Magical Music in a Digital Age

Yo’ music listening pleasure need never be the same again, thanks to Shazam and Spotify. WARNING: Running mystifactious software on your computer will probably destroy your brain, but, once it’s gone you won’t care ayway...

You are listening to Radio 1 whilst preparing your sermon. No, your kids have Radio 1 on loud whilst you are trying to prepare your sermon. Anyway, a half decent track accidentally makes it onto the airwaves and you think “Wossat?” Wonder no more. What you do is launch Shazam on your iPhone or computer, and tag it. The machine listens to a brief snatch from anywhere in the track, sends it away for analysis, and comes back with its identity, along with any iTunes or Youtube references, and further information about the artists. Shazam is probably powered out of a basement somewhere by a couple of ageing “High Fidelity” hippies on weed. Alternately, it’s Magic. Anyway it’s fun and it works.

But why listen to Radio 1 anyway when you could order up what you want to listen to and have your own bespoke music show? Spotify is a narrowcast station which enables you to listen for free to music on demand, using your computer. Read that sentence again and think about it. Several million tracks are up there, including more classical music than I expected. You sign up for a free account; ask for the music, listen and enjoy for free. The only cost is a single advert at the end of the track. For a modest subscription you can bypass that and listen for nothing. Becauze you don't download the track it's legal, and it's free. Think of it as a music radio station where you control and mix your own personal broadcast. It's also superb for tracing recordings — enter a song title and get a comprehensive list of covers — and then, best of all, you can listen to any or all of them to your heart's content gratis, feee and for nothing. Perfick.