I always said it wasn't for me that I was happy with my vinyl and CD collection, well I still am but, I got 3 months free Spotify offered so thought I would give it a go. Didn't expect it to be much better than online radio or DAB, but I am pleasantly surprised. I have a playlist of just under 500 tracks (so far) all of course from Lp's I own and the bit rate is higher than the MP3 rips I have used. I can shuffle them or shuffle them with some similar tracks picked by Spotify. My amp has a Spotify "input" so it's all so easy. £9.99 a month after the trial I may just not bother saying "Arr much" this time. Goes to show, at 70 you can teach an old dog new tricks.
We signed up at the start of last year. Never looked back. We can listen to what we like when we like. CD's and vinyl donated to the Hospice shop and we play our music more often. Welcome to Generation Rent!
Try cancelling every so often and signing up with Amazon Music. Spotify might give you an offer to stay or Amazon might give you an introductory price.
In the process of clearing mum & dad's house ahead of sale and it's brutally hit home how much 'stuff' we acquire over the years that we're never likely to use or need again in our lifetime. Came home and looked at the record collection (was around 4k LPs, now down to 3.7k-ish) and had a lightbulb moment - huge swathes of it I'm probably never going to play again & don't want my kids to have to deal with disposing of it all should I not survive another 98th minute capitulation to Bolton. So I bought a dedicated streamer during the Black Friday 'week' sales last year, took out a sub to Qobuz and haven't looked back. Around a tenner a month for all the hi-res music I can eat (better than CD quality) and slowly realising some cash by selling off the vinyl. Not regretted it a bit; the sound from this little box is genuinely astonishing (and that from someone who's spent many years and many thousands of £££ on trying to achieve 'perfect' music playback).
I resisted for ages, resented having to pay to 'hire' music. Relented last year when I got some Shokz bone conducting earphones (for running & cycling) and a bluetooth speaker for home. I've listened so much and varied music - its been like being back working in Fopp in the early 2000's where we would listen to virtually anything we could get our hands on! Went with Amazon Music - if its good enough for Neil Young, its good enough for me
Great for the consumer, not great for the Musicians. I dint know that way around this but Spotify must do more to pay your regular bands who aren’t Ed Sheeran or Taylor Swift. A lot of bands I like now use kickstarter to raise funds to to make an album, breaking even at best. Bandcamp helps too with direct sales where the artist can keep 100% some days of every sale. I’d d courage everyone to keep buying music where they can… otherwise we might end up a lot poorer culturally in 50 years!
A few years ago I was still buying albums and using Apple Music on my phone whilst using the free version of Spotify on my work laptop. Then I started using the Spotify app on my phone and realised the free version is absolutely not fit for purpose. Unless it’s changed now, you can’t listen to a song you want as it can only go on shuffle and even when I thought I’d be clever and make a playlist to have on shuffle, it then added random songs in there for me. Got the subscription now and given the amount of listening available, it is worth it. I know bands get a raw deal from it but I’d like to think that with gig tickets and merch that I buy, it slightly makes up for it. Maybe?
Right on cue I got this email this morning: Tge band are called Six By Seven View this email in your browser Kickstarter Hi Everyone, This is very exciting. We are now 80% funded. We only need another 20 people to get us over the line. So what are you waiting for! A beautiful looking signed limited to 100 Pink Vinyl of the rocking Artist Cannibals Poets Thieves album! I have just been in the loft and found a box full of original Phil Nicholls contact sheets from The Way I Feel Today photo sessions around my house and at Vimy Ridge Battlefield in France. So...I will put one of these into the boxsets to make them even better. The good news is, I have just spoken to Lisa at Key Productions (the lovely people who make my vinyl) and she has agreed to start the manufacturing process of the Vinyl as soon as the Kickstarter goes over the line. This is great news as it normally takes 17 days to get your money from Kickstarter after the campaign has ended. (they take your money and then sit on it for two weeks and it takes a further 3 days to arrive in your bank account). So, if we can get this over the line this weekend, I can put the artwork in on Monday morning and the record will go into immediate production. This means, if we get this over the line in the next 2 days, instead of waiting another 9 days for the Kickstarter to end and a further 17 days to get the money to pay the manufacturing bill, you will get the record delivered 2 weeks earlier. So hopefully there are 20 of you out there who can help us get this over the line. I thought Artists Cannibals was a pretty cool album. It was my first attempt at producing the band on my own and I recorded it with my Mackie 8 Bus desk and a load of Shure SM57 microphones. Sadly we never toured it or played it live because we were fed up with playing gigs at that point and needed a break. We were also all very depressed about John Peel dying. (Which is why we changed the cover to a black one). It got really great reviews at the time. To give you an idea of how the music industry and people's perception towards music have changed, back then, I sold 4000 CD's of that album out of my house and a further 6000 in the shops. The day it came out, we sold 800 copies online in one day which gave us enough money to keep going in the studio for another year. Right now I've sold 43 copies! How times have changed. It's catastrophic for small independent bands. Even big bands on major labels can only sell 20,000 copies now. We sold more copies of six by seven:04 than that. It's Taylor Swift all the way. I mean, I don't know anyone who buys her records, yet she's huge...or so it would seem. I don't think she's the biggest star in the world, I think she's the biggest cult star, because no one you know likes her. I'd give anything to be able to sell 4000 copies of an album now, it would mean we could get a press company and go on the road. Back in 2004 we were able to go out and play in Europe and even Hong Kong because we could fund everything with album sales and self publishing and royalties. Now you get £10 between 5 people for 60.000 streams. But I'm not ready to give up yet and after my recent health scare, I'm busy planning to get out and do some gigs again soon. So C'MON PILGRIMS.. let's get this over the line... let's keep evil music evil...and Artists Cannibals if defo an evil little album. Did you get it when it came out? Maybe you were one of the 800 who bought it online? Peace Love And Bono Quotes (I didn't realise at the time!!) CHRIS PLEASE Pledge Now! REVIEW OF ARTISTS CANNIBALS FROM PENNY BLACK MUSIC AT THE TIME: At a first glance at the sleeve of their fifth and latest album, 'Artists, Cannibals, Poets, Thieves', and its track listing which includes such titles as 'All I Really Want from You is Love', 'Nowhere to Go But Home' and 'You Know I Feel Alright Now', one might be fooled into thinking that Six by Seven have finally mellowed out. The Nottingham-based guitar/keyboard rockers have garnished a reputation over their previous four albums for being uncompromising. Much of their music has had an abrasive, acerbic edge, and in Chris Olley they have had an intelligent frontman, but one who, whether he has been venting his spleen at government dishonesty, celebrity culture or more often than not himself, has become known for being confrontational. 'O4', which came out last year and which was their first studio album on their own Saturday NightSunday Morning label, showed a mild softening in mood, and was psychedelic in tone. 'Artists, Cannibals, Poets, Thieves' is Six by Seven's second album to be recorded as a three piece after the departure of bass player Paul Douglas shortly before '04', but the first to be produced without any bass parts, and finds the remaining trio of Olley (vocals, guitars) ; Chris Davis (drums) and James Flowers (organ, keyboards) broadening their parameters yet further. The lack of bass has given them a greater fluidity. There are further moments of fuzzy psychedelia which recall Spacemen 3 and Spiritualized ; guttural dirges which are reminiscent of the Cure of 'Pornography', and passages of heavy industrial sound which recollect Nine Inch Nails. With Olley's buzzsaw guitars and distorted, rasping vocals ; Davis' sledgehammer beats, and Flowers' spiralling keyboards, Six by Seven, however, carry much of their own also. 'Artists, Cannibals, Poets, Thieves' tells of the burn out and collapse of a love affair "I don't want to frighten you/fight with you or mistreat you/All I want is you to feel my love to keep you warm" sings Olley, amidst scuzzed out washes of guitar, on 'All I Really Want from You is Love', the album's hazy, cavernous-sounding opener. Any attempt at tenderness, however, doesn't last. "Well, I'm Chaos baby, you gotta hand it to me" he rages, mid-point in the album, at his ex-lover about to plead with her to give their relationship another go on the furious, self-loathing jangling punk of 'Tonight (I Wanna Make It Out)'. There is no happy ending though. "It takes a whole lot of loving to find your way" Olley concludes mournfully after it is all over, knowing that he has screwed up and is to blame for the romance's end, on the sinister, chattering electronica of the album's final number, the part ironic 'You Know I Feel Alright Now'. While their sound has broadened and loosened still further, Six by Seven remain as gritty and as intransigent an option as ever, defiantly obstinate, but hard-hitting and honest. They are too dark to ever perhaps be pretty, but, boldly experimental, prove on 'Artists, Cannibals, Poets, Thieves' to be as vital and as powerful a force as always. John Clarkson, Penny Black Music Copyright © 2024 snsm records, All rights reserved. You are part of this list as you have bought something or expressed an interest in six by seven / SNSM Records Our mailing address is: snsm records 15 Balmoral Road Nottingham, England NG1 4HX United Kingdom Add us to your address book Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.
For info, Spotify is probably the worst major streaming service for quality. I think it's the only one that still doesn't offer lossless. Apple Music, Tidal, Qobuz, Deezer, Amazon all offer lossless.
Depends on your budget. The Wiim, Bluesound Node and Cambridge CXN are all great options for under £500. I've got the CXN V2, which is outstanding value right now, as a new version has just been released.
I can’t imagine there would ever be a point where I’d consider streaming, or listening to the radio. Maybe if my house burned down, but that’s about it. Even then I’d probably grab my hard drive with all my music saved on it on the way out of the house. And with my other hand, one of the kids.
Streaming takes a lot of responsibility for the astronomical price of gig tickets nowadays as playing live is the only way most artists can make money, bands used to tour to promote albums nowadays with the pittance they get from streaming they’ve had to either tour constantly or charge silly money for tix.
I'm a big streamer. I have Spotify on all the time when I'm not in meetings and usually go through 3-4 albums every day. I think its a fantastic way to listen to new and varied music - although I've been going through the best albums of the 80s for 18 months now and still got another year or so to go... I also find it convenient to stop listening at home, then I can continue listening in the car on the same song. And I object to buying music in 3-4 formats so I can listen in different places (even if the car would play CDs or tapes). My big problem is the music that is missing from Spotify - although I've not tried the other sites yet. I've got around 50 albums that are on my list that aren't on there at the moment. I'm also going to far more gigs than I used to, so at least I'm giving money back to the musicians.
I'm not a fan of these. Everyday when I cycle on a shared path, the 2 types of people I have most problems with when approaching from behind and ringing my bell, are the elderly (who have my sympathy for being somewhat deaf) and younger people with earphones. In the case of cycling, I think they are downright dangerous, particularly on the road. Hearing traffic is almost as important as seeing, sometimes more so when said traffic is in your blind spot.
My main reason for disliking streaming services. One of the reasons why artists charge eyewatering sums for gigs.
Had Spotifybalmost since week it came out when they was testing it via invite only. Not bought or downloaded a cd since
They're not 'in the ear' ones so you can hear people approaching, cars etc. I turn them off on roads anyway, need to concentrate more for rubbish car drivers. I have the same issues with people with their phones glued to their head or 'in ear' headphones and them not hearing me shouting 'hello' or ringing my bell
