"Really, Spotify? ANYTHING?" I said, reclining in my lavish reclining chair. "I doubt that you could keep up with MY taste in music! Ha! Ha ha ha!" (the douchey laughter gets louder and douchier until I finally over-recline and fall out of my papasan chair).
Because I'm so very tr00 and kvlt, and my taste in music is very singular and underground and edgy (not unlike the tastes of the average 14 year old, but with less swoopy haircuts), I was awash in a sea of doubt about Spotify's claims to give you access to so much music. I was similarly suspicious of Oxy Clean's stain-fighting claims, which, as it turns out, did an admirable job of battling my skid mark stains in my underwear, but like all things in life, my skid marks proved to be much too powerful and persistent.
So the question is, would the skid marks of my musical taste prove too much for Spotify's dookie fighting capabilities to do battle with?
Answer: It doesn't seem that way at all.
Now, though I wouldn't say that Spotify is perfect, since it still lacks music by several bands that I've been listening to for the last couple of weeks, Spotify has also impressed me over and over again with the fantastic breadth and depth of music that they have to offer right out of the gates. Example: I'd never heard the newest Slayer album, World Painted Blood, and I decided that I should try to change that. I searched for Slayer in Spotify's memory banks, and it turns out that they have six Slayer albums and four partial Slayer albums available to listen to whenever I want. How about something crustier, like Victims? They've got five Victims albums available RIGHT NOW. It's like my D-boner died and went to heaven!
I'd like to make it clear, however, that I'm a total wang and am paying for Spotify Premium, which is the top-tier service that includes ad-free listening and unlimited access to whatever crap they have that I like. I pay $9.99 every month from now until somebody finds a way to beat this (I'm wondering what the Spotify killer would even look like...perhaps it has every song by every band EVER? Then we're all on it!), and I'm feeling pretty good about it. I think we can all agree that we have a lot of music theft to atone for, and I'm trying to do that to a small degree with my Spotify account. And I keep praying and praying to my CD collection, asking it to show me what to do with my guilt so that I may be absolved.
My CD collection's stoic silence is unsettling.
Since I count that as asking the artists themselves what the best way to atone for piracy is, it turns out that they don't know, either, so Spotify is soothing my jangled nerves and allowing me to listen to Kylesa and Ringworm as much as I want. Seriously, five Kylesa albums and seven Ringworm albums. Hooray!
For the peasants who don't want to pay for the Premium service, I don't know what your service looks like. I used paying for the service as a way to check out everything that it had to offer without waiting in the Spotify bread line and possibly starving to death while my children cry. "Daddy, daddy!" they scream. "When will they let us listen to the new Children of Bodom album?!?"
Yes, I still like Children of Bodom. Don't judge me. My children are crying over my dead corpse here in the frozen tundra, and all you can think of is how lame it is that I want to hear Alexi Laiho play guitar solos. You are the worst.
Spotify might not be for everyone, though, so if you're like some people I know and only want to listen to the hand painted limited release Ashdautas audio cassette single that is still 40 minutes long or whatever, you won't find most of what you're looking for. There's no Satanic Warmaster available, there isn't anything except for one Marduk song for some reason, and certainly no Ashdautas. But there is plenty of stuff by Burzum, Averse Sefira, and 1349 that might whet your appetite for cold, cold grimness while you sit alone in your mother's basement. You can even check out several Watain albums if you want to listen to pig's blood-soaked pretension wrapped in tattered mediocrity.
Sorry, I was just judging something while I listen to the new Children of Bodom album. It's like the pot telling the kettle it has shitty taste in music, right?
Right.
Anyway, Spotify is awesome, and I think it's the wave of the future. I don't usually do early adoption for tech stuff, but this isn't like Google+, which is going to go away in a couple of months. Spotify is here to revolutionize the way I annoy my coworkers with my crunchy, hateful music, and I'm loving it. And, if it makes any difference to you, they have an amazing variety of standup comedian albums to listen to, including Shane Mauss, David Huntsberger, and Dan Cummins. My friend who does standup comedy was highly impressed with it, and you should be too. So go check it out while I sit here and listen to Agoraphobic Nosebleed some more. I can't believe how lame I am for not having gotten into them until now.
Thanks, Spotify!
No comments:
Post a Comment