Tag Archives: music

Amazon and music

Posted on by

 

I order a fair amount from Amazon even though I am one of those dinosaurs that actually likes to go into a store and browse. I order books too even though I work in a library and I haunt Barnes and Noble and visit the smaller book shops regularly. Amazon has books I need for my research that I can’t get by any other method.

But what I really use Amazon for is streaming music. I have a variety of playlists and I buy music, both old and new, to download to my phone, all the time.

The problem with Amazon is this: Music unlimited. Now I am willing to purchase the songs and I do, (And sometimes Amazon takes them away again even though I have bought them and downloaded them. I hate this. But I digress.) But I CAN’T buy some songs because they are music unlimited and Amazon wants me to pay $7.99 a month for access to them. I do not download that many songs per month. Besides, the time I would need by itself stops me. I am sure that Amazon believes that customers want the songs so much they will pay that amount of money. But I won’t. I think its gouging. And its not like Amazon doesn’t already make huge profits. So I don’t buy the song at all.

Still. Amazon’s control of this marketplace is both irritating and frightening. They can go into my phone and remove something I’ve paid for? Seriously? And the billions they are already earning isn’t enough? So here in a nutshell is the good and bad of the digital world. I can get odd books and yet Amazon has so much power over music as well as my phone.

More about American music

Posted on by

When my husband and I were in Greece this past summer and went down to breakfast that first morning, a woman at a nearby table suddenly burst into a James Brown song. No lyrics, just the hook, bookended by a flood of Greek.

Although we haven’t had members of the native populations bursting into song in other countries, we have heard American music everywhere. Perhaps I should say American/British since the Stones and Led Zeppelin are well represented. As tourists, we hear plenty of the native Greek or Peruvian or other local music but the pop music is all the music we grew up with. And even the Stones and other British Bands we hear have been heavily influenced by the Blues, R and B and so on.

American music is one of our greatest exports, along with our movies.

And the interesting thing is that the ‘melting pot’ of the United States is really obvious in the music. From the Chansons Profanes of the French trappers, to the work songs (the sea shanties and field hollers), the drums of the Native Americans and of course the rhythmic music of the black slaves, American music is a combination that has really gone everywhere. (Think the popularity of Metallica in Japan!)

The history of rock from its beginnings in Blues is well documented but of course there have been other important influences, all ending up in James Brown sung by a Greek.