Since George Jones death earlier this year, a week hasn’t gone by without an email from Spotify telling me a new George Jone album is available for streaming. Just the other day, they made available Sings Bob Wills. Sings Bob Wills???? Does Steve Crawford know about this.
I am a huge Jones fan and I can get pretty obscure as well (George Jones Sings Hank Williams, anyone…)but even by my standards, The folks at Spotify are coming through. They recently added the extended version of George Jones And Friends.
All respect here, folks, since Spotify are not affiliated with any label, they can compile albums from all periods of his career, put them in one place, and leave you to sift through them. And they are adding albums all the time.
Bob Wills was a Western Swing pioneer best remembered for Patsy Cline’s countrypolitan take on “Faded Love” and his band the Texas Playboys. But beloved by country fans such as yours truly. Spotify have an excellent Bob Wills collection and yet again, among the many things they do well. Currently, they have around 100 Jones albums and they just add and add and add and it is so magical.
We see streaming as the death of music in a sense, the quality of the sound, the easy access making it less valuable, its ubiquity makes it irrelevant. I mean, if we don’t have to work for music, the way I spent a year and spent a fortune, getting every Patsy Cline song ever recorded, an obscure greatest hits for one song I didn’t own, back in 1989, made it matter much more than typing George Jones in a search engine does today.
But that’s in theory.
In practice it is all about the music and the ability to pull a hundred Jones albums with a click is heaven. It is a miracle of science. I am so happy and Spotify aren’t finished yet. Within five years they will be a major archival resource for George Jones recordings. And everyone else.
Any musician who has any sense of prosperity should immediately give Spotify access to their music. Prince should. It will live on forever there.