I dabbled with a trial of Idagio as I found a workaround regarding the aforementioned lack of PayPal. While I really like it as a service, it's a shame that they don't provide any information on composers. Oh, sure, I can fire up DuckDuckGo and cross my fingers that Wikipedia is in the ballpark, but how AWESOME would it be to have quick access to expert info? For a service that specializes in a genre (especially classical), this is a no-brainer, right?!

That said, they don't exactly have a large team, especially as they would just be rotating the tires on work already replicated by other services. I also found its search engine to be not particularly forgiving, which is problematic when the music genre is largely in other languages than English!

At any rate, I'm going to be relegated to free streams. As I write this, it's a classical stream out of Venice. I ran across another stream last night, like Idagio, out of Berlin, HOWEVER, this stream is from a FAR different genre; it's locus broadcasting just down the road from here!

...and on my Linux box, there's several streams to choose. Sure, it's nowhere near the sound quality of Idagio but my equipment largely makes that a nonissue.

Another consideration for my pulling back from Idagio is it's simply consistent with what I've been doing the past 9-to-10 years, minimizing my login exposure to the web. In like fashion, I deleted my LibraryThing account so that I can bring my content over to my own site. Clattering away as a content chimp is one of my biggest pet peeves with Facebook. Granted, Facebook is largely a 1,000 monkeys in a room with a 1,000 typewriters.

Plus, it's hard to restrict myself to a single genre as I've really been in the mood for some Sinatra lately. Or this song, that along with the theme to Top Gun, calls back to my waning moments in the Czech Republic as I was finishing my graduate degree:

YouTube Link

I FINALLY finished up Gilbert's The Second World War: A Complete History. It was definitely an autumn march to Leningrad on that one! I'm just glad to get it out of the way so that I can focus on other studies, something that I'll likely be fleshing out on this site soon.

For all of my resistance toward the account management of Idagio, I do LOVE its platform. Thus, I write to Beatrice Rana's Chopin: 12 Études, Op. 25 & 4 Scherzi.

With a free account, it's set to shuffle play for the album, a queue approach that usually sets me at edge, but in this context, it's largely immaterial as I'm so green I've got a pot of gold next to me.

I could be persuaded to signup if Idagio didn't abandon its use of PayPal, an option it references in some help docs that seems to no longer be relevant. While its use does offer a layer of protection, nevertheless, I don't trust floating my CC in cyberspace; I like retaining control as to whether I want a merchant to take my money.

Think about it: how fantastically bizarre would it be if, while you are sitting on the couch watching DS9, a corseted wench enters the room, pulls cash out of your wallet, shoves ye olde turkey leg into your hand and leaves without saying a word? Wild, right? Back on Christmas Eve 2000, my CC was charged for a hotel room near the Grand Canyon despite my not having been in Arizona since May of that year. Unlike my at-home renaissance faire, as Silent Night played in 2000, I asked, "where's the beef?" I had enough of turkeys: "trust, but verify" is prudent here.

Tangentially connected to Idagio as a service, I've been considering how much value can I attain from something without going all-in with a cash commitment. With Idagio, how much more economic utility would I attain by bartering 40 lbs of liver a year for a service that also provides a crippled-while-free version? Yes, I speak in terms of MEAT because we've lost our way with the monthly subscription model in understanding the value of a dollar—it's only a matter of time before we'll hear, "At just 33 cents a day...." Like my cost-of-living reference about my $50/year membership with the Brooklyn Public Library in a prior post, there's a whole LOTTA difference between a New York fifty bucks and the same wadful of cash down here in Tennessee—it's why I once cringed when I used to shop at bookstores that ran with the printed price on the book flap, knowing the east and west coasts were getting better prices thereby receiving greater educational opportunity. Thus, I speak in liver: real-world capability trumps abstract dollars.

How much more economic utility would I derive from a quality, printed textbook for $34 over its ebook twin that's FREE? Of course, a printed book for self-instruction is superior, but does my paying $34 make sense for that added benefit when the content itself remains unchanged? Am I just paying for the tactile experience? How great of a role does enhanced accessibility play? Furthermore, if I go with the hardcover route, I might be entering into the entire network thereof, acclimating my studies with paid resources that are no different than their free alternatives.

Specifically, I'm considering the OpenStax platform with its Calculus, Vol 1. I seek a solution to detangle the awkwardness of juggling the 14-21 day library checkout for e-content—not that there's a big run on academic works, but still, it's a weird model to apply—appropriate for pop works, but for edu content? Just flag educational with a 6-month checkout and attain the appropriate licensing instead of this broad strokes approach. And the thing is, it's not like it's a limited resource, right?

While I was absolutely STOKED by a CLI client for Spotify, I was nevertheless reminded of Spotify's perspective on society (and of me, personally) through its Android client. Yesterday, I took a spin on Idagio, the classical streaming service. While I felt immediately uplifted by the experience, life as a classical neophyte makes it challenging for me to justify any subscription fee as I'm basically a grinning chimpanzee nodding my head along.

Thinking I might try the junk drawer of general music streaming again, I dived into Tidal only to find that my user experience was hampered. My demographics may not be aligned to its target audience, though you'd think at a $20/month lossless option, we might have a hand-in-glove relationship, my aversion toward cool kid politics notwithstanding, of course. Nevertheless, Tidal just feels like Spotify sans podcasts, admittedly, a superior experience. That said, a huge drawback for me is Tidal's denying me the opportunity to close my account. That NEVER gives me those cherished warm and fuzzy feelings! It oozes control to me with just a dash of neediness. Cue up 1979 with KC and the Sunshine Band's Please Don't Go!

Idagio applies the same schema with its users as well. To compound things further, apparently, its cash cows have to contact support to update their email address—isn't that the support script of a small town utility company, not a tech firm? It's especially bewildering to me with its monthly subscription rate of $10-$17. Must I fax over paperwork so that somebody has to pull up my bibliography in its card catalog? (Thinking about card catalogs and their disappearance from the 21st century makes me nostalgic for all the hours I spent as a kid at the Bartlett library, a place like many, now only lives on in my mind. Entropy is a ravenous creature.)

Thus, I'm moving on from Spotify, Idagio and Tidal or any other music subscription services. I'm actually to the point in my life where my enthusiasm has waned. I may not be the same guy in 1997, downloading his first MP3s, those Garth Brooks songs off a fan site were an upgrade over my cherished collection of MIDI covers and WAV snippets—and don't get me started on my Ropin' the Wind cassette and its magnetic defects!

And yet, resurrecting my massive CD collection from the 90s is not a solution, either. It's all about the metadata, right? Clearly, physical media in a library context to represent genres is far too unwieldy as we tend to jam the single schema onto it, as if even albums can be randomized without looking like something out of an episode of Hoarders; crazy further, it's far too manic/compulsive to pull out a record/CD to throw hurriedly atop another to play a single track. Sadly, the music single schema is too invasive in our consciousness, perhaps the fruit of a long-ago industry money grab in pressing greatest hits vinyl.

Well, at any rate, what is the alternative and how does that choice propel me to become better? Let the subsequent questions and fill-in-the-blanks commence!

Fundamentally, the question for me is not a new one, "what is the chief end of man?" Everything else stems from that, doesn't it—well, from my own pragmatism insofar I'm neither unwilling nor unable to actively shape my behavior to be consistent with this question, behavior in today's context I can only approach and never attain. Thus, in the vein of streaming music, or broader still, content marked for consumption, how shall I interpret and apply resources to that end?

And admittedly and unremarkably, I fall from that mark ALL the time.

Nevertheless, I think my watching this Unashamed podcast this morning adds value to that end: Jase Freaks Out Pizzeria Customers & How to Disrupt This Fake, Virtue-Signaling Culture