I Love My Car
So today I wanted to write about music discovery, mostly because I’ve had occasion to try out something new on that front. Of course, that previous sentence misused the word “new” in just the same way that words were misused in an earlier post of mine. I guess I just can’t follow my own advice.
The new (to me) service that I’ve been alluding to is Rdio, and it’s pretty good. The premise is familiar; for a flat monthly fee, one can stream as many tunes as one wants, or optionally sync those tunes to one’s device for offline listening. The service costs just £5 a month, and when my free trial is over, I will absolutely be not signing up.
I had thought when I left Spotify’s service behind that it was because of the introduction of a policy that new customers sign up using their Facebook account. (I expunged my Facebook account back when I thought the service was still cool because I had concerns about their copyright policy for uploaded photographs. That issue may have been fixed by know, but I’m frankly glad I’m out of it now.) As it turns out, that may have just been a catalyst in my move away from by-song streaming.
Rdio is a service of two halves in my eyes. Users can search for a specific song or album, create playlists, and assemble a collection of the music the like to listen to. This is mirrored by the functionality of the Music app on my iPhone, or iTunes, or Sonora, or SongBird, or [insert name here], although backed, of course, by a much larger library of music. The other half is more in the vein of Last.fm, Pandora or The Sixty One: the user enters a band, or a song, or a genre, and they provide music that their system thinks you’ll enjoy.
This second kind of service is much more appealing to me: I’d rather have less work than more when it comes to finding something good to listen to, and I’d rather the tunes just keep rolling in. The problem I have with Rdio is that this aspect of the service isn’t great. Now Last.fm have a lot more information about what I listen too, so I would expect their radio to generally sound better to my ear, but the worst of it for the fine folks at Rdio is that Last.fm isn’t the only radio station better for me than theirs. In fact, I’d say there are a number of music services better suited to my needs than even Last.fm.
In an odd twist of fate for someone as tech and gadget driven as I am, those services are old-fashioned radio stations. For music discovery, I’d much rather listen to 6 Music than muck around trying to get Rdio or Last.fm to work: the tunes are hand-picked by humans, they’re often brand new to my ears and unlike anything I own (and therefore unlikely to turn up on Last.fm or Pandora), and the music is even interspersed with news and interviews with musicians. It’s a heady cocktail, and doesn’t require me to sign up for anything or hand over personal details or rights.
And I can listen to it while I’m in the car.
Until the next time, stay safe.
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