I wish someone had told me that Spotify rocks!

“I wish someone had told me” is a series of posts that feed into our inquisitive nature at CN&CO. Each week we hear from someone in our network about something interesting or surprising that’s recently happened or occurred to them – or lessons they learnt. These blogs are a way to pay it forward and form part of CN&CO’s belief that the world can be a better place – and we all have a responsibility to make it so. This post is by Cristiana Cavalieri. 

“I’ve never been up with the times, always been slightly out of step.” – Christopher Eccleston

I am a 1997 baby with a year-2000 brother, Stefano. This makes the age gap between my brother and me three years. This doesn’t seem like a big gap at all. However when it comes to new technology, it is (well, at least in my case it is).

In addition to technology, I find myself lacking in knowledge of music and artists. In the past two years, Stefano’s taste in music has really, first of all improved, but second of all has become more versatile in genre. He would play song after song in the car, and I would enjoy every single one. I secretly Shazammed the songs and started to explore and familiarise myself with the more modern artists and their music.

For those of you who are unsure, Shazam is an app that can be used to identify music, movies, advertisements and television shows. The app is able to recognise the specific audio based on a short sample that you record while Shazam is open.

I say that I secretly Shazammed Stefano’s songs because an older sister is supposed to be the cool and up-to-date one right? I couldn’t possibly be seen prying on my younger brother’s playlist!

The question that constantly ran through my mind was, where on earth was Stefano finding these artists and this music? What site was he on? I, in the meantime, had been converting the songs from YouTube into a MP3 format and downloading them one at a time. This was one tedious task.

I knew that Stefano was on Apple Music, which I had never got around to downloading. I do realise that this put me at a mega disadvantage.

Thankfully, in this past December, a friend introduced me to Spotify.

Spotify is a music and podcast streaming platform. To search for and play music on Spotify is completely free! You can download whole albums at a time or individual songs. Already-made playlists are also available to download, such as playlists for gym. The app follows the songs that you download and then makes recommendations based on similar genres and artists. This has made my life one thousand times easier!

I can now find new music on my own rather than secretly Shazamming my brother’s. I have discovered so many new artists such as Stephen, Paolo Nutini and Zhu.

I can safely say that I no longer feel as if I am living in the Stone Age. It’s taken me a while but I now feel like the hip-and-happening sister that I strive to be.

I have a feeling that this sense of accomplishment may only last until the next app or invention is introduced. Until then, I’ll be on Spotify indulging in the world of music.