Music: You're here...now what?!
Last week I wrote about how I needed to bring music back into my life in 2021. It’s not that I wasn’t listening to music at all in 2020. A look at the numbers shows a disproportionate amount of time listening to podcasts versus music. You might be thinking...”he’s got numbers to back that statement up?” Yes...I do. Let me provide a bit of context.
Some of you know that I time track certain things in my life with the amazing third-party app Timery. Timery works in conjunction with the time tracking app Toggl. Both apps enable me to collect data like time spent in a week (or year), because I’m curious, listening to podcasts and music. A quick look at the numbers shows that I spent about 501 hours listening to podcasts versus about 196 hours listening to music in 2020.
Last week I wrote about how I had an abundance of apps, platforms, and services at my disposal that would enable me to act on the insight I made; that music needed to be more a part of my life in 2021. This brings me to the main topic of this week’s post.
Just before the end of 2020 I leaned into the insight that I’d made regarding my need for more music in 2021 and purchased a Family subscription to the Apple One service. You might be wondering how subscribing to this service is going to help me bring music more in to my life in 2021? One of the features of Apple One is access to “70+ million songs, all ad free” on Apple Music. To borrow a “thought technology” from Horace Dediu, I have decided to “hire Apple Music” via the Apple One service, to help bring music back in to my life in 2021. Specifically, I plan on using Apple Music for deep dives into music. Let me explain.
Recently, while listening to a treadmill playlist on Spotify I came across the song “Don’t Bring Me Down,” by the Electric Light Orchestra.
NOTE: Since listening to that song…on that playlist…on Spotify, “it”…meaning Spotify…has been demoted. I will say more about that in next week’s blog post. Back to my point.
An amazing song from an even more amazing compilation album: All Over the World: The Very Best of Electric Light Orchestra. As I listened to the song...it brought back memories of hearing that song for the very first time, in 1979, as a 12 year old. Later that day, while writing, I found myself on Apple Music listening to the album, in its entirety; loving every minute of its brilliance!
Some of you might be thinking, “he could have just stayed in the Spotify ecosystem, with a premium account, and did the same thing.” Probably. Again, I will invoke the “thought technology” of Horace Dediu and say that it is my opinion that I have a better chance of seeing that insight from last week come to life if I take a “modular” approach to it; hiring (as well as demoting) different apps, platforms, and services, (as I become more and more familiar with what each has to offer) in a coordinated effort to bring more music into my life!
