140 Character Record Review - Vince Gill - Guitar Slinger

Vince Gill - Guitar Slinger:

country -(western.swing.rock.gospel.a-billy.blues)- pop;

like if John Mayer moves to Nashville in a couple years

In The Headphones - October 26, 2011

Joe Henry - "Heaven's Escape"

Blitzen Trapper - "Love the Way You Walk Away"

Alabama Shakes - "You Ain't Alone"

140 Character Record Review - Ben Sollee - Inclusions

Ben Sollee - Inclusions:

Cellist frontman uses tempo above folk/jazz/classical
genres to pace strokes of human moods

Five Reasons Why Spotify is a Game Changer

Back in July, Spotify, a digital music streaming service, launched in the U.S.  Since operations began in 2008, the Swedish based company's signal has been warming over 10 million European ears in seven different countries and has been steadily building the infrastructure, multiple platforms and strategic partnerships to achieve world domination. 

With a stated goal to combat the industry tanking piracy model with a simple and cost effective alternative, while at the same time fairly compensating artists, encouraging the symbiotic music sharing experience and supplying infinite access, Spotify's American launch has some lofty goals live up to. 

After spending some time using both the computer based (free) and mobile (paid) versions of the service, here's a few thoughts on why I think Spotify represents an exciting shift in music listening. 

1. Price
Everyone can afford free.**  Even at the premium level of $9.99, you're getting unlimited access to approximately 15 million songs for the fixed price of one iTunes album purchase a month.  For those of us still buying music with any frequency, that's a pretty good deal. 

2. Choice
Why have someone else's super complex algorithms (a la Pandora) dissect, classify and characterize millions of song bits to figure out what music you like and play random choices based on that formula, when you can just tell it what you want to here?   

3. Storage  
Apple solved the portability issue for us; now the storage space of your mobile device is no longer an issue (I think we just endorsed "the cloud").  With an offline feature that lets you sync up to 3,333 tracks on up to three different devices, you've even got a nice well to pull from when the Internet spigot goes dry. 

4. Discovery
Risk mitigation targeting your wallet.  You can listen to all those albums you wanted to but were never willing to pay for.  Now that crappy album that wasn't worth the sticker price is only wasting your time and (less of) your money.  Now you can finally listen for yourself and decide whether Weezer's Pinkerton is worth cult classic status or the critical drubbing it got.  Ahh, progress. 

5. Filling the Gaps
Face it, at some point, accumulating all the music you wanted in your library was gonna be cost prohibitive, making your music stash constantly incomplete, so why not let somebody else fill in what you don't already have.  Since you can incorporate your existing iTunes library into Spotify as well, this is the definition of the ever quested for win-win.

**As free as buying a computer and paying Time Warner, or AT&T, or whoever for Internet access can be...I'm considering this a prerequisite of modern life - for better or for worse.

140 Character Record Review - Bon Iver - "Bon Iver"

Bon Iver - Bon Iver:

When technology creates distances greater than a cabin in the woods