Everything as a Service

I've been a user of services since I was born. Strictly speaking, it was my parents who paid out for services for the family to use. We had electricity and a telephone. To begin with, we had monthly coal deliveries, but these were replaced with piped natural gas heating when I was about nine or ten. We also had television, although I am unsure whether the BBC Television License is strictly a service.

Now that I have my own family I'm the one providing services for them to use. The services that they use are very similar - and also very different. Currently, we have electricity and gas provided by one corporate entity. (Forgive me if I don't remember who - we change suppliers regularly.) We used to subscribe to cable television, but found that once SkyOne was removed from the picture (no pun intended!) there was little difference from FreeView.

Other services include:

- Mobile telephones (2)
- Broadband
- VOIP providers (2)
- Google mail and blogging
- Flickr photo storage and sharing

Some of these are subscription services and some are free.

I've subscribed to the Spotify premium service. At £9.99 a month, this is extremely good value. I will regularly spend this sort of money on a CD or download from iTunes. However, despite being a seasoned user of services I am still reticent to relinquish ownership of the music that I listen to. Some part of me wants to download a copy of each track I listen to using the service to somehow 'keep' it in case.

I suspect Spotify (and Naspter et al before it) are really only forerunners to a truly service driven world. If I'm to truly embrace the brave new world, perhaps I need to subscribe and enjoy the benefits. Meanwhile, I'll keep my iTunes library stuffed under the mattress...