No Nonsense Marketing From Doug Prentice

Do you want free music without the guilt of illegal downloading? Well I certainly do and sitting at mt PC most of the day I get bored with radio after a while. Yes, there are lots of free internet radio stations but even they get a bit boring after a while.

This week my mate Bob of corvoleather fame (best leather guitar straps ever!) turned me on the spotify. In the past I’ve sung the praises of WE7 but this is even better. Once you’ve completed the simple registration form you have FREE access to music via your computer that’s only limited by your imagination.

Music from your chosen artist comes up in form that allows you to choose tracks or albums. Choosing an album present you with the track listing, an image of the record/CD cover and a review/ history of the chosen album. Click start and Bob’s your uncle – well not in this case, he’s more of an old friend.

Spotify have deals with lots of record companies so the choice is wide. The only price you have to pay for your listening is the occasional ad (every 7/8 tracks). It’s a bit like commercial radio. This ensures that artists/ record companies get their bit and you can enjoy the music knowing your doing your bit to support the musicians.

It seems to have the same limitation as we7 with certain artists missing. My pet gripe is lack of Frank Zappa/ Mothers of Invention. I guess it must a label thing.

Overall though a pretty good addition to help you through the day.

Hi

About a year ago the good Mrs P and I moved in the the 21st century and bought ourselves a big 42″ LCD TV. We’d always had small TVs before as big ones 26″+ were physically so big they tended to dominate the room – even when switched off. The introduction of the flat screen removed this last obstacle and I had to concede defeat. In hindsight probably the best defeat I ever conceded to.

Anyway, with this we bought ourselves a didgtal recorder/DVD player. This allowed us the freedom not only to record programmes we couldn’t watch at the time but also to be able to burn them on to DVDs and watch on another DVD player/TV in the kitchen while having supper ( we both work and eat late at times). The full glory of modern technology was thus brought to bear to let us see Coronation Street later the same night.

However on the movies side it does allow me to record movies at all times and subsequently burn them to DVD to watch at a time of my choosing. Great you might think and yes it was for a while. There is one golden rule to observe that I did not. ALWAYS CHECK YOU’EV ENOUGH MEMORY ON YOUR DISC TO RECORD THE FULL MOVIE.

Regrettably I didn’t and thus so far have enjoyed some pretty disappointing evenings. Losing the last 30 minutes of a 3 hour movie isn’t a lot of fun after you’ve just invested two and a half hours watching!

So always check how much time there’s left on your disc. It usually shows up when you go to record but on my Panansonic it doesn’t shout “don’t do it you haven’t enough space left” it just lets you go ahead and make an idiot of yourself!

However I’m now gradually getting a library of movies (full length) to watch as and when it suits me – where ever I want to watch.

I check the movie listings for the week at the weekend and then go to   IMDB for reviews on any that I’m not sure about or that sound unusual. It’s a great asset for any movies you’re not sure about and give a good synopsis that allows you to find out as much as you want to know about the movie with out spoiling it.

Do you work from home? Piles of work to do but little stimulation except the distractions through your window (if you’re lucky enough to be able to set your home office up to be able to look out the window easily). So rather than giving in to some surfing – seldom find much of real interest and suddenly half an hour’s gone – you on the radio for some background noise.  That works well for the first few weeks and then boredom beckons. you know what I mean, favourite DJs and those you can’t stand. You’ve also usually exhausted your own music collection by this time.

Then you discover FREE Internet Music. That’s FREE as in legal – not illegal downloading and wondering if you’ll be the next one to receive warning emails from your ISP. There’s so much free music our there from free listening to free radio – unlimited.

However the latest website I came across is We7 a new website where you can create your own playlists of artists/albums etc or buy and download the tracks. The only downside is that you have to live with ads in between the tracks – but hey it’s no more distracting than DJ’s between records. They claim to have over 3 million tracks and you can find many of your favourites there, add them to your playlist and enjoy at your leisure.

I read in the media that one of the founders is Peter Gabriel who is usually at the forefront of this sort of project so being a PG fan, I entered Peter Gabriel in the search box and guess what – no PG albums available. I believe the current expression is “go figure”. But this is a minor criticism as the service is otherwise great and growing at 3,000 tracks a day offers a great alternative to boredom.

If you like live music, try Wolfgang’s Vault. There’s loads and loads of concerts recorded mainly in the States from Bill Graham’s ealy gigs at the Fillmore Ballroom up to more recent material and so much more.

I’ll post some more info soon on other internet radio options.

Back soon