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