Tales of a Conflicted Apple Loyalist

Let me start by addressing the timeliness of writing about the whole Spotify/iTunes thing at this juncture. I realize I'm late to the party here; that's actually why I'm taking the time to share my thoughts. Hopefully my perspective provides enough of a twist to make it worth your while. So first of all, let me preface the main body of this post with a little bit of backstory on who is writing what you are about to read:

I hate the idea of taking the Spotify Plunge. Hate it. I'm about as close to a certifiable disciple of the Steve Jobs Philosophy as you're likely to find. Someone who loves the idea of integration and wants everything to work together seamlessly.  A guy who cringes at using apps that don't look like they were designed to fit in aesthetically with all the native ones on my iPhone. I would never think of jailbreaking any of my Apple devices. Not because I'm afraid something will go wrong.  It just doesn't sound attractive to me. At all. My entire tech food chain from top to bottom is branded the same way, looks the same way, and runs the same way. And I love it.

On top of all that, and perhaps most significantly, I am somewhat of an obsessive collector. I've been one for as long as I can remember, specifically with music and media in general. But music more than anything else. I can remember being 12 and completely obsessing over having every album from all of my favorite artists, and if they weren't all organized perfectly (artists in alphabetical order, albums chronologically), freak-outs ensued.  I'm still the same guy, and though the vehicle is no longer physical in nature (it killed me to let go of CDs and all their glorious packaging),  I still get considerable gratification from finding new music, downloading it, and watching the track count go up in my pretty sizable iTunes library.  In short, I'm the consumer corporate types count on.

So why is any of this pertinent information?  Bottom line: If Apple isn't worried already (and I'm sure they've probably hired people to run formulas like this), they better get that fixed pretty quick. Plain and simple. I am one of the LAST people they should ever have to worry about shelling out money to another company every month. And yet, here I am after 48 hours of Spotify Premium, thinking there's probably no going back.

So what's made a believer out of me already? Well let's start with the obvious:

IT'S A MASSIVE, BOTTOMLESS OCEAN OF MUSIC, AND FOR 10 BUCKS A MONTH IT ALL BELONGS TO ME (sort of). Seriously, have you been on there yet?  It's completely ridiculous. Too good to be legal even, but it is.  As a lover of indie music who is constantly digging for the next payoff, Spotify presents a double-edged sword of awesomeness. Practically almost everything by almost everyone is available, indie bands included. This is invaluable, because the "unknown" factor is so prominent with indie music. There are tons of great unknown bands out there, but for every great one you stumble on you'll suffer through at least 5 awful ones along the way. Spotify makes this irrelevant, at least financially speaking. There is no risk. And no doubt the discovery/recommendation features are pretty fantastic as well. Also the awesome price point cannot be overstated. $10 will get you one album on iTunes. As somebody who will routinely purchase somewhere between 4-8 albums a month, it's just flat-out economically irresponsible for me to not go with Spotify.

The other half of what makes Spotify so attractive is its social media integration. Frankly, Apple confounds me with this. How and why they haven't made it easier to share what you're listening to with others blows my mind. This has to be costing them money. Has to. And personally, I love sharing the music I discover just about as much as I enjoy collecting it. I'm sure there are plenty of others out there just like me, so why you wouldn't provide these people with a convenient means to help you sell your product for free is beyond me.  And Spotify just absolutely kills iTunes in this department. They make it extremely easy to share songs and/or albums (I'm an album guy) both with friends within Spotify and through social media outlets like Twitter. And I love being able to see what my friends are listening to in the "Activity" feed.  It's almost as strong in this department as iTunes is inept.

Spotify is not without its issues, though. For one, I'm not a big fan of the interface. It's a bit clunky, and organizationally speaking I can't stand it. There really needs to be some sort of library for you to store artists/albums that you're currently into, but presently the only method for that is through playlists.  I don't imagine it will take long before it gets pretty hairy trying to find what I want to listen to on my phone, and honestly if anything could drive me away at this point, that would probably be it.  Another huge gripe for me is the lack of any kind of mini player whatsoever, which I find absolutely inexcusable. It was a big turn off for me when Spotify first came out, and it's still annoying the crap out of me now. Also, and this is a bit of a nit-picky thing, but I'd really like to be able to tell Spotify that I've already heard a band in the discover section. I appreciate being told that I will like Braid because I listened to Crash of Rhinos, but the reason I'm listening to Crash of Rhinos to begin with is because I worshipped Braid about 15 years ago when they were actually around (the first time, that is).  Lastly, general integration is a major issue for me. iTunes works seamlessly with every other program on my iMac. This is lost with Spotify, and Airplay is nowhere to be found. Yeah, there's a workaround for that, but I don't really want to have to dig around in my computer's settings every time I want to use it.

Maybe 5 or 6 years ago, this stuff wouldn't have been that big of a deal. It certainly wouldn't have been a decade-plus back when Winamp was setting the bar for music players. But the thing is the iTunes interface has just become soooo stinking good.  It's definitely not perfect, and Apple takes inexplicable steps in the wrong direction at times, but they usually get around to doing what needs to be done. And the current version is their best yet. The new mini player is so fantastic it actually makes Spotify's lack of one a bigger issue than it probably should be. There are a ton of ways to view and organize your music (a big deal for an obsessive collector), and Spotify offers exactly zero options in this department. I suppose someone could make the "you get what you pay for" argument here, but I don't find that to be a valid excuse for most of these issues.

All that having been said, sagging digital music sales has been a hot topic as of late, and one has to wonder how long Apple can stay with the status quo before they start taking a substantial hit.  iTunes Radio will be a positive step in the right direction, and maybe it will stem the tide for a bit, but it's hard to imagine that a company (or companies) providing a well-executed subscription option won't force them to join the revolution at some point.  The way I see it, right now they're profiting from the ignorance of their consumers.  That's not going to last forever, so the real question is how long before we reach that fork in the road. As an Apple enthusiast, I sincerely hope it's soon. 

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