I wrote a post back  in 2011 about “Going Digital” with my personal music library.  Needless to say I gave into the times and sold off most of my cd collection after ripping everything onto a hard drive.  I, of course, kept some stuff (i.e. Illmatic, Ready To Die). It was hard for a brother to get rid of all of those cds. There was a lot of history behind those “physical” copies of some of my favorite albums.

So there I was, my record  collection in the palm of my hand. I was happy but unfortunately, I was  getting a little tired of managing space on my phone and ipad. My old 80gb Zune has since died. There was no way for me to have that variety on the go.  You don’t understand how much  joy it is to be on the road with  music from Nas to Marvin Gaye, Mos Def to Miles Davis,sh*t… Master P.  to ColdPlay. (Yeah, I got that).

“Pick Your Poison”

I was always turned off by music streaming services. I didn’t like the idea of “renting” the music.  Like I said before, the space management was beginning to drive me insane.  So I decided to just go for it. I decided to try out a couple  of the more  popular services.  Before I even get into it, Pandora  was  my sh*t for a while. Being able  to  create a playlist  using your favorite artist and those related was God send. Pandora was nice but it got tired.  Recently I noticed a lot of the same tracks on several stations.  I used to use Pandora but now I’ve move on to bigger and better things…

I had heard about this service (SPOTIFY) outside of the U.S. (it’s  here now) that was supposed to be waaaaay better than any music streaming service out.  Not only did it have a ton of licensed music (15 mili), you could  also  create playlist like Pandora, listen on or offline, create playlist/mixes and share them using social media, and listen to albums (new and old) in its entirety. Now of course, record labels are pricks who don’t always license “everything”. Let me say that, it is rare that  I don’t find the album I’m looking for.

“Basically sums up how I felt…”

This was exactly what I needed. Not only will it give me access to the albums I love, but it allows me to discover music I’ve missed as well as brand new albums. That should cut down on some internet piracy. Now, I didn’t jump into the fire nose first.  I had to give it a test run to see if it was worth the price of admission ($9.99 per month). So, everyday in the  gym I’d listen to whatever. One week, I went thru T.I.’s  entire catalog. Sorry, never like dude enough  to check them out until now. (side bar “Trap Muzik” is his best). I even gave a good listen to some Lenny Kravitz albums I never heard before (Hey, I usually listen to Hendrix exclusively when it comes to  that genre).

After the 30-day Free Trial was up, I was more than happy to give them my money. I’m saying. To the people  with  kids… How many times did you wish you could hear that one song or album in the car but the lyrics were  dirty? They have clean versions!!! C’mon Son! It doesn’t get no better  than that.  One last thing, you can also  use it like a music player for the music you already have on your  device. I’m mean, Spotify does everything.  They have a desktop client, iOS and  Android apps. If you read this post and was also on the fence, let me testify…

ONE SATISFIED CUSTOMER…