AshKMy blog post about computer users getting all over Cambridge Audio’s DacMagic digital to analogue converter (as seen here) promoted some feedback from the source of the quoted user figures, Adam Shaw-Cotterill of Cambridge Audio.
He reckons that, according to the user survey, the majority of people “using the DacMagic with a PC are not using it to play back content from their hard drive, or music downloads, but are instead using it mainly for streaming music from internet radio, and sites such as Spotify and LastFM”.
In NZ, we hardly seem to hear much about Internet radio or music-streaming services. That’s probably because NZ broadband has been a little, shall we say backward in coming forward over the years or bloody feeble if you want the correct description. When you’ve got a slow connection or worse yet, a slow connection with a lousy little data cap, you tend to develop thrifty Internet habits. Those habits don’t suddenly vanish when your speed increases and your monthly data allowance heads upwards.
Is the local mindset something along the lines of “streaming music all day long uses precious Megabytes, which have to be saved so we can download the latest episode of Lost or Breaking Bad”? I know that IT support people tend to regard music streaming as only a little better than having a car parked on their head because of the data consumption over the course of a month. Internet radio falls into the same grey area – nice but is anyone using it?
To stream or not to stream? This might make an interesting poll when that lazy web guy (i.e. me) gets off his butt and implements polling functionality.
PS – Good luck getting Spotify to work if you’re in NZ:
