Spotify

"You'll find loads of Joss Stone songs on there that you haven't heard." Emma told me the other night.

She was talking about Spotify, but I scoffed at the prospect. I refused to believe that the aforementioned Soul Angel had made a single sound since about 2004 that I had not picked up on. Well actually she probably has but I'd rather not go into that. I'm talking music now. Anyway, how wrong I was. Suddenly I was like the proverbial child in the sweet shop as I discovered dozens of what I thought were new tracks. It has probably been there years, but as with all other technological developments I have been a bit slow on the uptake where Spotify is concerned.

Mercifully for all you nay-sayers and philistines out there, this is not another pro-Joss propaganda article. The point is that Spotify is a brilliant little invention which, when you type in the name of an artist or a song, will list endless tracks associated with that artist or song title. The only down side to it is that after every three or four tracks chosen you are subjected to an advert (usually for Spotify or a related music product) whether you like it or not. But it is almost always only the one, so it is not long before the music world is once again at your filthy, disturbed fingertips. And unlike YouTube, you don't get tracks that sound like they have been recorded from inside a beer barrell, nor do they cut off before they have actually finished.

I tended to get a bit bamboozled by the choice, even within the limits of a list relating to a single artist. It reminded me of that Monty Python sketch about spam only instead of spam, spam, spam, spam and spam I was left to ponder over Joss with James Brown, Joss with Melissa Etheridge, Joss with Leanne Rhimes, Joss with Jeff Beck, even Joss with Robbie Williams. There's even a cover of the old Beach Boys classic 'God Only Knows'. By the way, in the interests of balance I should point out that Mr Williams has an extensive collection of Spotify tracks of his own. Be warned though, for every Morning Sun there is a Rock DJ, and for every No Regrets there is a Rudebox. Or something. Yet irrespective of which artist floats your boat you will find a veritable array of treats here. You can just skip over the garbage.

You can, if you are sad enough, lose hours on Spotify. I told myself repeatedly that I would just play one more song, but by the end of another 100 one more songs it was well after midnight and I was cursing Spotify for the exhaustion I knew lay ahead in the morning. For all the things that Spotify can do, it cannot get you out of going to work, nor getting up at 7.00 in the morning with the distinct feeling that you are three stones heavier than you were when you went to bed.

Give it a try. You'll find loads of tracks on there that you never knew existed. No, really. You will.