If there is one area where the effects of digitization have been felt the most it is music. And for the most this has been a positive. New things have become possible and almost all music is now available everywhere at a zero to low cost. Especially for the more frugal inclined this has been a big change.

When I was younger portable music meant a Walkman with cassettes (later followed by the discman and cd’s). Getting a new album meant going to a shop and actually buying it. It took time, effort and money. The equivalent now would be to buy it online. The hour it took to go back and forth to the shop is now 2 minutes online and the cost has gone down. But does anybody still buy albums? The internet has given us so many new possibilities that music habits are fundamentally changing and can differ immensely from one person to another one.

Owning it

Sure, there is the ‘old school’ approach where you still own the music you listen to. Owning it now means it is some file on your computer and ‘carrying it with you’ is putting that file on your phone (although I still have a few friends who use a dedicated mp3 player). A hybrid approach is where you upload the songs you already own. Some use dropbox (or another cloud storage service for it) for this, but Google music lets you upload up to 5.000 of your own songs for free (without the need to use their paying streaming service). This can be handy for those who do not have enough memory on their phone (but be careful about data consumption in this case). Some go as far as running their own little network connected storage so they have control over it. Personally I am running Plex on a Synology NAS. But I have been thinking about tinkering with a raspberry Pi and turning one into an internet connected music server for the girlfriend. This is especially handy for people who have A LOT of music but for whom a NAS might be overkill.

Streaming it

This is still you owning the music. Owning music almost feels like an outdated concept nowadays. There are a ton of streaming services now who give you access to millions of songs for a monthly fee. For us frugal types there is the free version of Spotify. Youtube also contains millions of songs but that is not a very handy platform if you still look at music from an song – album point of view.

For me, Youtube is a lot better if you are interested in DJ sets and performances at festivals. Forget listening to a song or an album. Thanks to the internet you can now listen (and watch in the case of Youtube) your favorite artist perform at a concert/festival on the other side of the planet!

For this Soundcloud and mixcloud are veritable treasure troves where the discovery of one great DJ leads to discovering other DJ’s, which in turn leads to a gazillion hours of music to listen to.

Youtube, Soundcloud and Mixcloud are completely free at the moment. Even if there was a magical piece of software that is able to select only the music you love on these platforms, you probably would need several lifetimes to listen to it all.

The way the sloth

If a passive approach is more your style the internet has you covered to. Most radiostations can now be accessed via the internet. Personally I prefer TuneIn as they also provide a wide selection of ‘web-only’ radiostations. Put in a few hours searching for radio stations that cater to your own personal taste and voila, free music for the rest of your life with zero effort at zero cost. Sloths all over the world: rejoice!

Staying connected

For people who are mobile all the day or do not have access to free WIFi at work, the scarlett Hi5 abo gives you 5 gb for a 15 euro monthly subscription and Mobile Vikings now offers the possibility to make your own subscription type where 15 euro will get you 4 gb of data and 50 min calling time. For those thinking of switching over to mobile vikings, send me a message and I’ll be able to earn a 15 euro referral fee 😉

Getting creative post FIRE

In the future VR technology will create additional new possibilities where it will be possible to ‘attend’ festivals at the other side of the planet from your own couch (free or for a low fee probably). But personally, once I am post FIRE, I am a lot more interested in a private version of the Tomorrowland Unite approach. Tommorrowland Unite is where they live stream performances from Boom Belgium to stages in different countries. Which means that if you have a projector, a screen and some decent speakers you can replicate this in the comfort of your own home/garden (you can of course select your own festival off choice as long as they have a decent live stream going. Or if they post sets on line after the festival you can do it a week later, thanks to internet time is starting to be a little bit flexible). The girlfriend already has her hart set on Awakenings – the home edition) …. Get some friends and some quality beers and you can have the ‘festival’-experience at a much lower price and with a hell of a lot more comfort (no dixie toilets!). The older you get, the more you appreciate the comforts of home and in case the title of this post didn’t give it away, I am a child of the nineties …

But some of us old geezers might have a few good tricks up our sleeves …