Spotify has arrived in the US! Twitter was all abuzz when the announcement came, and lots of my friends jumped on board as soon as they could scrounge up invites. I was excited to sign up too, but then I procrastinated. And then procrastinated some more.

For one thing, I have a pretty big collection of music I’ve purchased over the years, and when you consider that, say, 500 years ago, many people on the planet had the opportunity to listen to music only a few times during their lives, maybe I should just be satisfied with what I already have. But it seems I’m not, because in addition to my own music collection, I use Pandora, and I subscribe to eMusic.

I like the “lean-back” experience of Pandora. I don’t have to make many decisions, and it often introduces me to great new music – which I then add to my wish list on eMusic.

That’s where the problem starts for me.

My eMusic wish list has become absurdly huge, and for $11.99 a month I can download about three albums (which is much better than iTunes or Amazon). The problem is, I’ve come to dread my “refresh” date, because I know I’ll be overwhelmed not only by what’s already in my wish list, but what’s available to me in the rest of the eMusic catalog. More than once I’ve left without downloading anything, telling myself I’ll come back when I feel more inspired or when I have more time to browse. More than once I’ve failed to come back, forfeiting my monthly fee (until recently, the policy was use it or lose it).

Based on my experience with eMusic, I hesitate to sign up for yet more music to choose from. But the problem is not just about choosing what to listen to; there’s also the problem of choosing which music service to sign up for.

There’s Spotify now, but there are also Spotify’s competitors – most notably Rdio and Grooveshark, but also Rhapsody, the old incumbent, Last.fm, and many more. I’ve read five or six blog posts comparing these services to each other, and honestly I still feel like I don’t know what the differences are, or what makes any one of them better than the others.

I think it boils down to this: People prefer Rdio’s UI (especially the mobile app). Spotify has a (slightly?) bigger selection (and better sharing features?). Grooveshark, as a crowdsourced service, suffers from inconsistent song naming and questionable licensing (the latter of which puts them at risk of being shut down). Also, they don’t have a mobile app. Last.fm and Rhapsody are fine services that just have the misfortune of being yesterday’s news.

This of course is a uniquely first-world problem, which lies in the psychological realm of what is lately being called “The Paradox of Choice.” Psychologist Barry Schwartz, author of the book bearing this title breaks it down into several sub-problems – two of which are relevant here:

• Choice and Happiness – Basically an over-abundance of choice leads to depression. One study showed, for example, that people at chocolate-tasting events enjoyed themselves much more when they were given a smaller selection of chocolates to choose from.
• Missed Opportunities - I know I’m not going to pay for eMusic, Spotify and Rdio, but I resist committing to any of them because I’m afraid of what I’ll forever miss from the others.

This all reminds me of the first time I saw one of those Internet-connected digital jukeboxes in a bar – the ones that will fetch almost any song you can think of. I was waiting my turn behind a guy who’d just put his money in it, and he was taking forever. Come on come on come on, I was saying in my head, until he finally finished making his picks. Then it was my turn, and I was completely flummoxed. Eventually I think I gave up.

There’s a bar in San Francisco called Lucky 13 that’s famous for its jukebox. It’s a wonderfully-curated selection of great punk music, plus a few all-time classics and a nod to pop. It’s easy to choose a great set in the Lucky 13 jukebox.

Carefully considered limits can be a good thing.

Here’s what I’m gonna do. I’m going to cancel my eMusic, because choosing three albums a month out of their massive catalog is the most acute problem in this mix. Then, I’m going to sign up for Rdio, not because I’m certain it’s better than Spotify, but because my friend Marisol works there.

It’s Friday, and here’s my video of the week… wait, let’s enhance it:

I have an idea. Every Friday I’ll post a video from my YouTube “Favorites.” It won’t necessarily be new, or timely, or funny, or profound. But I’ll do my best not to totally waste your time.

So, without further ado, did you know that George Lucas approached David Lynch about directing Return of the Jedi? This video is making the rounds today, unsurprisingly…

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For the last couple of months, I’ve been working for Kyte (more on that in a future post), and yesterday we got a nice shout out from backstage at the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, highlighting Kyte’s mobile streaming capabilities. Ever the evangelist, Arianna was pressing Jon Stewart on the question of blogging – specifically, why doesn’t Stewart blog?

His knee-jerk answer was that he has a television show – one that airs daily – that provides an ample outlet for his thoughts. “I don’t have any extra thoughts,” he says.

Of course Stewart’s answer doesn’t satisfy Arianna, and I’m sure she’s right in the sense that Stewart’s fans would eagerly devour all his extra thoughts, spontaneous backstage antics and the rest of the “dreck” (as he refers to it later on the show, with Arianna as his guest).

On the other hand, I understand how someone who writes all day every day for his show would have no energy left over for blogging.

At one point Stewart notices the member of Huffington’s crew using the Nokia N95 8GB to capture the exchange on video, and the conversation turns briefly to online video and “embedding.” Then web analytics, and when Arianna mentions Nielsen ratings, Jon Stewart recognizes commmon ground and asks, “are you sure you’re not TV?”

Here’s Arianna on the actual show:

I wish I could maintain this perspective all the time:

Thanks Louis CK

I can’t believe I’m writing about Britney Spears, but bear with me.

One would hope that Britney bottomed out somewhere around the head-shaving or the crotch-flashing. Now it seems the gossip mill’s coverage of Britney has finally bottomed out as well.

Yesterday I was in the checkout line at the Safeway – where I get most of my celebrity gossip – and I noticed the usual array of Britney shots on the covers of the usual magazines. But something was amiss.

The normally snarky Us Weekly had Britney’s face dominating the cover, but instead of the obligatory jab about her latest booze binge or child-endangerment episode, the headline simply read, “Living With Mental Illness.”

Adjacent to this on the shelf was Star magazine, whose cover story was something about how Britney and K-Fed are working to come up with a parenting agreement that will be good for their kids.

All of this on the heels of the recent South Park episode (“Britney’s New Look“) lampooning our insatiable appetite for tabloid news. Key quote, “I know watching celebrities go down can be fun. Me and my friends were just as guilty as all of you, but maybe, just maybe it’s time to let this one go.”

Amazingly, the tabloid press is listening, and it seems they’ve agreed to a ceasefire.

Of course, Craig Fergusson called for it a long time ago.

The other day, I was watching – for maybe the fiftieth time – this video by sigur rós for the song “Glósóli”

It’s a stunning piece of filmmaking, for a gorgeous song, but if not for YouTube, how would one find such a thing as this? MTV doesn’t show videos anymore, and a band like sigur rós probably wouldn’t get much play even if they did, so why does sigur rós bother? Who is it for?

Well, thanks to the wonderful internetz, MTV is completely obsolete. sigur rós offers up a huge collection of videos on their website for anyone to download. And there are many more on their ftp site.

I’ll be busy with these for a while.

When I was a kid, my parents controlled my TV diet, and while I was hardly deprived, I was never at risk of becoming a glutton. After school each day, I was allowed to 30 minutes of TV time – enough for one show. Our TV set was a 17″ black and white with the obligatory rabbit ears. It was old and sad, even for its day. It sat in the corner of my parents’ bedroom, probably because that was the only place where it could get decent reception, and I remember sitting on the corner of my parents’ bed, joyfully, for my daily dose.

There were, if I remember correctly, six channels: NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS and two UHF channels. I would rush home from school to watch Ultraman, Spider-Man, The Little Rascals or The Three Stooges (although my mom ultimately banned this last one, after I started reenacting the stooges’ antics on my younger sister).

Sometime in college I stopped watching TV. I think I just didn’t have time. I also didn’t have a TV. This abstinence phase continued after I moved to New York, then Arizona and well into my life here in the Bay Area. I won’t say I missed it, but this was probably due to not really knowing what I was missing. I will say that through those years, whenever I encountered “ambient” television – in many bars, for example – I was powerless to look away.

All this ended a few years ago when I signed up for DirecTV, with TiVo (before they switched to their own DVR). It was like going from a tricycle to a Ferrari. I had never been one to proselytize about the evils of the idiot box but still, for the first few months, I kept my conversion secret. I considered TV to be junk food for the mind, and while I never begrudged anyone their right to a tasty – if unhealthy – snack, it was also not something to be proud of.

Gradually though, I began to make exceptions for certain shows. Then more and more. Until finally I had to acknowledge that there are a whole lot of good things on TV. It’s not 57 channels and nothing on. It’s 500 channels, and trying to optimize my TV viewing to see as much of the good stuff as possible.