@Slj, The first thing I would suggest is you go and see a physio therapist (also called in the States a physical therapist). There are a lot of different reasons why you might be having back and shoulder trouble, and depending upon what the reason for the trouble is, getting a massage chair may or may not help, eg, if the problem is to do with joints or bones then massaging the muscles will just as you said be temporary relief at best.

Likewise, whether you need massage, or just extra support or pressure relief on your muscles will depend upon what the actual issue is and the reason for the pain, and again it might be an easier solution than you might think.

Hth.
Btw, my mum is a physio and my sister has a variety of problems due to her myotonic dystrophy so I sort of grew up with this sort of thing .

My problem with the things you're asking about is the ones I have seen go over the spine, and that's not only uncomfortable, that's somewhat dangerous. Being a massage therapist myself, I would definitely recommend going to see someone. I tell my clients it's like going to a mechanic for your car. You can go when things break down, but it will cost you a lot of time and money, or you could come on a semi-regular basis for a tune-up and oil change.

If that's not feasible because of money, I would suggest daily stretching, applying heat, and making sure to drink lots of water. Be mindful that if you're at a computer a lot of the time, you're posture is probably hunched forward with your head also forward. This contributes to pain between the shoulder blades and the neck because the pectoral muscles become tightened.

One stretch that can help with the pecs is standing in a doorframe. Let's say take your left arm, and reach up so your elbow is bent at a 90 degree angle, and grab the side of the doorframe. Step forward with your left foot and twist slightly to the right. Stretch only to the point where you feel the stretch, but not to the point of pain, and hold for thirty seconds.

As far as the neck goes, it really depends on where the pain is. You can sleep with a rolled up towel under your neck, you can do a couple of stretches from side-to-side, or you can try a different pillow.

I had a massage seat once. I forget the name of it but it wasn't a chair, it was a device to strap onto a chair. It has a cushion for you to sit on, that part didn't have any heat or massage, but the rest of it that ran up the length of your back and on your neck did. It was pretty nice. I didn't use it all the time but the problem is, one day it just quit working. Well, at first I thought maybe something tripped in there, and I opened the back up that had a zipper compartment to see if there was some kind of reset button or fuse or something, not finding anything, I looked it up on this forum and they said this is somewhat common and nothing really can be done. Well, I didn't buy it, it was a gift, and I didn't have the money to check into repairing it, so I just threw it out. I only really used it two dozen times over like 8 months.

It had the option for heat, and different patterns. It had these 4 rounded things and the main part of it would either start down low and go up, or the other way around, but it would stop and then the nub things would start moving in towards the center of your back, and out towards the shoulders. It would then move slowly up as this was going on. You could change the speed of it, the pattern, or press the demo button and it would run through a sequence. You could also stop the pattern and run it with the controller, so you could have the nubs moving, and then control the position of the main part of it, so up and down, so if you had a trouble spot, you could continue to move the thing up or down until you reached that, and then just stop pressing buttons and the massage nubs would just continue on that area until you changed it. It had different patterns for the nubs to move in, like short pulses or all the way, and stuff like that. You could manually set the position of the nubs too, then control the up and down movement, so it was either automatically controlled, or you could run all of its functions. Pressing the demo button was nice because you got like a full detail basically. but, you could focus in on an area by running it yourself. Also while there was only one demo you could use, if you set a patter and started it moving, it would continue like that if that makes sense. I liked the heating. One thing I would do for sort of general back ache is set the position of the nubs and start it going up and down automatically, that way it was hitting a majority of the spot, but the nubs were staying still.

I hope this is making sense. Think of it like having 2 axis controls over it. One is moving the main arm up and down the vertical shaft in the thing, and the other is moving the massage heads in and out, not like pressure wise, but laterally. They did sort of spring a bit so you could have light pressure, or lean in hard and get a more deep massage.

I was recently diagnosed with minor arthritis; it can happen to anyone regardless of how well you keep yourself maintained physically, because in all reality arthritis is a word used for any number of problems that concern painful inflmation of the joints.  More often than not, especially in young people, any damage arthritis causes can only be seen on x-ray, particularly if it's nothing overly debilitating.  You may have been exposed to lead without knowing, which may also be a contributor and one that you'll want to rule out immediately.  considering everything you've posted, however, I would suggest as Dark wisely pointed out in post 2, that you seek professional help at every corner, as the fix may be as simple as taking an antiinflammatory medication such as Naproxen which comes in many forms such as Aleve, EC-Naprosyn, Flanax and Naprelan depending on what you need it for but which all more or less do the same thing.  this may be coupled with a low grade or imitation opioid such as Ultram.  Interestingly enough, while it may seem like you'll always be dependant on the stuff you'll more than likely find yourself taking it a lot less than you think.  I find that the best time to take any pain and antiinflammatory medication is when I know I'm going to be out and about doing any number of things which under most circumstances would cause me pain.  Being a dad, I sincerely don't need pain; I'm always dealing in some way or another with 3 children.