The cover of Anthem by Desolation Angels

Isn’t internet brilliant for eating up your time?

The ‘what’s new’ section of Spotify keeps displaying an album called Anthem by somebody called Desolation Angels, with a strangely familiar cover. It reminded me of something.

The name ‘Desolation Angels’ and fantasy artwork made me think that maybe it was some variety of metal, so I had a listen and track one was a cover of the Four Tops’ Walk Away Renee, so not metal then, but try telling Spotify that!

Spotify has a bit of a problem with two artists or bands having the same name, and can’t really cope with it. The biography for Desolation Angles is all about a NWOBHM band and is a minor masterpiece itself, making much of the fact that they took their name from the Bad Company album and not the Jack Kerouac novel and that they got through over a doxen drummers before their first album.

Neither version of Desolation Angels was even famous enough to get their own page on Wikipedia, but I did find out that the lot who did Anthem actually released that album in 1996.

Another thing that Spotify is not terribly good at is deciding what date to put against an album. Should it be the original release date, the re-release date, the re-mastered reissue date, or the date it was added to Spotify? In this case the 1996 album is dated 2012.

This particular band is described in passing on Wikipedia as an ‘über-group’ featuring the Roches, Kit Hain (who was half of Marshall Hain who did Dancing in the City), Karla DeVito (a jobbing singer. Successful but not a household name), Deborah Berg (Similarly successful but un-famous singer-songwriter) and others.

I don’t want to confes how much time I spent looking all that up.

As for what the album cover reminded me of – it was another album cover for an album called Anthem, featuring a fantasy painting of a female figure with wings:

The cover of Anthem by Toyah

What they are doing now is limiting the free service to 10 hours a month.  I could almost live with that, spending more time listening to my own CDs and save Spotify for trying out new stuff, but I’ve kind of got used to using it to listen to things I actually have as well.  Maybe it is time to move onto the Unlimited option which is a fiver a month.  It seems strange to be sort of paying for radio, but since you control what is played it is more like paying for on-demand radio.  As a society we have got used to paying for TV now, which would have sounded unthinkable 30 years ago, so why not music as well?

Thinking about it, I spend more than £5 a month on having TV and yet I must spend more time listening ot Spotify most days than I spend watching TV in an average week, so it would be better value for money for me.Having said that, it will be interesting to see if I do hit those limits first.  They reckon there is already a limit of 20 hours a month, but despite listening a lot more than that I have never encountered any limit.  Maybe there is some sort of loophole or something overlooked about my account because of the time it was setup.

I know I have heard the ads for Spotify Unlimited which keep stressing how you can have unlimited music and I have always wondered why they made such a big deal, given that I was already getting unlimited music.  Now I know.  I’ll keep my fingers crossed.  If the deadline comes and I find myself still able to listen as I do now I’ll be quietly pleased, but if I get messages about reaching the limit I’ll fork out.

In the last month I have listened to the brand new albums by Paul Simon, Foo Fighters, Glasvegas, TV on the Radio, The Strokes, John Foxx, Bob Geldof, Green Day, Human League, Wire, Penguin Cafe, Peter, Bjorn & John and a few others.  Even at my peak of profligacy I would never have bought a dozen new albums in a month.  If I do wantto buy anything I’ll know which to avoid (Glasvegas) and which I like best (Human League, Paul Simon).

All sung in Swedish, but does that matter in this genre?  I spent a happy couple of hours watching Anthrax, Slayer and Megadeth on DVD this morning and didn’t catch more than one word in twenty of the lyrics.

A quick summary of the band performances in the ‘Big Four’ DVD:   Anthrax – Oldschool, Megadeth – awesome, Slayer – extreme, Metallica – majestic.   Good to see them all on stage together at the end in a line-up featuring even more guitarists than Iron Maiden – well not all of Slayer, but still an amazing thing to see.

The most listened to artists are:

1. Dr. Feelgood
2. Primus
3. Gang of Four
4. Kraftwerk
5. Genesis
6. Manu Chao
7. Depeche Mode
8. Mano Negra
9. Les Negresses Vertes
10. Pet Shop Boys

Followed by Santana, Talking Heads, Angelique Kidjo, Erasure, Yes, David Bowie, Thin Lizzy Stevie Wonder, Rachid Taha and Fleetwood Mac.  It makes some sort of sense – a mixture of artists I like a lot and artists with huge catalogues.

Going a bit further down the list is where it all gets less predictable.  I have used Spotify in a few main ways:  to discover music that is new or new to me, to fill in gaps in my knowledge, and to listen to things that I know well, having got them on CD or vinyl.   That has led me down paths I had not expected, like listening to early Bee Gees (19 plays) and Chicago (32 plays).    Some artists that I had never heard of before Spotify have had a lot of plays, the most being Tanzwut (69 plays) and Premiata Forneria Marconi (58 plays).

Over such a short timeframe the list is obviously weighted a bit towards people who have released new albums in the last year or two.  Although I like Pet Shop Boys I am sure their high position is largely down to them having released two albums since I started Spotifying.  I still can’t understand how I have listed to Simian Mobile Disco more than Black Sabbath though.  I’m sure I like Black sabbath a lot more.

As far as top tracks go, I think that is a bit of a lottery.  All very good tracks but certainly wouldn’t be my desert island discs – although I can’t quibble with the number one most-played track which surely is the best single track ever made.

1. Green Onions / Booker T and the MGs
2. Down at the Doctors / Dr. Feelgood
3. Pendant que les Champs Brulent / Niagara
4. Don’t Believe a Word / Thin Lizzy
5. Sir Duke / Stevie Wonder
6. Clandestino / Manu Chao
7. Roxette / Dr. Feelgood
8. Thou Shalt Always Kill / Dan le Sac v. Scroobius Pip
9. Epic / Faith No More
10. Hong Kong Garden / Siouxsie & the Banshees
11. Not Great Men / Gang of Four
12. Excremento / Tanzwut

Actually, come to think of it, I can’t argue with No. 2 either – one of the most beautiful songs I know and one that I played a lot on CD/walkman back in the pre-Spotify days.   No way is Sir Duke my favourite Stevie Wonder tune though, nor is Not Great Men my favourite Gang of Four track.

Still trying to work out how or why I managed to listen to Head to Toe by Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam a whole eight times though…

Perhaps the biggest surprise is seeing how many different artists I listened to – 3,715.    That must be a result of clicking through to a lot of the ‘related artists’ to see if they appeal to me, where the answer is often ‘not a lot’.

I’ll have to return to this after another 20,000 tracks to see what it looks like then.

They are not wrong though.  I saw the name and thought, yeah.  Haven’t heard any Enya for years, let’s have a bit of Orinoco Flow.

I’m just a little worried about the automatic labelling of imported libraries though – I think I’d want to look into how that works before importing everything and make sure all the new labels are only in the Spotify library and not changing the tags on the files themselves because some of them are very deliberately different to what Gracenote would make them.

I particularly like the idea of seeing who added what tracks to a shared playlist and the easy sharing of tracks within Spotify itself.  If I want to share something at the moment it means sending an email with a URL in it which is not ideal.

My favourite comment of all is the one that says, after all the boasting of a major new release and a long list of new features, “nothing says major release like version 0.4.3″.  So true.  It must be time to finally declare the product to be at least 1.0 despite the stigma attached to 1.0

Talking of Spotify:  a few recent additions that are worth a listen -

• Paul Weller’s new album
• MGMT’s new album
• A new album from Gotan Project

Only just started listening to it myself so can’t give a verdict yet – just glad to see it up there.

Exhibit one: Dil Da Rog Muka Ja Mahi by Gaudi and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

Surely the most unlikely Kraftwerk cover this side of Senor Coconut.

Exhibit two: Panic Grass & Fever Few by Ian King

Is that really dub-tinged folk?  I think it must be.

Exhibit three: Extra Pleasure by Simian Mobile Disco

This was the limited edition second disc of their Temporary Pleasure album.