I opened up iTunes this week, sometimes that does not happen too often. There was my full list of all the songs I had bought this year. A grand total of THREE. That’s it, just the 3 songs. When I mentioned this to colleagues, it seems that I’m not alone in my minimal of songs, with some saying they can’t remember the last time they bought something. But there are different reasons for this. For them, it’s because they pay a subscription to services to Spotify and that delivers all their needs. for me, I just don’t do that much music, I don’t have a streaming service and if I need to listen to something, then that’s what the radio is for.
Having looked at iTunes, what other media have I consumed this year. I’ve bought about 6 DVDs, 2 of them the Olympic coverage as a souvenir record, the rest films I’ve missed in the cinema years ago that were on sale. As with music, I don’t have an on-demand subscription for a service such as Netflix. In fact, I haven’t watched anything on demand at all, even the ‘free’ service offered by Sky. I have done catchup TV though, through iPlayer if I have occasionally missed recording something. I do watch online TV, but primarily at work, where it replaces the radio as a background distraction when I’m concentrating on writing documents. Home under the Hammer is definitely a favourite for this!
On the games side, I’ve probably got about a 10 or so games for the phone, usually cheap or free causal games, but most don’t last long for playing. I’ve bought one videogame this year and I’m still working my way through it. I’m slow at games, not very good, so the outlay of £40 or so usually has a good ROI given how long it takes me.
The biggest media consumption by far though for me is books. I’ve bought – and read – 114 books through Amazon this year, most of them on the Kindle. There’s about another 20 or so that I have got in physical form, my regular authors who I usually buy in hardback. That’s where my attention goes to, the books rather than any other way of taking in stories. That’s a lot of books – the major benefit of the Kindle for me is that I now longer have to find the space for the books!
Looking at my gadget consumption, I’m definitely a lot less likely to buy the latest version than 10 or so years ago. I’m running a 2 year old phone that I’ve got no desire to upgrade as it works fine. I upgraded my laptop last year and I’ll run it until it breaks (as I did with the previous one). I don’t own a tablet as I can’t see a usecase for me that justifies the expenditure. And I won’t be upgrading to one of the new games consoles for the same reason, the justifying usecase is not there and the 4 games consoles I own work fine! The only gadgets I have bought this year are my Fitbit and a Garmin watch, both to help drive fitness and life change.
I used to buy a lot more. A lot more games, videos, music, gadgets. The book consumption is about the same, if possibly even higher as it’s easier to by on Kindle. The time is being taken up by work, going places and the internet, when I’m not reading. How about you?
Me? I seem to stick heavy on the gadgets, and movies (I quite like passive 3D at home), and games. No subscription music or video services (other than iTunes match), and music is usually bought in Cd or vinyl form then ripped, only bought through iTunes when significantly cheaper/has some extra (such as a music video) I want…