With the end of my four month free trial looming, I am once again returning to reflecting on the successes and failures of Project Crimson, that is, my scheme to phase out buying MP3s in favor of using Google’s paid music subscription service. The rationale behind this was that it costs more to buy a single CD each month than it does to pay for a one month subscription to download however much music I feel like.
I was a bit worried that I wouldn’t actually use this on a day to day basis. I was wrong. I immensely enjoy having music to listen to while going about other tasks, and I especially enjoy having the ability to pull from a vast database in order to create a soundtrack for a specific task, such as being able to create a playlist of running cadences for my exercise routine, or what have you.
I have somewhere in the ballpark of three hundred songs currently compiled in one form or another on my various devices among the various google music applications. To claim that each of these is a song that I would otherwise purchase, and therefore another dollar saved, is slightly duplicitous, as my standards for downloading a song for free are understandably lower than my standards for spending money directly on individual songs.
As I said during the opening of this project, my purchasing of music is heavily biased towards those times when I am about to travel, because that is when I will be unable to access free online streaming, and hence when I will need to have whatever music I want to have be downloaded. At the beginning of summer I was looking at a shortlist that included somewhere in the ballpark of $100 worth of music; hence why I was willing to bend my rules against spending money on “Internet luxuries” like a premium account.
And for the record: Google’s music subscription is undoubtedly a luxury. Despite how much I have come to enjoy it, is not like paying for broadband or a cell phone, which, although strictly speaking, remain optional, are made effectively compulsory because of the way society now organizes itself. It is a luxury, like cable, or Netflix, or a newspaper subscription. All nice things to have, but also things that can, in most circumstances, be axed from a tight budget without life-changing implications.
Perhaps this is why I have such trouble coming to terms with Google’s music subscription service, even though I unreservedly enjoy it and think it improves my day to day life. I have always been taught to be scrupulous about expenses, particularly luxuries. I learnt from a young age that money is a finite and scarce resource, and squandering it is not just irresponsible, but morally repugnant.
On the other hand, I have never hesitated to spend when I felt there was an articulable need, and I have relatively few qualms about spending a little extra for a better product after I have been convinced to buy in the first place. I am content to pay extra, for example, for a better fitting or looking pair of jeans provided that they serve my purpose. At restaurants, once I have decided to eat, I am seldom bothered by the relative costs of menu items unless it comes down to a tie on taste. I am able to accept that life has expenses, and that in these expenses there are inevitable tradeoffs that involve the choice between a better experience and a better price.
Which brings me to the price point. Ten dollars a month is I think an interesting price point. It is just enough that I would consider it non-negligible. Ten dollars a month translates to a coffee every two or three weeks depending on the specifics of the order, which is just often enough that I can see it in concrete terms as a regular habit. It also translates to a hundred and twenty a year, which is just enough that I feel uncomfortable carrying around the cash in person and would probably make an extra trip to the bank, if I didn’t spend it on a nice Lego set as a Christmas gift. So, although the expense certainly doesn’t break the bank, it is just large enough to be awkward.
There is one metric I haven’t mentioned that probably plays a larger role in determining both the price offered, and whether or not individuals choose to purchase Google’s music subscription: the monetary value of my time otherwise lost to advertising. This is supposed to be the core feature of their subscription model, and I’m sure is the thing that most informs their pricing. There is a number somewhere that says how many hours of video I watch or listen (but mostly for my purposes listen), and there is a number that says exactly how many advertisements I would have been subjected to during this time. I don’t know whether it is possible for me as a consumer to find this number, at least in the United States.
In any case, using some very wild ballpark guesses, I come up with somewhere around three hours a month. This does assume that every time I could get an advertisement, I do, and that it’s one of the ones that takes up time when I’m listening rather than merely popping up somewhere on my screen. Then again, Google seems to have gotten it in their server that I’m one of those demographics that advertisers want to target, so there are times when I end up seeing more ads than video. Ten dollars to reclaim three hours of good, usable, first-world time is a shockingly good deal. It’s better than minimum wage anywhere I’ve ever lived.
Except there’s that troublesome word “usable”. The economics of opportunity cost assume that I’d be doing, or want to be doing, something else that’s worth that ten dollars. Comparing the cost per hour to minimum wage only works if I have a job that makes at least minimum wage (I don’t) and that I’d be doing it during the time saved (I wouldn’t). Moreover it assumes that these tasks are mutually exclusive. This is true sometimes, but not always, depending on precisely how annoying and distracting the advertisement is. But for the most part, I am free to work with my hands, eyes, and most of my brain on another tab on my computer while advertisements play in the background. This is, after all, what I already do with music.
Since I have already gone over most of the arguments in favor of Google’s subscription service, I will also mention one more that is somewhat compelling in my case: supporting the creative economy. For the people who make the online content, including both music and videos, that my enjoyment depends on, the new subscription model provides a boost in both income and stability that is, while not massive, certainly noticeable. It adds money to the pot. And while there are far better ways of supporting individual creators (like Patreon, hint hint), knowing that my consumer spending is economically enabling and incentivizing the kind of free, accessible, and diverse content that I most enjoy.
After all of this wavering, my inclination is to probably just keep paying for my subscription. After all, I enjoy it. I enjoy having it. I don’t have a particularly pressing need for those ten dollars a month, and I can always cancel if that changes. I am still on the fence about this conclusion. But for the time being, I have come to the tentative conclusion to keep using it.