flux.

Spotify, a music service currently only available outside of the US, is a social streaming site that allows instant listening to specific tracks or albums.

Users can easily share their library with friends and collaborate on playlists.

Although ownership of music is important to users in general a more pressing issue is accessibility. Sites like Hype Machine and Imeem allow us to share songs with friends, but we can only share the content that those sites have available to us.

By employing the peer-to-peer model like Spotify does, I can upload those special gems and curated playlists I spend weeks agonizing over. My friends can then stream the music and click-through to purchase for legitimate ownership of the song.

Spotify takes advantage of the “cloud“- data living over the internet as opposed to locally on your computer. We can peruse music quickly this way without downloading it first. Then, if a user wants ownership of the song, it can be purchased – supporting the artist rather than jacking it from a blog.

Makes sense to me.

What is Spotify?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify

Twitter

My 5 year anniversary with Los Angeles is today.

I love this town. I feel blessed for the opportunities I’ve had and the many experiences I’ve encountered, good and bad, that have helped to shape me into a stronger and more mature person.

Around the dinner table the other night was a musician, an advertising exec, a writer, a designer, a video games producer. And me.

We tossed around ideas. We picked apart nuances. We heckled, we gossiped.

I left feeling inspired and renewed.

There’s opportunity in this town and creative people want to connect.

There have been times when I’ve been frustrated. I live in a tiny overpriced apartment. I’m friends with everybody but never quite sure who my real friends are. The traffic can be beyond maddening.

But it’s a fun process getting to wherever I’m meant to be.

I hit Hollywood or Silverlake to see bands play, I meander among gallery openings in Culver City. I travel downtown for fashion shows in dirty warehouses and discover secret speakeasies along the way. I go to beaches in Malibu and somehow find myself at random parties at ridiculous homes. I meet musicians, artists, entrepreneurs, stylists, and acrobats. I receive gift bags with free shampoo.

Creative people are feeling the recession and as a result we’re banding together, somehow knowing that creatives are becoming less fringe and more a part of the mainstream American landscape.

And when it comes down to it, everyone is adapting to change – even my friends and family back in Cleveland.

Here in LA, it’s challenging. You have to work hard to make it happen. Everyday is a fresh start full of possibility.

Plus, that tiny overpriced apartment IS 28 blocks from the ocean. And at least I have a steady supply of free shampoo.