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Welcome to the February issue
I don’t know about yours but my lockdown’s a cacophony. Right now, upstairs in her bedroom, the eldest, in enforced exile from Uni, is blasting out The Smiths’ The Queen Is Dead. Simultaneously the youngest, having just survived several tedious hours of online schooling, is cranking up some gloriously nasty Tyler, The Creator. In the room next door the boy, 17 and livid he can’t be out rehearsing with his new bandmates, is roaring along to Korn at an obscene volume. And, most heinous of all, the wife’s in the kitchen with Alexa and seemingly endless re-runs of The Archers.

Me? I’m trying to deny the disturbance and write this equipped with my noise-cancellers of choice in the fabulous company of Lana Del Rey.

Thank heavens, then, for the streaming services which, in a nano-second, can supply the soundtrack required to voice our changing emotions. There are six top digital platforms tested in the following pages to help you choose with whom to partner.

Personally, I’m Mr Spotify and it looks like staying that way until Uni, school and work resume and I’m left once more in peaceful solitude with only the occasional cat coughing up a fur ball to breach the beautiful, blessed silence.

Enjoy the issue.