Euros aren't what they used to be

Hello readers. I'm no longer in Crete, but not yet in Paris. I have a slight tan, several very irritating mosquito bites and very little money left thanks to the crippling pound-euro exchange rate. But all in all, it's turning out to be a wonderful week.

I thought I'd try a little experiment today. I'm not a music writer and I'm not ahead of the curve on bands, but I do take an interest in new music and I have a few helpful friends who point me in the direction of stuff I'll like. I've found Spotify to be a very useful tool in all this so I thought, using Spotify, I would put together a little playlist for you of songs I haven't been able to stop listening to over the past few weeks.

If you don't know what Spotify is, I highly recommend you download it (here)*. You just type in whatever you feel like listening to and it plays straight away, like listening to a CD - except you don't have to buy it, it's all free. You can't put it on your iPod, but that's the only drawback I can find. You can save whatever you like and build your own playlists and share them, as I have above. It's ingenious.

My little playlist is mostly electro pop stuff: Friendly Fires, La Roux, New Young Pony Club and so on. It includes one song I heard for the first time today, by Little Boots, who was recommended to me on Twitter by this lady. The main thing is that this kind of music makes me want to dance, which I see as a huge plus point. I hope some of you will have a listen, let me know if you like any of it, and maybe recommend your own current favourites or even post a link to your own Spotify playlist in the comments section. I hope you like this idea - to me it seems like a really nice use of technology - like us all sitting down together, somewhere in the blogosphere, and exchanging CD collections.



*Bugger. Just discovered Spotify is not available in America or Canada. So since not everyone can join in, here's the playlist in case you're interested:

Jump In The Pool - Friendly Fires
In For The Kill - La Roux
Paper Planes (DFA Remix) - M.I.A.
New York Girls - Morningwood
Fan - New Young Pony Club
Stuck On Repeat - Little Boots
Talking, Talking - New Young Pony Club
Lights Out (Tepr Emo Remix) - Santogold
White Diamonds - Friendly Fires
Suffragette Suffragette - Everything Everything