Record Companies Need to Brighten Up, Spotify Good Role Model

Spotify has served me well for what must be almost 5 months now. It has landed a special place in my heart after I realised that I had not illegally downloaded any music since I had been using it - something other services have repeatedly failed to achieve. Has Spotify found the solution for the thousands of seafaring pirates that thrive on illegally downloading their music? I think they've made a start.

Spotify hasn't necessarily revolutionised free music, rather evolved the music industry to reach a previously untapped user base. Pirates are people who want music among other media, but what better way to offer them the music they want in a package that is both attractive in terms of cost (free, of course, like their previous methods) and engaging in terms of method (an application that can be installed to a computer running Windows or ran from a memory stick on a Windows computer). It is much more effective to offer pirates an alternative than to try and tackle the problem of illegal music downloads by suing and closing-down/buying out the providers of such services.

There are only a few qualms I have with Spotify, but nothing major. Firstly, the kind of 'we appreciate you as a customer and think you would benefit from paying for our premium service' advert is quite the annoyance after the 100th listen. You think they would record a couple of different variants of the advert and do a rotation of them to stop me wanting to strangle 'Jonathan'. Secondly, I tried to buy a months premium last month but they wouldn't accept my card, yet I'm still being battered with these adverts... Kind of ironic seeing as I can't actually buy premium yet they are consistent with the kind advice. Other than the adverts (which I am sure are necessary to keep Spotify running, I have no problem with that at all) and payment issues I have run into then Spotify is a solid music player.

The premium service they offer is rather expensive. Whether they have priced it at £10 to compensate for the loss in advertising revenue they would encounter or because they like squeezing the most out of your wallet is hard to see, but the removal of adverts is quite attractive. If you think about it £10 isn't extortionate, maybe the price of an album in some stores, but it's the feeling that realistically you aren't 'receiving' anything that probably sways most people from paying for the premium service.

Spotify has offered users a free service with an optional service that you can pay for with some additional extras. This is where record companies are failing. They want money for everything, something that in this day and age is not possible any more - control over the media industry is no longer controlled by companies, the consumer has the power and if free is what they want then, eventually, free is what they will get. Record companies need to take a leaf from Spotify's book. Spotify is onto something and if the users choose free streaming alternatives to listen to their music then the record companies will have to give in and start creating their own Spotify-derived music players. It's only a matter of time... Music companies have been driving the wrong initiatives to try and prevent pirates from downloading music for free that they should be paying for. Spotify is a wake-up-call to those companies. Spotify has made a name for itself, one that people respect and support - this is the direction music companies should be moving towards. Otherwise they will continue to lose a battle that they cannot win.

I Love Homeplugs!

A friend lent me a pair of homeplugs he recently bought from max.tv very cheap after they had run out of stock and were no longer manufacturing them. I looked up their specifications and although they are only 14Mbps they sure perform like they are at least 85Mbps. I have been wanting a pair of homeplugs since they became quite the phenomenon over in the UK (and since my friend got them, of course).

Surfing the internet when in the lounge or kitchen has proven quite the annoyance since our router is placed in the front study. I get one bar if I'm lucky, but that soon bails on me and I end up frustrated, so I gave up on that a long time ago. Since I got these homeplugs I have been using the internet on my laptop throughout my home. Kitchen, Lounge, Attic, you name a room in my house and I can get the internet there without using my wireless network. Superb!

So there it is, my new love. I'm sure the novelty will wear off soon enough, but the practicality will not. My parents are rejoicing over the fact that they will now be able to work in the lounge and not in the study like a recluse.

I would most definitely recommend homeplugs to those who are having trouble with wireless connectivity in the home. You will still need a router, however, and you must make sure the rooms you wish to use the homeplugs in are on the same electrical circuit, as if they aren't they will not work. How they do it is beyond me, probably using some sort of pulse signals through the electric circuits of the home. But whatever they do it works like a charm!

Website of the Week - Janko At Warp Speed

With my recent quest to learn HTML and CSS and successfully incorporate one of my designs into a blog (what do you think by the way?) I have stumbled across a number of websites that are of interest to me more so than others. This week I found Janko's web design blog called Janko At Warp Speed. To be honest I can't remember how I found Janko's site, probably through Google or from a recommendation by a friend. There are a couple of things I like about Janko's web design blog and the advice he gives:

He provides demos for all examples he provides. This caught my attention almost instantly. When I find a good example on the web, usually after a painstakingly long search crawling through nearly 20 pages on Google, my puppy eyes light up. But then I'm often stuck wondering what the example will look like on my site. Sure, I could copy and paste the code, load it up in Firefox and look at the results, but it's the feeling that Janko has taken the time to entice the user by decorating his 'Demo' button so attractively (I'm a slave to design, you see) and the fact that the demos I have looked at have always been of superb quality. It makes all the difference when a blogger closes the gap between offering advice and giving proposition. I can see what the product will look like visually, which is a huge advantage because I find it hard to visualise the end result when I am looking at lines of code.

Janko targets the unusual aspects of a website that many other web design bloggers wouldn't go near. I found an article on his blog called 'Poorly designed webforms force users to leave: Example'. Many of his articles follow suite, questioning the internets many websites ability to provide a successful platform on which the user can interact. A website that is poorly designed, which is often the case with novice programmers (like me!), can lead to instability within the visual - a product of interactivity in a way - and underlying interactive elements of a web page. Janko not only picks up on the transparency of the internet (because almost all web pages are not connected to each other and have no meaningful relation other than they are all part of the internet) due to poorly designed web pages but offers advice on how to combat these common website problems within your own site and - the part I like - an example of how.

His blog offers down-to-earth advice that makes sense. The examples and advice provided to website designers isn't too absurd that it interferes with the creation of any website, merely helps improve and offers a stepping-stone on which website designers can use to augment their site.

Take a look around, especially if you are interested in website design or programming. I found his articles inspiring and interesting.