It's a brave new world we are moving into. Non of us know where it will lead to next, or how it's gonna change things. Exciting though, isn't it?!

There's too much choice in the world generally.

My wife and I don't argue about who gets who's way - we argue over whose turn it is to *decide* what to eat/ what to watch/ listen to etc etc

I feel the same about music. I'd rather go to the pub with one or two mates and have a really good chat than be forced into a massive party where I have to mingle and have about twenty really superficial, boring, quick chats which have enriched my life not a jot

Combine Spotify with universal wireless broadband and mobile internet phone type device and you don't need ipod - you cut out the downloading part of the process, which is the inconvenient bit.

What I've noticed amongst myself and my friends is that we aren't investigating new music as much as we used to. Some of that is our age, but a lot of it is the amount of music that is available to us these days.

Greater availability of music, both by fair means and foul, means that I can hear songs that I only read about previously and investigating a particular genre takes you down a lot of long and winding roads. Those little avenues take up too much of my time to really bother with any other types of music at this point. For instance I'm a huge soul and reggae fan. But the huge amount of music produced over the years means there is a so much to listen to that it almost becomes impossible to be anything but a soul and reggae listener. That is if I want to listen to music properly, the way I always have and not just have it as background music.

So before I was a music fan. I considered my tastes to be wide ranging and I knew what was going on in the world of music. I knew who the new bands were, I knew what the old bands were doing. Now, I'm primarily a soul and reggae fan, and mostly of the 60s and 70s varieties. Occasionally I break out and go through a different phase: perhaps The Clash or The Kinks or a week of early 90s dance music. But I keep finding myself going back to the Motown, the Stax, the Trojan and the Studio One. Nice here!

I'm impressed with Spotify but I'm trying to use it as an audition process for purchasing things on iTunes - sometimes it's so hard to judge a song on those 30 second snippets. Still, there's a nagging part of my brain that thinks this may be the beginning of turning music into the audio equivalent of the Weimar Republic's worthless, market-flooding currency.

A person of my acquaintance downloads all of his music from illegal sites. He gains considerable satisfaction from the fact that he's getting all this stuff for free and has openly stated that he would not buy new music even if he really liked it and - by some fluke - couldn't get it through other means.

His iPod is stuffed with music that he has listened to briefly on the internet and then downloaded but because there is so much of it he has practically no idea what any of it is. It's just music, sounds, the thing that comes out of his iPod. On occasion he'll remember a song he really liked but can't remember who it is by or what it was called. I wonder if he even enjoys listening to music. I get the impression that he prefers the mild thrill of knowing he can get whatever music he wants, when he wants, for free to the activity of listening to it.

In other words, he doesn't care about the music he's downloading and so the overwhelming amount of choice is not a problem. Instead, the choice has become the point. Where it comes from, who is playing it and - out on a limb here - what it means, is utterly irrelevant.

I welcome the new technology. All of the above posts make valid and interesting points, but I look at it as a trade off. Would I give up all the benefits of the last 10 or so years, mp3/iTunes/iPod, downloading and all the gains that come with these changes, to go back to a time where I spent hours searching for a particular album and then spent hours listening to it, 12" sleeves, listening through giant headphones in my bedroom (all wonderful things that I miss) etc. I'd say no, every time. If you find yourself unhappy with the way you consume music these days all you have to do is change your behaviour. The great thing about all of this is that you have the choice. Whether to use the technology to serve you, or to frustrate you, or to shun it all together and do things 'Old School' . How can that be a bad thing?

http://www.settingthewoodsonfire.com/2009/01/and-all-world-is-biscuit-sh...

I download from iTunes only for my kids and have never ever illegally downloaded anything. Not for goody-goody reasons just cos I like the product in my hands. Seems more special somehow.

4 cds today. I still like a physical product, especially if it's vinyl. Also, I'm a bit paranoid that all my downloads will get wiped (I have two external HDs just in case!). I do like spotify though and, like Niks, I also got that 'small-boy-in-a-sweetshop' feeling when I first used it! However, I still think that I'll continue buying cds and vinyl, although the days of browsing for them where I live are coming to an end!

Sorry if the header sounds like a Disney Channel film.

I rip most of the cds to the ipod and it's a bit scary when you look at how long you would take to listen to it all.

The ipods for out and about and the Griffin adaptor thing opened up a whole new world while driving, particularly audio books / podcasts/ radio shows.

However, I never play the ipod at home and when you've got the 20th album from a band, you want to put it next to the other 19 and a hard drive doesn't display welf on a shelf.