This is my 20th year of freelancing, I think. Could be 21st. Maybe 22nd. It's funny how leaving regular employment was a mountain when it was ahead of me, but not even a hill in retrospect. Whenever I did it, though, I've now had at least two decades of working from home, plus very often fitting in with many different offices. A week-long project in a book publisher's building, one day a week at a magazine's office, running mentoring sessions in people's homes, workshops at festivals, and once doing a thing in an abbey. Call me stupid, but it's taken the new Apple Music service to make me realize that across every place I went, I had to adapt to different attitudes to music.
Some company's offices had the public regularly stopping by, so they didn't play music. Other places were newsrooms that could go live to air, so they tended to just have lots of TV monitors with the sound off. You'd expect if you worked in a radio station that you'd hear that AM/FM programming all day, but those were places that often had no music at all.
Magazines, for some reason, tended to have radios, and it's interesting how differently they handled it. Some had a daily vote among the staff for which station to listen to, others had a deal where one person was nominated to plug their iPod in and DJ the day away.
There was no wrong, and there was no right, way of handling music in other people's offices -- except that isn't true: there was one wrong way. I was once on a two-person team where my colleague would come in on the morning, pop on headphones, and write until the day was done, and he could take the headphones off again. I've no doubt he wrote more than I did, and I think he was the stronger writer, but that was on a magazine's editorial desk -- and you just do not cut everybody off like that. Music is a personal thing, and it helps some people concentrate: but when you're freelance, you fit in with the culture around you.
You do that because you want to keep working there, of course, but also because it's just more interesting. Everywhere is different, and moods change even within the same office, which is fascinatingly clear when you're only popping in there once a week. For two decades, I've been noticing how tastes change, and radios led to iPods led to streaming, but it's only now we've got Apple Music that I've discovered what I do when I'm working in my own office.
Enter Apple Music
Let me be clear that Apple Music hasn't gigantically changed what I do, it just made me aware of it. Specifically, having music on tap and available in any form, at any time, made me aware of the times that I didn't want it. The times when I apparently needed silence. I'm newsroom-trained, and I'm a radio man: I like noise and activity, it helps me work, and when I'm alone in my own office I'd have told you I need music, and I need it loud.
Sudden memory: this has just popped back in right now, right as I talk to you. When I went freelance all that time ago, one of my leaving presents from a magazine was a CD of Mahler's symphonies. On my first morning working for myself, I popped that CD on, but within moments the phone rang. So I turned down the volume, took the call -- and forgot to turn the volume back up. At the end of the day I was in pieces, completely miserable and depressed -- because Mahler's not known for his dance music, and I'd had it almost subliminally playing on a loop for eight or 10 hours.
Hang on, let me fire up Apple Music. There it is. I can't remember who played the version I got on CD, but I can tell you that the Chicago Symphony has got Mahler's 5th spot on. Every note right. Looks like I've got 11 minutes and 39 seconds to finish talking to you before I'm on the floor weeping. I'll type quicker.
Notice that I had to fire up Apple Music, that it wasn't already on. We're still in the trial phase with Apple Music, and you won't be startled to know that just about all
MacNN staff are continually trying it out but, I don't know about everyone else, I often have to stop. Partly it's the distraction of the For You playlists, which are uncannily good -- I wonder if I'll get classical music recommendations now? -- and you spend half your time looking to see what they've come up with today. The other half of your time is trying to track down that Introduction to Regina Spektor or Sheryl Crow iTunes Originals playlist they showed you yesterday.
More than that, though, more than the ability to lose a lot of time delving into the millions of tracks available, I'm also finally aware that sometimes my head fills up. A long time ago, I used to listen to BBC Radio 4 all day, speech-and-dramatic radio that I'd argue is the best in the world, and it would all be filed away in my noggin without my truly noticing, until I'd watch the evening news and realize I knew all about it. Either it's age, or it's a sign of how much more concentration my current work requires, but I can't do that any more.
I also can't always listen to music. When I'm writing scripts, I'll sometimes play fast rock and type to the rhythm of the music. Once when I was writing a
Doctor Who radio drama, I asked on Twitter for advice for music that was icy, and that someone born in the 1990s would be listening to.
Usually, though, the music is there as a barrier to the outside world, a way to protect my concentration by denying access from anything else. It's also almost always over headphones, because I start work at 5AM. I'm based at home, and I don't have neighbors with this idiotic work ethic, plus I do have a guilty conscience about how loud my iMac's startup chime is. So music is quite a physical barrier, it's an actual weight on my head, and there's something about this that means usually it helps me focus intently on the work in front of me.
It's just that sometimes my head fills up and I can't take anything else in. Have you ever turned down the car radio when you got near your destination? It's common to find that you can't handle the data coming in your ears while you're looking for street names and the right turning. Mind you, I also often try to turn up the volume on my passengers, so this may not be a universal rule.
I think that's the thing about music and freelancing. There isn't a universal rule, except that as a professional you adapt to the environment you're working in. When you're based at home, when there is no fitting in to do and you can be entirely yourself, there's no universal rule at all. Loud music, quiet music, no music: it's up to you, and more than ever, we have that choice. Whether you freelance or you get one single hour a week when you're working for yourself on your own projects, we can now choose to have just about any music we want.
It's an astonishing change since my one CD all those years ago. When you work from home, you do get people saying that you're lucky and no, you're not. There are good parts and bad, I wouldn't choose to go back full-time to one place ever again, but the work itself is not luck. I wanted this, and I worked for it, I want to keep it, and I have to work hard to do that. Yet the one thing that I think is lucky, that I think is a privilege for every one of us, is this tsunami of music available to us on demand. It's not even really demand, it's available to us on a whim.
It's just that we can also choose to switch it all off. If you need silence while you work, go for it. If you need 4/4 time and a loud blues riff and beat, it's here for you -- and yes, I've sat here at 5AM with headphones on and no music playing at all. Granted, it is always because I forgot to start iTunes, and was so into the work so quickly that I didn't notice, but when it happens, I tend to not notice for many, many hours.
That's it, you've decided me. I'm ready to call it: I am going to subscribe to Apple Music when the trial is over. I've hesitated because I've had days and days where I just couldn't take in any more music, but that ability to reach out for anything at any time, it's become part of my working life. And do you know what? I've got Mahler's 5th symphony on a loop now, and it isn't depressing me, it is invigorating. Soaring. Maybe 20 years ago I was more depressed about the fears of working from home than I realized, than I am today. Funny how it takes music to take you back to times and places.
-- William Gallagher (
@WGallagher)
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