Spotify

One of the most pleasant features I’ve found on my new iPad is a music app called “Spotify,” with an insane amount of music from which I can choose. In the old days of music listening we had records, then tapes, then cds with twelve to eighteen tracks on each disc, then MP3 discs with about two hundred tracks. We could put in ear buds for listening to our tapes and discs, set it to shuffle, and away we went, our heads filled with song for an entire day, free from the babble of too many smart (or dumb) phones around us. Now I have Sirius radio in my car and on my television with an almost infinite number of radio stations on my computer that let me choose from any number of musical styles and artists. And now I have Spotify. This is a web site where I can select a playlist that someone has placed on the site with anywhere from thirty to several hundred tracks of their favorites within a specific genre of music. And there are hundreds of different playlists. One I really like is called “Jazzy Romance,”with mostly female jazz singers, some of whom I’m already familiar with and a bunch I’ve never heard of. Those familiar to me: Karrin Allyson, Stacey Kent, Jane Monheit, Norah Jones, Natalie Cole. Some I’ve heard of but never heard, like Amy Winehouse singing an old Gershwin, “Someone to Watch over Me,” Nicole Henry with a wonderful song called “Make It Last,” Melody Gardot and “My One and Only Thrill.” And a bunch of singers who’ve been hiding from me: Sos Fenger, Marie Bergman, Margareta Bengtson, Sinne Eeg, Caecilie Norby, Malene Mortensen, and Térez Montcalm. From the spellings of those names, I can only assume they’re from well out of this country, but they all sing in English. I guess that speaks well of the influence our singers and songwriters have on the musicians of the world. There’s a galaxy of music out there just waiting for us, and we don’t have enough hours in our lives to listen to it all. But it’s now available on our television hookups, our computers, our iPods and iPads, our smart phones and our dumb phones. I recommend to anyone who might be reading this, anyone who loves music as I do, that they go to the Apple app store and download “Spotify.”