Henrik Carlsson posted this
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and tagged it with Gear Music Many years ago now, I set ”The Year of Music” as a Yearly Theme. Though one of the ideas behind a theme is that it shouldn’t really be something that you can fail at I would say that The Year of Music was a huge failure. No new music made, very little music listening. Now, however, the latter part of that is changing.
After many years of indecisiveness I took the plunge and bought into the Sonos ecosystem and I am so glad I did. The idea of being able to fill the house with music, or to have different music playing in different rooms, have been something I’ve wanted for so long. However, even though I’ve considered Sonos – and the Sonos/Ikea products – I’ve always resisted, thinking that there’s got to be a better, less expensive solution that doesn’t lock me into a single company’s line of products. So I’ve kept thinking about it, going more or less deep into various Raspberry Pi-based rabbit holes, never sticking to one idea. In recent years I’ve even considered buying a turntable and getting into vinyl records. I’ve got a MacMini server at home, several speakers – both Bluetooth and wired – and I have some basic programming skills. Surely, I should be able to create the perfect solution. Surely…
Obviously that didn’t happen. Now, in hindsight, I think that is part of why the listening part of Year of Music failed. Friction, even light friction, greatly reduces the chance of something happening. When music listening requires me to connect my phone physically to a speaker, or make an AirPlay connection, and having playback be instantly disrupted whenever a call comes to my phone, making it almost impossible to have a communal experience with my family about selecting the music, and so on, there is great friction making it very unlikely to happen.
So a month or two ago I started seriously looking at Sonos gear. Yes, it cost a lot of money1 but honestly speaking I am in that part of life where I have more money than time so I should at least consider it. Fortunately I spoke to Linn about it. I have a tendency to overthink everything. She is much more spontaneous so she encouraged me to go ahead and buy a speaker or two, or why not even three. Thank you, Linn! :)
Finally, I talked to my old friend Johan who’s been using Sonos for a long time and he’s recommendation was the last push I needed so I bought two (yes, two) Era 100 and one Roam 2. I’m using the Era 100s as a stereo pair in the kitchen/living room and the Roam as a portable speaker, wherever I might need it.
It has worked great, both as an interconnected system with the same music playing in the kitchen as on the backyard patio – or when I’m writing this among the flowers next to the green house of the front side of the house – as well as a system for the kitchen and a separate speaker for separate music somewhere else, for instance when my daughter brings it out to the trampoline in the back garden. The fact that each speaker is ”smart” enough to act as a music player, that no phone or other device is required during playback is such an important feature and makes it miles better then any Bluetooth or AirPlay speaker.
In the end, the friction of listening to music is minimal and the result is that I indeed listen a whole lot more. Sometimes it’s to music that I really like, sometimes to music that someone else in my household really likes, but there is always music in the air.
- I try to separate ”expensive” and ”costs a lot of money”. The former is when more money is spent than what is reasonable on something. The latter is for things that have a high price tag but that provides something that lower cost things don’t. ↩
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Replies and comments
hutaffe
7 februari, 2018 10:55@MrHenko This is one of my all time favorites! When I hear these songs I still see my self on a bike, riding to school, listening to them my walkman. I still know all the lyrics… It’s a magic and special album.
MrHenko
7 februari, 2018 10:55@hutaffe Same here with the bike riding and listening to this. In my case it was a cd walkman. (With 10 seconds of electronic skip protection!) That walkman scratched this cd up so badly that eventually it wasn’t playable anymore so it’s one of the few cds that I’ve bought two copies of.
MrHenko
7 februari, 2018 10:55@hutaffe How do you feel about Garbage’s other albums? For me it’s only the ”The World is not Enough” single that’s stuck with me. Still love the bamd though, just because 2.0 is so incrediby good.
hutaffe
7 februari, 2018 11:08@MrHenko Not Your Kind Of People stuck with me because I heard it a lot on a roadtrip through California with a friend ☺️ The rest of the older stuff is quite good too, but I sadly didn’t really care for. Their latest album is way too weird for me though.
hutaffe
7 februari, 2018 11:09@MrHenko 😆 I had a real cassette walkman. It was a real fancy one because it was basically just as thick as the cassette itself. What a technological piece of art at the time 😉
MrHenko
7 februari, 2018 11:18@hutaffe Cool! Do you still have it?
MrHenko
7 februari, 2018 11:18@hutaffe Given how the roadtrip influenced your regard for Not Your Kind of People, maybe we hold Version 2.0 is such high regard because of those memories of walkmans, bicycles and school. (And the girl that I liked when I was 14. Her name always flickers by in my mind when I listen to this album.)
MrHenko
7 februari, 2018 11:18@hutaffe Wow, I’ve been out of touch with the music lately. I had no idea that they had released anything new after Bleed Like Me. I need to chech this out!
hutaffe
7 februari, 2018 11:23@MrHenko sadly I don’t, but I think this was it… What a beauty! ☺️
MrHenko
7 februari, 2018 11:26@hutaffe Awesome! And it had a remote! My cassette walkman was way less fancy and I don’t remember what brand my cd one was.
hutaffe
7 februari, 2018 11:27@MrHenko sorry, that link didn’t work… Maybe now
MrHenko
7 februari, 2018 11:31@hutaffe No worries, I got the first link working. :)
hutaffe
7 februari, 2018 11:39@MrHenko I fail to operate micro.blog today. Reply got lost… It’s always like that with music for me. I even have very good memories about a Crash Test Dummies album 🙈🙉🙊 But I also think that Version 2.0 was their best album by far!
MrHenko
7 februari, 2018 11:44@hutaffe I think Crash Test Dummies was just before ”my time”. Off course I’ve heard the songs but I was just eight years old when the album came out, so it didn’t stick with me.
hutaffe
7 februari, 2018 11:48@MrHenko yeah, I was 10. But it’s true, music that’s special to you in special times of life will stick forever, no matter how bad it is. That’s also why I love music so much. I have countless songs and albums like that. Always great to stumble upon them from time to time ☺️
MrHenko
7 februari, 2018 13:13@hutaffe Indeed! I think that’s the ultimate proof that people of our age are now old enough to be nostalgic. :)
schuth
7 februari, 2018 18:40@MrHenko @hutaffe We must be rough contemporaries. Love Garbage & am nostalgic now for similar chapter of life reasons. (Also: Green Day & Radiohead) Moved to Madison a decade ago; it’s a bit surreal to drive by the studio where Garbage recorded those first four albums.
hutaffe
7 februari, 2018 20:25@schuth @MrHenko it was such a great time! I guess I will listen to some more music tonight 😉
MrHenko
10 februari, 2018 11:48@schuth @hutaffe Cool! I found Radiohead way later, so they don’t have that same nostalgic shimmer to me. But Basket Case and When I Come Around definitely bring me back to my best friends room, playing Super Empire Strikes Back in the SNES.