The Internet Isn't Entertaining Enough

I have something like 3,000+ songs in my digital music collection. If I played my entire music folder it wouldn't repeat anything for over a week. And I have a relatively small music collection -- I know people who could play their music for months without repeating anything.

Markie has been complaining about the music selection at her salon. They have two iPods, one of which has a lot of my music along with music from her collection of CDs, and yet… they're sick of the music on the iPods.

So, for her birthday, I got her a cheap Android device that can play Pandora and Jango (and she could put some of those songs she's sick of on it, too, if she wanted to). It took some fiddling with signal quality, power strips and new audio cables, but I got it all hooked up and now they have the entire Internet at their fingertips.

Except… it's not really going to be enough. I listen to Pandora and Jango in the office, and while I can add artists and songs to get more variety, I get a lot of repeats. I shouldn't be able to even remember the same tune when I'm listening to a group of Finnish rockers wailing away on their cellos…

Turns out, my brain is bigger than all the music I care to listen to online. I was going to say, 'my brain is bigger than the Internet,' but that's obviously not true -- otherwise I wouldn't be searching on my phone for who played that guy in that movie to settle a bar bet.

But while I can't remember an actor or a film title, if they start playing the theme song, I'm going to be humming along. And then a little bored. Especially if I have to listen to it more than once a day.

And with the licensing agreements that Pandora and Jango have made, I start hearing the same music over and over again. It's like listening to someone else's MP3 collection, which, I guess is what I'm doing. And, even if they have months worth of music, I'm only listening to a slice of what they have, so… I'm still getting tired of the music collection.

It's probably a sure sign that we're near the fall of civilization as I recline on my settee (from IKEA) complain that I'm simply not entertained enough by all the music on the Internet…