So there I am, just clicked onto a picture of JS Bach in
sunglasses so I can listen to one of the master’s rather nice pieces of music,
when this awful woman’s voice leaps at me through my headset. It isn’t a nice
voice. Some American accents I like; this one I don’t. In the course of a
single phrase it drops down the scale from something sounding almost feminine
to something resembling a frog in pain.
It’s extremely
irritating.
And so I reach for the Sound Off button and press it. And
then I wait for the Skip Ad button and press that. And then I have to go back
to the Sound Off button and press it again to get the sound back on. Only now
the rather nice piece of music has already started so I’ve missed the first few
notes – and that’s important, you know?
So it’s off to the Pause button, then slide the search bar
back to the start, and then press the Pause button again. Right: now I can
listen to the master’s work from the beginning as it’s supposed to be listened to.
Ironically, it occurs to me that this is an example of
Google getting it right for once. They’re obviously doing it to irritate the
life out of me so I’ll subscribe to the premium service. Nice one, Google, but
I’m not playing your sordid little game. I do understand that if I’m to have
free music I have to pay for it with ads because that’s the way the
money-obsessed free market world operates. There’s no such thing as a free
lunch, and there’s no such thing as free music. But isn’t it a bit like meeting
an ice cream vendor who says:
‘Hey kid. Would ya like a free ice cream? OK, but it has to
come with a spoonful of dog’s diarrhoea on the top. You can either lick it off
or scrape it off, and then eat the ice cream. Your choice. Am I kind, or am I
kind?’
Oh, and I forgot to mention: When the master’s nice piece of
music ends it goes straight into another ad for bloody Grammarly. The ice cream vendor didn’t tell you about the
spoonful of dog’s diarrhoea at the bottom of the cone, did he?
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