casual musings on things

Back to basics

This year I decided to get back to basics with regards to my music consumption. No longer do I want all the worlds music at my fingertips! I want to seek out music at my own speed and I want to listen to it without distraction or the pull of another album. In essance, I am crippling my ability to drink from the fountain of audio pleasure. I have cancelled my spotify subscription!

Yes I am aware that I still have the internet and that all the world's music is still at my fingertips. I am aware that I have basically just thrown away my cup used to drink from said fountain and now need to rely on my cupped hands. All metaphors aside I was starting to feel uneasy with spotify and it caused me stress and anxiety. The simple app that allows you to listen to music anywhere was beginning to ruin music for me. I would often find myself bouncing between artists and not really listening to the music. A sort of choice paralysis that first appeared with netflix and the netflix screen of death. As well as constantly making headlines for stealing money from artists the decision to move away from spotify came rather easily.

It takes time for you to come to a conclusion. The idea rattles around your subconscious while you wrestle with the app and how to use it so that you can actually LISTEN to your favourite artists. Once the idea bubbled up to my conscious mind I realised that it actually made the most sense. Stop using spotify. Go back to finding music organically. Part of consuming music is discovering music slowly and sometime by accident. Sure spotify offers this but it just didn’t seem to work for me.

This is why physical media has never gone away. Album art is awesome! Holding a record, cd or tape in your hands and looking at the album art or lyrics sheet is what it’s all about. Of course also listening to it but ya know what I'm saying. So I acted on the idea that deep down brought me some sort of peace and joy. This gut instinct just felt right. And wouldn’t you believe it but new years day was just around the corner so what better time to start this new journey. So on new years day, I cancelled my subscription and logged out of spotify. Although I am paid up until the 21st of January but lets not think about that now. So it's just me, my trusty mp3 player(DAP for the new team) with rockbox as well as a custom theme and bandcamp. I'm debating getting a portable cd player second-hand and buying second-hand cds but baby steps first.

I plan on discovering music via other people. I'm subscribed to some content creators online who discuss music on nebula and I have already found a decent physical magazine for music. I will also use festivals that I go to to find new music which can lead me to new and exciting discoveries. This will also leave me with more time to listen more deeply to the music and hopefully form a connection like I did back in the day when we weren’t bombarded with information from the world. This idea is also connected to a bigger idea where I have decided to break down how I use my mobile in a way that I have more control over it and not the other way round. So this is just the first step in the process. I hope to regain my attention and actually start doing more things in the wider world while listening to music that I have a better connection with.