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[Touring Mars]

I finally succumbed and signed up for Spotify Premium - the first streaming service I've ever signed up to.

I've always bought mp3s and have a pretty big music collection that I own, so the idea of paying every month for access to music has never appealed to me... but a few things have conspired to tempt me to the dark side and start paying for a subscription service.

Firstly, Apple. I used to love my iPod and I loved using iTunes. Now, iPods are no longer available, iTunes is a hateful piece of crap, and I don't like Apple either. But last night was the final straw - when I discovered that iTunes no longer works on my version of Windows. Fair enough, my laptop is about 7 years old, but now I cannot buy music from iTunes - so that's the end of that.

Secondly, DRM has also left me with a bunch of files that I can only play using iTunes or my dying iPod, which sucks. I have paid a lot of money to obtain these things legally (unlike a lot of people who would have just stolen/downloaded the same material for free) and yet I can't play/watch these things on the devices I want to any more.

Finally, I now have so many devices (tablet, phone, PS4, laptop) and Spotify is perfect for that.

So alas, my old MP3 players look like they may well have taken their final bow, and I shall pay £10 a month for ever more to listen to music more conveniently.

 

[Silver Arrows]

A couple of CD's

Silent Alarm is one of the best debut albums ever, IMO.

 

[SlipZtrEm]

I finally succumbed and signed up for Spotify Premium - the first streaming service I've ever signed up to.

I've always bought mp3s and have a pretty big music collection that I own, so the idea of paying every month for access to music has never appealed to me... but a few things have conspired to tempt me to the dark side and start paying for a subscription service.

Firstly, Apple. I used to love my iPod and I loved using iTunes. Now, iPods are no longer available, iTunes is a hateful piece of crap, and I don't like Apple either. But last night was the final straw - when I discovered that iTunes no longer works on my version of Windows. Fair enough, my laptop is about 7 years old, but now I cannot buy music from iTunes - so that's the end of that.

Secondly, DRM has also left me with a bunch of files that I can only play using iTunes or my dying iPod, which sucks. I have paid a lot of money to obtain these things legally (unlike a lot of people who would have just stolen/downloaded the same material for free) and yet I can't play/watch these things on the devices I want to any more.

Finally, I now have so many devices (tablet, phone, PS4, laptop) and Spotify is perfect for that.

So alas, my old MP3 players look like they may well have taken their final bow, and I shall pay £10 a month for ever more to listen to music more conveniently.

It's hard to argue with how well Spotify melds with our different way of life compared to a decade ago, too.

I've been paying for it for a few years now. It started thanks to a friend getting me a free six months, and once it went back to having ads, I couldn't deal with it for long. At that time I still had a fairly large collection of music files from iTunes and ripping my own CDs, but a hard drive failure two years ago wiped all that out. That solidified my use of Spotify.

There's still a handful of things I miss from my collection that just aren't available on the service, but overall it's still great. I like being able to download what I want for offline use on the phone, and wifi is never very far away to change that. Being able to listen to podcasts in the same app is great too.

Silent Alarm is one of the best debut albums ever, IMO.

Indeed. Definitely a listen-the-whole-way-through one.

 

[Silver Arrows]

Stickers!

 

[W3H5]

Seems my dislike of consumerism has been completely ignored in the last week as I’ve been sent out to buy a new washing machine, garden chairs and table set, shoe rack, baby beds, all kinds of washy gadgets and a bbq.

The bbq was my idea and I haven’t regretted it a single bit.

 

[Apok]

I finally succumbed and signed up for Spotify Premium - the first streaming service I've ever signed up to.

I've always bought mp3s and have a pretty big music collection that I own, so the idea of paying every month for access to music has never appealed to me... but a few things have conspired to tempt me to the dark side and start paying for a subscription service.

Firstly, Apple. I used to love my iPod and I loved using iTunes. Now, iPods are no longer available, iTunes is a hateful piece of crap, and I don't like Apple either. But last night was the final straw - when I discovered that iTunes no longer works on my version of Windows. Fair enough, my laptop is about 7 years old, but now I cannot buy music from iTunes - so that's the end of that.

Secondly, DRM has also left me with a bunch of files that I can only play using iTunes or my dying iPod, which sucks. I have paid a lot of money to obtain these things legally (unlike a lot of people who would have just stolen/downloaded the same material for free) and yet I can't play/watch these things on the devices I want to any more.

Finally, I now have so many devices (tablet, phone, PS4, laptop) and Spotify is perfect for that.

So alas, my old MP3 players look like they may well have taken their final bow, and I shall pay £10 a month for ever more to listen to music more conveniently.

Was it one of the old iPod Classics? Those were great. Thankfully, mine still works and when the hard drive fails I'll probably replace it with an SD card. 3rd party kits for solid state storage + foobar2000 for file transfer means I'll probably use it for a long time still.

It's hard to argue with how well Spotify melds with our different way of life compared to a decade ago, too.

I've been paying for it for a few years now. It started thanks to a friend getting me a free six months, and once it went back to having ads, I couldn't deal with it for long. At that time I still had a fairly large collection of music files from iTunes and ripping my own CDs, but a hard drive failure two years ago wiped all that out. That solidified my use of Spotify.

There's still a handful of things I miss from my collection that just aren't available on the service, but overall it's still great. I like being able to download what I want for offline use on the phone, and wifi is never very far away to change that. Being able to listen to podcasts in the same app is great too.



Indeed. Definitely a listen-the-whole-way-through one.

Unfortunately I find that streaming services aren't all that great for smaller markets like Slovenia. Spotify isn't even available here for one, but for a while I tried Deezer and I wasn't a huge fan. The problem of missing artists and albums is even worse here and the way they handle metadata leaves a lot to be desired. Lots of bands are capitalised incorrectly, čšž are sometimes replaced with csz (but not always ) and the English standard of capitalising words in titles is also used for titles in Slovenian, where we only capitalise the first word. I know Spotify does this as well and it looks very bizzare.
With these negatives in mind, going from my collection of music, that I've spent time on properly tagging and getting the right artwork, to a streaming platform seems like a downgrade. I do understand the appeal for people that are less nitpicky or enjoy more mainstream music. The ability to share playlists is nice and the artist recommendation system seems fun as well.

 

[kikie]

Today I bought my 3rd 5 kg Cashew nuts.

 

[TB]

baby beds

You didn't have that done already? Our crib was bought and assembled months before our first was born.

 

[W3H5]

You didn't have that done already? Our crib was bought and assembled months before our first was born.

Although everything was a bit last minute, we did have a bed but needed a second to save moving the whole bed from upstairs to downstairs during night and day. Her bed is litterally just a small foam pad anyway.

After talking to my colleagues about a room, crib, monitors and all that I realised that we’re taking a very simple approach to baby raising with only the bear necessities needed.

 

[kikie]

Oh no, now I'm stuck with the song "Bear Necessities" from The Jungle Book" again.

 

[W3H5]

Oh no, now I stuck with the song "Bear Necessities" from The Jungle Book" again.

I was really tempted to post a pic of Baloo with that post.

 

[Brend]

My first gaming PC - Ryzen 2600 AMD RX 580

 

[W3H5]

More home stuff. This time a unit for the bedroom.

 

[Silver Arrows]

With these negatives in mind, going from my collection of music, that I've spent time on properly tagging and getting the right artwork, to a streaming platform seems like a downgrade. I do understand the appeal for people that are less nitpicky or enjoy more mainstream music. The ability to share playlists is nice and the artist recommendation system seems fun as well.

Honestly, most of the value in Spotify for me is the fact that I can listen to it natively on both Xbox One and PS4. So it's very easy to just pop on a playlist while i'm playing a game.

The fact that they've added podcasts to the mix as well helps too. (Most of the podcasts I listen to thankfully are on there barring one)

If you have a large collection of music that you've gathered over the years, then I can see why it'd be pointless.

 

[kikie]

I bought my second Samsung S24D330 monitor for my triple setup.

 

[Darla Starch]

Finally found a copy for a reasonable enough price, assuming 38 'Murrican dollars for a ten year old game is reasonable.

 

[Nexus]

8GB DDR3 1600 MHz RAM

 

[Silver Arrows]

Finally found a copy for a reasonable enough price, assuming 38 'Murrican dollars for a ten year old game is reasonable.

...I could have hooked you up with the download that THUG 1 speedrunners used.

 

[Darla Starch]

...I could have hooked you up with the download that THUG 1 speedrunners used.

I'm a sucker for physical media. Also gives me a curiousity to talk about.

 

[W3H5]

Finally found a copy for a reasonable enough price, assuming 38 'Murrican dollars for a ten year old game is reasonable.

Pretty sure I paid less than that for it brand new, all that time ago.

I bought a starter deck of Pokemon so I had something to play with my sister and I didn’t consider that the text would be in Thai.

 

[Brett]

I picked up one of these today:

 

[Sprite]

4K UHD box of Blade Runner 2049.

Goes well with the UHD version of the first film.

 

[Darla Starch]

Went to my nearest mall for the first time since 2003ish, saw Hot Topic was still there, bought me a wrestleshirt:

Swung by Best Buy afterwards, mom was pricing out laptops (and bought one).

Priced out one too, would've bought it (Dell G7) if I had the money for it. Instead:

 

[Slapped]

Stickers!

For a minute there I thought I was looking at "jaDe" laptop - a brand I'd never heard of, but then I realised that it's an "acer", which means all your stickers are going to be upside down when you open the screen.

 

[ImaRobot]

Silent Alarm is one of the best debut albums ever, IMO.

Indeed. Definitely a listen-the-whole-way-through one.

That was quite the golden era for that genre of music.

 

[HuskyGT]

I was curious about the Boost technology, so I got me these adidas to try it out (and add another pair to my collection ). I must say it is pretty impressive. No other cushioning system feel quite like it.

 

[Brett]

One of these arrived today:

It is a Vortex Pure with MX Clear switches.

 

[GTPVenomZombie]

 

[kikie]

One minute ago, I bought KartKraft thanks to the article from @SlipZtrEm.

https://kartkraftgame.com/

 

[TB]

Needed new shoes. Old ones will move down a tier to lawn mowing shoes. Old lawn mowing shoes probably shouldn't even be allowed in my house anymore.

Should be here Saturday.