Ev BogueTwo years ago, I took a crate full of CDs, stuck a note on them "shit that was weighing down Everett's life" and put them in the hall for my roommates to MP3 and/or recycle. I was done with physical CDs.
Now, I'm ready to do that with my MP3 collection. Yes. Delete all of my MP3s, and never own music again.
Why? Because I've been playing with Spotify (which has a free version). $9.99 gets me access to every song that I ever wanted to download. That Smashing Pumpkins single that I've been keeping on my external hard drive since Napster because I never thought anyone would ever be able to find it again? I don't need to keep it, store it, and think about playing it again anymore.
Yes, after a quick search I found that I can even play cheesy teenage emo power pop that I've never grown out of like Kill Hannah. Yes, there are some things I haven't been able to untether from.
Because all of the music I listen to now lives in the cloud, I don't have to dedicate brain or hard drive space to maintaining it. Hurray!
Obviously there are other ways to stream music over the Internet like Pandora. Also, we can buy anything we want for almost nothing at the Apple Store. But nothing seems to (currently) beat randomly remembering a song that I used to listen to, searching, and then playing it within 5 seconds.
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Every once in awhile the Internet jumps ahead, it's an evolutionary leap. If I want to keep up, I have to jump ahead with it.
With infinite copies, ownership becomes a burden. Sharing becomes the norm. With decentralized costs for music.
A good video about this is S.L.'s TED talk on the end of ownership.
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This is a similar distribution model to Zipcar. I've used their service dozens over the last two years. In Seattle, there are two Zipcars in the parking lot behind my apartment. All I have to do is log on with my mobile app, select the Zipcar behind my house (if it's available) and I'm heading to the airport to pick up G.B.
Easy, huh?
When we share resources, everything in the world gets cheaper and easier.
Best, Ev