Songs on Sunday: What I'm currently listening to

This should perhaps be retitled as 'How I'm currently listening to.'

I don't seem to be listening to my mp3's stored on my external hard drive anymore, and I still haven't bought a CD (except as a present) for quite a few years now. I suppose I just listen to music on YouTube, I don't even bother with Spotify or any music platform like that anymore (got sick of the adverts and they can be blocked on YouTube).

So, I listen to new music I find, like The Gaslamp Killer:



I like being able to discover new music on YouTube, mostly from watching a vlog from one the many music reviewers (the best being Anthony Fantano @ http://www.youtube.com/user/theneedledrop). This makes me more likely to go see these bands or buy their music (although not in my case).

I also tend to seek out old tunes that I love, like this one by Martyn Bennett. Of whom I should really write a long review about the man and his music. He was an amazing musician and holds deep resonance in my life, for many reasons.



The good thing about music on YouTube is the possibility of people posting whole albums, although these seem to get blocked much quicker than single videos. Indeed, that is the whole problem with finding music (new or old) on YouTube. You might bookmark a video, or a couple of videos by an artist, but on returning after a week you find that several of your videos are now marked as a [deleted video] or [private video] or [unplayable video] as it now carries a copyright notification.

"The YouTube account associated with this video has been terminated due to multiple third-party notifications of copyright infringement."

Once they're gone, it's total deletion, no record remains of what the video was (not in all cases, sometimes it remains, but won't play). So, unless you've an excellent memory of what video 17 in a playlist of 80 was, that band will probably stay forgotten.

Anyway, this isn't a post about open access or defending the right to download for free. I'm fairly ambivalent about these things, I can see that artists need to make a living as well. I'm less worried about record labels and whether the people making claims for copyright infringement are always representatives of a label or even have a just claim.