One More Thing

Posted on 20 Apr 2009 at 14:44

 

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Whatever your taste in music, Amazon MP3's downloadable albums at knock-down prices will broaden your horizons. The Smurfs, anyone?

I've always had a bit of a problem with the phrase 'guilty pleasures'. It's generally used to describe a movie, television programme or piece of music that society dictates you're not allowed to like. But society, being all kind and all encompassing that it is, will give you a Get Out Of Jail Free card if you pass it off in a kind of 'I know it's rubbish but that's why I like it and I'm in on the joke' kind of way. Hence, a 'guilty pleasure'. I've always thought 'cobblers to that'.

One of the by-products of being relentlessly bullied at school (don't worry, this isn't a sympathy ploy on my part) is that you get to a point, if you're lucky, where you get fed up of adjusting your life to the standards of others and simply don't do it anymore. That's why, right now, I realised I'm sitting at my desk in a shirt that cost me £8 in a sale 18 months ago, and not some ripped-to-shreds piece of cloth that society has deemed as 'designer' and thus 'okay'. I don't feel guilty about it at all, either.

Given that I'm clearly a deep believer in customisation, I've enhanced my shirt's appearance by adding a dollop of pink paint to it, a by-product of when I wore said garment to finish off decorating my daughter's bedroom. Barely a day goes by when I don't add a drop of coffee to the unique cotton cocktail, too. Heck, by my reckoning, £8 is £8, and I've long since gone past the day when I need to have the name of some designer or other rich person I've never heard of plastered across my unhealthy torso to justify my place in society. It helps, too, that it's about the easiest shirt to iron that I own.

Which brings me to my music collection. Most third parties would, with some justification, describe it as 'tragic'. Not me. I'm as proud as punch of it. Just perusing my rack of CDs, I can - right now - spot a now-rare disc of Margarita Pracatan Live, of which my iPod is silently begging for a copy (and is selling for £28 on Amazon, so ner). A car boot sale just outside Southport united me with a copy of The Smurfs Go Pop!, while I bounded up to the counter with a shameless glee to pick up the compilation album Cheggers Choice (incidentally, my biggest problem with the latter was its lack of apostrophe. I interviewed the man himself several years later, and he assured me that his name was an apostrophe-free zone. Hmmm). So what if the oik behind the counter sniggered? He should be glad he wasn't working when I bought the Britney Spears epic, Crossroads, on DVD. The disappointment when I got home and realised Benny wasn't in it was palpable.

Recently, though, my horizons have been broadened by, of all places, Amazon. Its decision to start selling DRM-free downloadable albums before Christmas intrigued me, not least because of the £3 deals it was offering. I didn't need to load a third-party application, either, which also endeared it to me enormously.

So I started filling my proverbial boots, and felt for the first time that this is what digital music distribution should be capable of. In a matter of hours, I'd picked up a bit of David Bowie, some Alison Krauss (whose music I've always had a soft spot for) and, more recently, a lot of Beethoven and a few movie scores I was missing. And then I found I was having a whale of a time simply exploring. As a result, I've migrated from just the cheap deals to devouring the broader music catalogue, and found that I'm not alone in my, er, 'more diverse' music tastes.