My Music experience ...

Sonata Music Originally uploaded by jrossol

A few words about my music experience.

Previsously on this blog, I've spoken about music 2.0 by Gerd Leonhard, and about his idea about the fact that in the future, access to music will be free, but we will pay for filter to access it.

I think he's right. The evolution we've seen in musci business since 25 years is amazing.

Here's my own experience.

1 - The 80's.

I remember in the 80's when only a few computers were able to produce (bad) sounds that we called music. At this point of time, I did not listen any music on PC, but all my music (I was so young...) was on vinyl disks or tapes. Buy a new disk or tape was a big deal : need to decide, go to the shop. We used to buy small disks with 2 songs on it.

2 - The 90's Then came the CDs, a first revolution :

  * quality was very good (we called it "perfect")
  * it became very easy to go from a song to another, no "rewind" needed !
  * it was supposed to be "indestructible", especially compare to vinyls or tapes.
  * it was possible t copy them with no loss, even if at the beginning it was very expensive to buy the blank disks.

Today I still have around 300 CDs, that I've bought in the last 20 years.

3 -And then internet...

When peer-to-peer networks became famous (kazaa, napster), I started to used them in the early 2000, to download a lot of music, especially some songs I'd never buy because music was too expensive, but were very famous. It was amazing to see the speed for a download (even using the poor phone connection).

I started to buy music online in 2005. Why buy when it's possible to just download it ? Main reasons for me were :

  * I do not like to stole (maybe old fashion.. but true)
  * the music I can find on peer to peer networks is not always high qualitiy, and the mp3 tags are not always up to date. This is very important for me to be able to manage the music
  * the price. At this point of time, in Europe, the price of a CD was about 20 Euros (30 usd), and online, the price was 9.9 Euros( 15USD)
  * you get the music immediately : you hear something, you like it, you can buy it immediatly (I know you can also stole it, but i prefer to buy !)

The main problem I've with this downloaded music is the protection embebded. I use wma files with DRM. I encounter time to time issues (for which I need to call the vendor). Every time my PC crash ... it's a new story to find again the licenses

Until now, I've bought around 500 songs (ie around 40 albums)

In the mean time, I still continue to buy CDs, when I found cheap ones (in fact I buy them if the price is lower than buying online). When I buy a cd, the first thing I do is to put it in the PC to extract the mucic in mp3 format to have it available on all my devices.

Today , the situation is quite nice :

  • all my music is on 1 PCs in a nice library, well organized.
  • from this PC I can update all my mp3 devices
  • I keep the CD, but seldom access them (only to play them on my old CD machine).

Finally, I started to used the new online music systems : deezer, and now spotify. I really love spotifiy. Now I use it to listen music at home. I like to be able to find a lot of different music, and to have it available for free, immediately, even if it s only streaming.

So, what is next ?

For me, system like spotify is perfect, but I need few enhancements to only use it :

  * to be able to "download" the music I like on some mp3 devices to be able to listen to them not connected to the internet.
  * to have a better management of my library (not just simple playlist).
  * to imporve the social part of it : having my friend using it and sharing new songs / artists we discover

To be followed....