The Pay Model

Welcome to my blog. Not going to bang on about what it will try and achieve, but hopefully it'll be a nice one-stop shop for my general thoughts about culture alongside links to the stuff I've actually been paid to do! Anyway, let's get stuck in straight away...

So, now my cosseted life at Metro is nothing but a distant dream, I now have to - shock horror - actually buy music, wait a week for the next instalment of television series, and consider exactly what gigs I want to go to.

Sounds pathetic, and I'm sure your heart bleeds. Welcome to the real world, eh? But it does change your relationship to culture almost immediately - and I think for the better. I was actually excited when news broke of a new Vampire Weekend song to download, a new LCD Soundsystem tune available whereas before I might have been mildly interested (or more likely, already received it on CDR or on e-mail from a kindly PR person).

And before you tell me those two songs were free anyway, I have actually taken a deep breath and bought a record: Florence And The Machine for a full £5 on download from Amazon. I have listened to that album far more than I would otherwise have done (unless I was directly reviewing it). The verdict: £5 seems about right, but when you own something rather than just get it for free - which is a point that stands from illegal downloading too - you do have a different, perhaps more intense relationship with it.

The tickets thing is the most interesting: I can now understand why safe-ish middle of the road bands sell so many tickets. Because I don't know whether I'm prepared to take a £10 punt on a a band I don't know much about, any more. But I do want to go and see Arctic Monkeys or Lisa Hannigan because I know they won't let me down.

And as for television series: in the past I would have got a couple of preview discs for the likes of Heroes. But actively waiting a week for an episode of Flash Forward, only to find it's like a bad version of House meets Grey's Anatomy, is very irritating.

My point? I think I prefer not having to know about what The Twang are doing because there might be a preview that needs writing. There's a lot less clutter in my house. And I haven't been to Vinyl Exchange for a while...