In my quick breakfast browse of the news this morning, I came across an article on the BBC about Spotify, a service that is trying to change the way we interact with music. Instead of paying for and downloading music, you can listen to any track/album/genre you want (that is on their system) for free. The catch is that you have to hear an ad every 20 minutes. That is something I can definitely deal with to be able to hear the music I want. Spotify is an experiment. Instead of asking “who owns the music?” they completely circumvent the issue by putting it in the public domain, much like a radio station. But the idea is that, in order to hear the music, you have to listen to it through spotify, and therefore will hear the ads.* I see this as a very democratic technology development, and plan on supporting it as much as I can (read: not subscribing, but listening!). They seem to have a growing classical collection too, though I haven’t wandered around it too much yet (this is just my morning breakfast break after all). (via Ponderingmind.org)
