’ve noted on some post back in the dim and distant history of this blog, I’m not huge on movies. It’s not that I don’t like them, it’s that I’d rather spend two hours at a time doing something else. I’m not sure why this is. Perhaps there’s something in my brain that sets me up to enjoy interactive, rather than passive entertainment — I’ll happily sit and play one game for hours at a time, after all. But that doesn’t explain why I might take a new TV show discovery and devour large proportions of a season at once (see: Community). That’s no more interactive than a film, and yet I have no qualms in doing that.

I think my main bugbear with movies has historically been their perceived “value” when buying them to put on your shelf. I have a bookcase in front of me at the time of writing — look, it’s over there — that is almost filled with DVDs. (The bottom two shelves are console games.) Of those DVDs, the only ones that I think I have watched more than once or twice are the TV show box sets. The movies I’ve kept around… well, I’m not sure why, really, since I certainly haven’t watched Human Traffic for a very long time, and my copy of Hot Fuzz actually remained shrink-wrapped for a considerable period, too (it was cheap in HMV, then it was on TV, so I didn’t really need to watch the DVD). I guess there’s some sort of curious feeling of “attachment” to many of these movies, like I remember the time I bought them and associate them with a particular period in my life. As such, it’s never really occurred to me to get rid of them, even though I rarely watch them.

The age of Netflix, however, has me rethinking this. Now for a few quid a month I have instant access (assuming I have an Internet connection) to a pretty huge library of movies and TV shows. Some are complaining that the selection is a little limited at this time — and perhaps it is if you’re a big film buff, but it’s certainly more than satisfactory for me at the moment. And the reason I mention the “perceived value” vs “time constraints” thing above is that I’ve been more than happy to just sit and watch a movie on Netflix, because I know that I haven’t spent £[x] on it, and have to feel obliged to enjoy it.

It’s the same for the TV shows, as it happens. I’ve been meaning to check out Twin Peaks for a very long time, for example — even more so since I played Deadly Premonition — but never got around to picking up the DVD set. It always seemed a bit expensive for something that was — to me, anyway — an unknown quantity. Would I like it? (As it happens, I love it, 90s hairstyles and all) Would it be worth the money, or would I be stuck wishing I’d spent my £[x] on something better?

This consideration is now irrelevant. Like Spotify allows me to check out music that I might not have felt inclined to buy outright, Netflix allows me to broaden my tastes in film and TV shows without any risk of feeling like I’ve wasted my money. And through the “creepy” (no it’s not) autoshare to Facebook facility, I have plenty of opportunity to check out what my friends are watching, start some discussions about it and become more “well read” in the media of TV and film.

So, then, fellow Brits; if you have a decent Internet connection and like watching people perform for you inside your TV, PC, iPad or iPhone, I suggest you get yourself signed up for a free trial. For me, it’s been worth it purely for the iPad compatibility — Netflix on iPad in bed has revolutionised insomnia.

#oneaday Day 738: Diversifying

In a recent blog post, one Ben Goldacre described Spotify’s auto-sharing behaviour as “creepy” and called for greater transparency in opt-out procedures. While I don’t disagree that users should have the option of whether or not to share what it is that they’re doing, I do disagree with the good Doctor’s assertion that showing off your tastes to others is somehow “creepy” or “wrong”.

The reason I don’t find it either of those things is because of discovery. Spotify is built in such a manner that it’s easy to check out an artist or album you’re unfamiliar with in a risk-free environment. You don’t drop any money on the album directly, so if you wind up hating it, you haven’t lost out. And if you end up loving it, you can whack it in a playlist or star it for future reference.

Combine this ease of trying things outside of your usual comfort zone with social features and you get a powerful tool to expand your own tastes. Because music is an ever-present part of society these days — silence, it seems, is frowned upon by most people, particularly those of more tender years — conversations about what artists are awesome are less common than they once were in the age of buying CDs (and, heaven forbid, cassettes). Music is just there for many people — a disposable thing that people may well have a strong connection to but perhaps don’t always think to actually discuss,

What Spotify’s sharing feature does is allow you to see what friends have been listening to and, if it takes your fancy, jump right in there and have a listen yourself. I’ve discovered more than a few new favourites this way, and I’m certain other people will have been curious about some of my tastes too. I don’t have any objection to people seeing what I’ve been listening to and I’m certainly not ashamed of it. The same is true for Netflix, newly launched in the UK and nicely integrated with Facebook to allow you to share what you’re watching. On the whole, I’m much more inclined to pay attention to new releases if my friends are enjoying them rather than if they’re simply “critically acclaimed”. See: The Squadron of Shame

Goldacre suggests that people will make judgements based on what you have been listening to, and your playlists which, if you weren’t already aware, are made public by default. And perhaps people will — but the attitude I have always taken with personal taste is that it is just that: personal. If you’re the sort of person who ridicules someone else just because of what music they listen to, how they dress, or their appearance… I probably don’t really want to know you. Everyone is free to make their own choices with regard to what entertains them (unless, you know, if you’re into something fucked up and illegal) and so people should not feel ashamed or embarrassed to share what it is that they have been enjoying.

In fairness, it’s entirely possible that there is the scope for cyber-bullying among schoolkids based on what they might have been listening to with Spotify, or the content of their playlists. But there’s the scope for cyber-bullying based on their photos, their status updates, all the other stuff that’s on Facebook, too. This isn’t excusing it. However, it does mean that Spotify itself isn’t some sort of creepy bully-magnet. As with all forms of social media and teens interacting with others on the Web, it’s important for parents to be involved and aware of what their offspring are up to. If it looks like causing a problem, they should be familiar with the options that are there to protect people — and Spotify has those options if, for whatever reason, sharing things does become a problem. But someone’s listening habits are public by default — and why shouldn’t they be? There’s nothing to be ashamed of there.

Perhaps I have a naïve view of social media and sharing information on the Web. But I just don’t see how sharing your entertainment consumption is particularly harmful. Sharing deeply personal information, yes. But the fact that you listened to the Lazy Town soundtrack today? For me, that’s the start of an interesting conversation, not something creepy.

#oneaday Day 625: Communal Listening

I’ve seen a fair bit of negativity floating around surrounding Spotify’s new (optional) integration with Facebook — for those unfamiliar with the changes, Facebook now has a new Music dashboard which broadcasts the details of what you’re listening to from services such as Spotify in real time and provides links for other people to go and listen for themselves.

I’ve seen several people on several social networks decry this as some sort of gross invasion of privacy, but I can’t help feeling they’re missing the point in a number of different areas.

Firstly, the whole “Facebook privacy” concern thing is something of a moot point when you consider the point of the site — it’s a social network designed to let people connect with each other and share things, whether that’s a banal status update, what album they’re listening to or the fact they unlocked an achievement in The Binding of Isaac. What you share on there is, ultimately, up to you, and if you’re worried about your details being online then — there’s no simpler way to say this — don’t put them online. Facebook doesn’t belong to you. It’s never claimed to be a private network and, in many ways, locking yourself in a walled garden when using a social network defeats the object somewhat — if you just want to use it with close friends and family then you might as well just use email.

Taking the music thing specifically, Facebook integration is an excellent idea. Consider how we used to consume music in the pre-Internet days. We’d listen to the radio, watch Top of the Pops, talk with our friends. We might have friends over and listen to a particular band’s latest album together — we’d certainly talk about it the following day at school, in the office, wherever you happened to be spending most of your time. Buying a new album was an event — these days, music is just “there”, it’s just something to have on in the background and people don’t think twice about buying a track here, a track there without any thought of its context as part of a larger album. As part of this evolution, the whole real-world social aspect of music has been somewhat diminished.

Which is why embracing online socialisation is a good thing. Your personal musical tastes — key word personal — are your own individual thing, and there’s very little reason why you shouldn’t want to share them with fellow listeners. In fact, Spotify has always been set up to encourage the discovery and sharing of new tracks thanks to its Spotify URLs and ability to share on Facebook, Twitter and other services. The automatic broadcasting of what you’re listening to right now is simply an evolution and automation of the process. And, if you’re embarrassed about your musical tastes, then you can always turn the facility off.

Facebook is guilty of many things — pointless interface redesigns, a bizarre definition of what “Top News” is, fiddling around with settings behind your back without telling you and gradually building up a near-monopoly on the social Web — but one thing it has always done over the years is do exactly what it set out to do — provide an online social network with which you can communicate and share with your friends. The precise definition of what you can (and what is worth) sharing has changed and grown over the years — but why shouldn’t music be a key part of that? And why, if the infrastructure’s already there to do so, shouldn’t that process be automatic?

You’re very welcome to look at my Music page — here it is.

#oneaday Day 546: Spot the Music

Hi, Americans. I hope you’re enjoying Spotify. As you may be aware, we lucky Brits have had it for some time and have been enjoying its considerable charms. It’s great to see you lot get the chance now, too.

Of course, you’ve had plenty of services like that already available, such as Grooveshark and RDIO. You also get to play with Turntable.fm while we don’t, which is a bit of a shame. As such, though, this means that Spotify is having to work a bit harder to impress you — it’s working in some cases, others not.

I have a Spotify Premium account — £10 a month for ad-free unlimited playback plus the ability to use the mobile app to stream over 3G (risky given the patchy coverage in most of the UK) and/or download playlists directly to the app for offline listening (much better). Since signing up for it, I don’t think I’ve bought a single thing from iTunes. I haven’t needed to. Most of the stuff I’d want to listen to — and plenty I don’t — is freely available for me to grab, stick in playlists and listen to at my leisure. There’s plenty of music to keep a continuous soundtrack spinning while I do my day’s work, and more than enough to set up some decent driving playlists for long journeys.

The service and its software isn’t without one or two flaws, of course — you can’t search playlists on the mobile apps and the interface is inexplicably the opposite way around to the native iPod app on iOS, meaning you’ll find yourself bringing up track information a lot when you actually mean to just close the player screen and get back to the menus. The desktop client’s habit of just disappearing and updating itself without telling you it’s updating is a little unnerving, too, but at least it keeps itself up to date. (I say that — it’s currently attempting to download the latest updater manually and claims that a 5MB file is going to take 16 hours to download.)

But all that aside, what Spotify provides for me has many benefits. Firstly, it’s a means of listening to music that I know and love without having to root through iTunes libraries or — in many cases — stacks of CDs that are buried in a cardboard box somewhere. Secondly, it’s a means of discovering new music — having listened to an album I like, taking a journey through the “Similar Artists” links is often quite eye-opening. Thirdly, and I can’t emphasise how nice this is, it makes having to manually sync an iOS device almost unnecessary, software updates notwithstanding. iOS syncs have a habit of taking at least three times as long as you think they will, particularly if you really need to be somewhere and you suddenly realise you don’t have any music on your iPod/have the “wrong” music on your iPod. Spotify’s offline sync system isn’t the quickest in the world, admittedly, but at least you can do it wirelessly without having to faff around with cables and USB ports and computers. Which is nice.

Spotify, then, is very much a Good Thing. And I’m delighted that I can now share links to tracks and albums with my friends in the US, as well as allow people to subscribe to my playlists. I already noticed that my “dungeon crawling” playlist where I just dumped a whole bunch of metal without really paying much attention to what it is has picked up a subscriber in the form of the fine Chris Whittington — guess I better be careful about what I publish from now on if people are watching! (Damn, no more Lazy Town?)

#oneaday Day 143: Music Monday: Unfair Reviews Edition

It’s been a while since I went through the top songs on Spotify, so I think it’s about time we rectified that right now. I’m going to do it with a twist this time, though. Since it’s been so long since I listened to the radio or watched any kind of TV with modern pop-type rhythm music in attendance, I’m sure there’s a lot of stuff out there that I’ve never heard before. So I’m going to completely subjectively go off my gut instincts after no more than 30 seconds of each song. I am also going to use no more than three words to discuss each song. And I’m going to sample 23 songs, just to be completely arbitrary. What could possibly go wrong?

From the top, then — I’m using the UK Top Tracks list in Spotify for this. Here goes nothing.

The Lazy Song – Bruno Mars

Bit Jack Johnson.

Party Rock Anthem – LMFAO

Not rock. Crap.

Give Me Everything – Pitbull feat. Ne-Yo, Afrojack & Nayer

Whiny dudes. Synth.

Judas – Lady Gaga

Jude. Arse. Judah-arse-ga-ga.

Beautiful People – Chris Brown feat. Benny Benassi

Dance eJay synth.

Where Them Girls At (Feat. Nicki Minaj & Flo Rida)

Awful. Just awful.

Rolling in the Deep – Adele

Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.

On the Floor – Jennifer Lopez

90s dance nightmare.

Sweat – Snoop Dogg vs. David Guetta

Autotuned single note.

I Need A Dollar – Aloe Blacc

Band costs more.

Buzzin Remix – Explicit Version – Mann

Shut up, Fiddy.

Born This Way – Lady Gaga

Sinister opening. Cheesy.

All Of The Lights – Kanye West

Terrible video. Pretentious.

Just Can’t Get Enough – Black Eyed Peas

Please stop autotuning.

The Edge of Glory – Lady Gaga

Racing game start.

Price Tag – Jessie J

Moderately catchy. Kinda.

Skinny Love – Birdy

Nice piano opening.

Make You Feel My Love (album) – Adele

Bit Norah Jonesish.

E.T. (feat. Kanye West) – Katy Perry

Babbling autotuned twat.

E.T. – Katy Perry

Infinitely superior version.

Guilt – Radio Edit – Nero

Song for club.

I Need A Doctor – Dr. Dre

Nice opening. SHOUTING.

Grenade – Bruno Mars

Deceptive title. Whiny.

There we go, then. If, for whatever reason, you want to listen to all this garbage, then feel free to load up this playlist into Spotify.

#oneaday, Day 347: The Christmas Charts

You’re looking for some new music, and you don’t know what is acceptable to listen to and/or share on various social networking sites. Well, let me come to the rescue, with some one-sentence reviews of the Top 20 tracks in the UK from Spotify. As the name implies, I will be reviewing all tracks using no more than one sentence.

Here we go! Hold tight! This is exciting!

20. Who’s That Chick? (Feat. Rihanna) by David Guetta

This track is not currently available in the United Kingdom.

19. Christmas Lights by Coldplay

This is a Christmas song which sounds like a Coldplay song, unsurprisingly, which means that it’s depressing as fuck and quite boring.

18. I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday by Wizzard

If you don’t know this song, you have probably not been into a shop any time from October onwards in the last 30 years.

17. White Christmas by Bing Crosby

See number 18, but insert the words “in the evening” after the words “into a shop”.

16. Step Into Christmas by Elton John

A rock ‘n’ roll Christmas classic that thankfully eschews most of the Christmas clichés found in many other seasonal tracks—things like sleigh bells, bells, bell-ends… oh wait.

15. Just A Dream – Main by Nelly

I was enjoying this song until he started grunting and then singing.

14. Happy Xmas (War Is Over) by John Lennon

The song that usually plays towards the end of the Christmas school disco.

13. The Flood by Take That

This song sounds more like a Robbie Williams solo number than a traditional Take That track up until the first chorus—this is probably not a coincidence.

12. Many of Horror by Biffy Clyro

Groaning, whining misery—just the thing to tell 2010 to stick itself up its own arse and look forward to a bit more positivity.

11. All I Want For Christmas Is You by Mariah Carey

The only Mariah Carey song I like—fact—despite taking in every single Christmas song cliché along the way.

10. Fairytale Of New York by The Pogues Featuring Kirsty MacColl

I fucking hate this song with all its out-of-tune whingeing and supposed charm and wish it wouldn’t be played every ten seconds on the radio over the Christmas break.

9. Just The Way You Are by Bruno Mars

To counter the cynicism from the previous items, I’ll say that I quite liked this one, particularly the drumbeat and the building drama in the backing.

8. Last Christmas by Wham!

Back at the school disco again.

7. Merry Xmas Everybody by Slade

I always get this muddled up with the track by Wizzard, thereby proving that all Christmas songs are the same.

6. The Time (Dirty Bit) by Black Eyed Peas

What is this I don’t even.

5. Firework by Katy Perry

Tuneful, predictable pop from the family-friendly slut.

4. Like A G6 by Far East Movement

The overpowering synth line thankfully mostly covers the awful one-note singing, babbling crap about drinking and “heeeealll yeeeeeah”s.

3. Only Girl (In The World) by Rihanna

It’s a Rihanna song which appears to take place in an early 90s German discotheque.

2. Your Song by Ellie Goulding

It’s Your Song by Elton John, now with added (or should that be removed?) dropped T-sounds, a questionable accent and a more melancholy, minimalist feel.

1. What’s My Name? by Rihanna

Your name is Rihanna, and this sounds very much like every other song you have ever recorded—but bonus points for the autotuned rapper guy who helpfully explains to us that the “square root of 64 is 8” (yes, really).

I can sum up this Top 20 in just one word. I don’t need a sentence.

Arse.

Thank you and good night.

One A Day, Day 44: Music Without Embarrassment

I love Spotify, yet still don’t understand how it can possibly work. The record labels seem to be perfectly happy to keep working with it, though – there’s a ton of stuff available on it now, from the mainstream to the super-obscure. There’s even some movie soundtracks on there – after a throwaway comment regarding the Beauty and the Beast soundtrack the other day, I checked to see if it was on there, and it was. Score. Assuming you like Disney soundtracks.

The best thing about Spotify, though, is it gives you the opportunity to “try out” music you wouldn’t think of walking into a shop and buying. Actually, I’ve been known on a number of past occasions to walk into a shop and buy an embarrassing album simply because I either found one of the songs repeatedly played on the radio just a little bit too catchy, or I quite fancied the singer, or both. I haven’t done that for a while, now. In fact, I can’t remember what the last CD I bought was. It was certainly a long time ago now – if I’m buying music these days, I’ll tend to buy it from iTunes or Amazon.

Anyway, two irritatingly catchy things that have been stuck in my head thanks to the stagnant playlist on Radio 1 are Ke$ha (who needs a slap for doing the “dollar sign as S” thing) and Owl City (who I thought was actually a guy called Al City, and was notable for being a recent UK number one that actually had something approaching a decent tune). Now, neither of these artists are ones I particularly felt the need to rush out and buy the albums for, but the songs they’d released were just the right side of the “catchy/annoying” spectrum to warrant a bit of further investigation.

Ke$ha produces from her mouth not only the most American American accent I’ve ever heard, but also sounds remarkably like what would happen if you took Kelly Clarkson and forcibly inserted her into a NES. From her recent single (the obnoxiously misspelled “TiK ToK”) I had assumed that all of her stuff would be along the lines of the interminable stream of crap R&B that seems to flood the charts these days, but her album Animal was a pleasant surprise, including a number of different styles of music, many of which feature appealingly lo-fi backings that sound like they were produced by a synth that had never heard the term “wave-table synthesis” before. The tunes are catchy and the lyrics are vapid bubblegum fluff (one song is called “Party at a Rich Dude’s House” and is, as you might expect, about a party at a rich dude’s house, where Ke$ha proudly informs us that she was sick in his cupboard) but the thing I actually liked about the album is that it doesn’t take itself too seriously. So much crap R&B (which there are definite leanings towards) ends up trying to sound “dark” or “gritty” but just ends up sounding like an emasculated twat whining about ooh baby girl, I’ma take joo out, oooh, yeah, mmmmm-hmmmm. Ke$ha sings actual words, doesn’t do that stupid Mariah Carey warble and, more to the point, doesn’t stick to the boring R&B sound. I’m not even sure why I keep comparing her to that, as she’s clearly a pop artist.

Anyway, enough of that embarrassment. (She was fun to drive home to, thanks to the Spotify mobile app on the iPhone. I should shut up, as I’m only making things worse for myself, here.)

Owl City – if you haven’t heard of them, you might recognise the song “Fireflies” which hit the UK charts a few weeks ago and proved so popular for a short period that it was even heard on Radio 2 at the same time as it was on Radio 1. It’s a pleasant little song about fireflies (all right, I don’t know the lyrics and don’t really care enough to go and look them up) with a catchy tune and a vocalist with a distinctive voice. The album is much the same – electronic backings, gentle, slightly whiny American voice over the top. It, like Ke$ha, isn’t something I’m clamouring to purchase for keeps, but it was a pleasant enough listen for a little while.

So there’s Half Hearted Music Review Of The Day. If you have a copy of Spotify, why not try out something you don’t expect to like? You might just be surprised.

On a side note, I have three invites to Spotify available, so if you want one, write me a poem including the word “turgid” in the comments and the best three win an invite. No purchase necessary.