It’s Tuesday! Obviously, that means it’s time for the first of many "Tune Test Tuesday" posts, right? You know, that thing I was talking about last week where I buy a new album/8-track/CD (or whatever the kids are putting music on these days) and then give it the Puddintopia treatment?
Um, yeah, not quite. So, just whoa there, big fella. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither am I ready to just jump up and start rambling nonsense about music.
Not that I am now or ever will be qualified to ramble about music, but that’s neither here nor there. I’m pretty sure the Johnny Fives aren’t ever going to see a drop in album sales because Puddin said their debut album, "Number Five is Alive" was "lifeless, tepid, and as robotic as a Steve Guttenberg movie.*"
My qualifications notwithstanding, before I could really move forward, I needed to decide how I was going to go about my weekly exposure to the new. Why? Why not just belly-flop into the one-new-CD a week pool and see how big the splash gets? Well, because believe it or not, buying new music every week isn’t exactly cheap.
I know, I know. It’s unfathomable that someone like myself, with all the cache, influence, and (obviously) cash that comes with being Puddin, could possibly be so crass as to belittle this journey of musical exploration with material concerns. It’s about growth! It’s about experience! It’s about opening your mind!
Actually, it’s about $10.99-12.99 a week. No, it doesn’t seem like much, but over the course of a year – which is the minimum amount of time I expect to be doing this – that’s not an insignificant pile of greenbacks. And sure, it’s a tax deduction for the blog. But it turns out that if you don’t make anything, there’s nothing to deduct from.
Once again, the US Government stands in my way, foiling all my grandiose, nefarious plans!
So then, for Tunes Test Tuesday to work and not cut too deeply into my beer budget (because the Puddinette tells me it’s not coming out of her budget for things like milk, eggs, and cheese until I sprout wings and become the Chancellor of Jupiter’s Giant Red Storm), a cost effective way to access all this new music will be helpful.
Oh, and I’m kind of a rules guy. I believe creative types, musicians included – yes, even the rich ones – should get their due for all the blood, sweat, tears, and toil they put into their art. I’d think that even if I wasn’t a pretend writer.
In other words, no, thank you, I’m not stealing music from the interwebs, even as I know how to go about it.
Thankfully, we live in future. And here in the future, in addition to magical hand-held phones which people use to write messages while simultaneously letting the government track its own people, we have music subscription services. And I don’t mean that Columbia House thing where you pick 8 CDs for a penny and then spend the rest of your natural life declining the Pick of the Month, which seems to be "William Shatner ‘Live!’" with disturbing frequency.
So, after comparing the options available, I decided to give Spotify Premium a try. It is the new, coo thing, after all. It also impressed the hell outta me with it’s mobile integration. Thus, I’m rockin’ a 30-day trial at the moment, and so far it’s exactly what I’m looking for. Assuming I end up keeping it, it’s significantly less cash than buying a new CD every week.
So I got that going for me, which is nice.
The tools then, are all in place. The time is upon us. Next week, there will be a post about new music in my life.
Unless I forget. Or, you know, get sidetracked listening to William Shatner "Live!" for the 300th time.
Pud’n
*Just because I’m curious, who sees what I did there?
Puddintopia 
alluded to a really bad 1980s movie called short circuit. I must admit that i did see this movie roughly 253 times in 1987 but only because of my unnatural attraction to Ally Sheedy at the time.
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