Ok, you now appreciate that I love Spotify right?

I can’t help wondering what the record labels get out of it, here is a true story about my own listening and spending habits (when it comes to music)…

Prior to signing up for a Spotify account in Sept 2009 I used iTunes and the Apple Music store exclusively in the 12 month prior to Sept 2009 I purchase over 1000 items from the store and spent well over £700 (I know! I was shocked too)… Since Sept 2009 I have spent £99 (a year subscription) and wont need to spend a penny until Sept 2010, yup Spotify has saved me £600+ isn’t it great?

Well yes it is for me (and maybe you) but what about the record industry who have been fighting a bitter battle against apple around the price of their product, yet they are loosing tons of revenue by supporting alternative suppliers who are essentially giving it away! Is this a case of biting your nose of to spite your face? Not sure, but it certainly doesn’t add up! (to me any way).

I can’t help but think that Great services like Spotify can’t last!

BTW I Love Spotify!

I have been using DropBox for a while and today I noticed that i’m using about 50% of the 2GB you get for FREE (yeah! it’s pretty generous!), for some reason I had an urge to click the “Upgrade My DropBox” link that was looking back at me, Don’t ask me why, maybe it was good link placement by the DropBox guys or simply my own appreciation of the FREE plan that caused it, but true enough I clicked the link…

Upon clicking the link I was faced with a beautifully laid out screen offering me 50GB for $9.99 or 100GB for $19.99, I instantly clicked the 50GB option expecting to get a nice big DropBox only to be presented with a payment screen that “Required” me to go and get my credit card before i could continue! Now… call me lazy but this seems like a silly hurdle to put in front of a potential customer, especially one who is here entirely on impulse.

For this (seemingly daft) reason I’m not going to upgrade, after all I don’t actually “NEED” to upgrade yet I still have ~1GB left, but I wonder how many people just like me would have upgraded if the payment process had that magic little “Pay with PayPal” button on it… I know i would have.

Let me take this opportunity to say that the iTunes Genius feature is… well GENIUS! It has changed the way I use iTunes for ever!

Once your iTunes library get over a few thousand tracks you often find that you loose the ability to put your hand on a great track to listen to next, the grouping of albums, artists, genres, etc makes it almost impossible to create a “Fresh” new playlist that hangs together well, Genius solves this issue in an instant.

The icing on the cake is the Genius side bar that includes songs that would fit well into the playlist that you don’t already own, in the few hours that I have been using it, I have already found several “GEMS” that i would normally not have in my library.

The only down side to the Genius feature that i can see it that I’m now going to spend even more cash on iTunes each day! Doh!

Talk about waking up with a smile

Harrision (5 1/2 months), Liberty (3) and Charlie (9) who is far to grown up to participate in a family photo