I'm always a little late when it comes to format wars.
I was still using tapes to record radio shows well into the mid-2000s. Fuck it, I still do it sometimes. I still buy CDs. And I still don't pay for a streaming service, which seems to be out of step with a lot of my contemporaries.
This has been playing on my mind - whether I should pay to stream. I use SoundCloud a lot, increasingly for podcasts but also for mixes. That and the BBC Radio iPlayer seems to get me by.
Yet SoundCloud could be going down the shitter, and going by the comments on FACT's Facebook updates, nobody will be that sorry especially DJs and producers who use it, though I will if it does. I mean it doesn't have everything, increasingly I'm finding most podcasts aren't on the platform and the search is still balls but it's still the best free service out there.
Another trigger for thinking about streaming is Kanye's latest, The Life of Pablo, being only available on Tidal ATM. Motherboard went full hyperbole claiming it'll kill streaming as we know it and signals the start of a new piracy wave. Whatever, I've still not heard The Life of Pablo but then neither have the peeps with full-whack Spotify accounts.
As the Motherboard article points out correctly, fragmentation of streaming services, each with their own exclusives, is a pain in the ass, the same as it is with sports, who shells out for Sky and BT?
Then there's the issue of paying for content but not getting anything, just temporary access. I appreciate this is an old fashioned view but if I'm paying for music, I want something, preferably physical, if not then at least a file. Again, I seem to be out of step, phones have stopped coming with memory card slots, we're all meant to be streaming. Owning something is better than renting something right? Or am I just a product of late capitalism, with a thirst to own, no matter how unsustainable it all is?
I'm over-thinking this... and I'm gonna download the MixCloud app just in case.
