I don't quite grok music streaming services. Sure, I understand that I get all the music IN THE WORLD!!!111 while I'm current, which is impressive, but that only works if I accept that I'd get tired of $7-10 of music each month or am happy paying $7-10 a month for life. (Amazon's service runs $7 a month if you have Prime.) Fair enough; there are many albums I'd listen to but regret buying, but would I get $7-10 a month of ever proverbial "joy" from that music?

If your daily playlist churns less and you tend to buy for the long term, wouldn't it be better to own an album a month?

I've made this argument on this site before.

But there are really two issues, aren't there?

1. How to most affordably pay for a license to your music, subscription or "own", and...
2. How to access it when you want to listen.

Spotify has apps for every platform. Apple Music famously even has an Android app. My mp3 files have... well, no great options for my phone or work computers.

How do I get ubiquitous access to music files that I own?

I used to use Amazon Music, which gives Prime users like me access to Amazon Prime Music streaming (the "free" subscription) and all the mp3 tracks you've purchased from Amazon, which lets you get around your favorites that aren't in the Prime Music library by... buying them. Seems fair, but you see the issues -- One, I have to buy all my music from Amazon going forward. Two, I can no longer add my own music files I had pre-Amazon. (I actually have 100 grandfathered tracks from when Amazon let you upload music, but that only goes so far.)

I've also tried Foobar 2000 on iOS (direct app store link), which, wacky dated UI aside, works well, but requires that you have your files on the phone, iPod-style, which Apple makes prohibitively expensive. Thanks, Mr. Cook. Can I have an SD slot, please?

Now, after a few failed experiments, I use Astiga, essentially a web-based third-party interface to music files you have in cloud storage. It's a competent app. It supports playlists, and gives you the normal Albums, Artists, Genres, and Songs lists. And it doesn't downsample afaict.

There are some foibles. My least favorite is that it sometimes splits albums into two for... I don't know. Small changes in id3 information? Different file types? (I have some AAC and mp3 mixes, I'm afraid.) But ultimately quote competent.

For sources, it supports, at a minimum...

• pCloud
• Backblaze
• Dropbox
• FTP
• Google Drive
• OneDrive
• Amazon S3
• SFTP
• WebDAV

I've considered keeping a box running at home and SFTPing into it, but decided against. Instead, I've opened a pCloud account and gotten a little less than 10 gigs for free, I believe. With the exception that this isn't nearly enough space, it's worked great. I've added a throw-away OneDrive account too to get twice the songs, but OneDrive often requires a new login to keep Astiga's access current. pCloud has not. pCloud wins by about a mile.

There's even an official Astiga Android app. There are also serviceable, though not great, pCloud apps for iOS and Android. Right now, I use CloudBeats on my phone. YMMV.

Admittedly, I do use a throw-away email address and there's ­nothing­ on my pCloud other than music. I trust most online services and these apps about as far as I can throw them. I really wish I could give read-only access to specific folders in OneDrive, but for some reason what's there now doesn't quite suit.

So Astiga and pCloud wins -- except for the lack of space. I listen to significantly more than 20 gigs of music regularly.

pCloud has a paid tier of 500 gigs for $175 lifetime or 2 TB for $350, on sale for Black Friday for $122.50 and $245. On its face, this seems ludicrous. $123 to host files I own? Super. $123 is a lot of music (the "opportunity cost" in this equation), maybe 10-12 albums on Amazon (my cloud "alternative"), but it's also a great price for 500 gigs of online storage with plenty of throughput.

I think I'm finally going to bite on the 500 gig plan. Again, I don't think I'd put anything particularly sensitive on pCloud, but I would load it up with music. It looks like I have just under 100 gigs of tracks on my "real" OneDrive account now, so that's lots of room to grow. And it would mean I could stop ripping at 256 and go full FLAC if I wanted, for instance.

Looks like I'm back in the "Rip. Mix. Burn. Cloudify. Stream." crowd.

Labels: amazon music, Apple Music, cloud, music, pCloud, spotify

TL;DR: Gimme the Zeppelin playlist

If you're an Amazon Music Prime subscriber, but not Spotify, Apple Music, or Amazon Music Unlimited, let me introduce you to Zeppelin Remasters - (Free) Prime Covers, the best Zeppelin fix Prime members can stream for free.

Update: Whoops. Zeppelin hit Amazon Prime Music just a few weeks after I wrote this. You're welcome. You know I forced their hand. ;^)

Finding Zeppelin on Amazon Music Prime

If you've got Amazon Music Prime, you'll know you've got a pretty nice deal. You can stream an impressive selection of songs without paying more than you already pay for Amazon shipping, and the app works well, seamlessly combining the Prime streaming selection with albums you've AutoRipped and mp3s you've purchased from Amazon.

But there are downsides. Kind of like when Metallica and Tool weren't on any streaming platform and you had to load ripped mp3s for those bands to your phone "the old way", the Music Prime selection is lacking in certain specific ways.

And the worst hole in the Music Prime donut? There's no Led Zeppelin on Amazon Music Prime. (Well, almost none. There's one exception that proves the rule. But more on that later.)

Why is there no Zeppelin on Prime? Dunno. Amazon Music is pretty low on the artist payouts, but I can't find anywhere suggesting Prime streaming royalties are different than Amazon Unlimited's, so you'd almost think you'd rather have all of the Prime streams than only the Unlimited's, at least for older music that's harder to "discover". Maybe the band's hoping you subscribe to a service that pays higher royalties like Apple, Spotify, Tidal, or, surprisingly (in that I see this name at all and that they pay like they do), the top royalty rate payer, Napster.

Or maybe they wish you'd just buy the albums, since you could just buy the mp3s for Zeppelin on Amazon and, poof, problem solved. You're able to stream 'em anywhere you have the Amazon Music app. Larkin Poe went off of Amazon Music Prime, and now I've shelled out for three of theirs. But that's more of a reason to, as Larkin Poe did, put songs on and take them back off -- the first hit is free, but then you have to pay to satisfy your fix. Wash, rinse, repeat. Kinda like Disney's vault, in a sense. Not having a back catalog on Prime leaves money on the table.

Maybe Amazon doesn't want to have Zeppelin on Prime so they don't have to pay all those royalties? I mean, Prime Music doesn't make money directly. It only pays out. Hrm. :thinking: Still, you think they'd revolve like the Stones or Beatles do. (And the Stones, at least, do. I'm always chasing what albums are active on Prime. I usually only listen to them on my phone now, where I own tracks.)

Regardless, I'd already paid for my Led Zeppelin songs a looooong time ago and I'm morally opposed to paying again for some reason. 

What should I do if I want to listen to a little Zeppelin? More importantly, what should you do if you need a Zeppelin hit?

Can we make a good Zeppelin Covers playlist?

Let's cut to the chase: I think we can create a good Zeppelin covers playlist. Because I did.

There are actually a fair number of Zeppelin covers on Amazon Music Prime. Some of them are good enough that you might enjoy listening to them.

I decided to recreate my first exposure to Led Zeppelin, a three-disc collection Columbia House slammed me with in the early 90s, the Led Zeppelin Remasters.

I was mad when I got them ("You're charging me for three CDs I didn't order, and only two have music?!") and cancelled my membership in Columbia House, as, if I counted the Remasters as two discs, I was finally through my required purchases.

If this slamming doesn't ring any bells, let's reminisce with that Slate article author...

But the most devious part of this hustle—the reason Columbia House and BMG deigned to call themselves “clubs”—is that each month they’d send you a CD you hadn’t asked for, unless you mailed them back a card within 10 days saying you didn’t want the CD, which, let’s face it, requires some foresight and organization that is well outside the wheelhouse of an average middle schooler.

(Or high schooler. Or older. But it actually wasn't that bad. You could even send the CDs back after they sent them to you. I'd done it at least twice by the time the Remasters showed up. But the multi-disc slam seemed patently unfair. Straw, meet camel's back.)

But then, years later, I finally listened to the Zeppelin CDs. Hello!

Playlist rules/priorities:

Grade A: Actual Led Zeppelin Tracks (1 track 1 track again)

I don't know how, but one real Led Zeppelin track snuck into the Amazon Music Prime free streaming tier. I'm pretty sure it's a mistake. If you look at the album in the Amazon store, it's the only track that's Prime eligible, and it's also the most popular track from the album too, as you might expect.

I'm not going to rat it out in case it is a mistake, but of course songs by Led Zeppelin make a playlist with "the most Zeppelin-like songs on Prime".

1. Led Zeppelin. One song. Maybe you've heard of them.

Update: Painfully, Amazon got wise. D'yer Maker is gone.

Another update: It's free again. As are lots more Zeppelin tracks.

Grade B: Covers by bands that include Jimmy Page (4)

This is limited to two options, but they're pretty good options:

1. The Yardbirds (1)
   • Here we have the original an earlier version of Dazed and Confused (no, really!) by Page's earlier band, a band that also includes, get this, Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck.
2. Jimmy Page & the Black Crowes (3)
   • These covers are wonderful. Page's back went out during the tour, cutting it short, but the tracks in the collection they released are hard jams. If I was bold, I'd say the Crowes + Page are better than Zeppelin on a few tracks, but I'm letting my Crowes bias get the best of me.

Grade C: Decent covers by bands without Jimmy Page (8)

This was tough. There are some bands you've heard of, like Heart, Gov't Mule, and Phish, that cover a few tracks, but... even though some are pretty good, they really don't feel like Zeppelin. There are also some interesting, even good, reinterpretations of Zeppelin that I would've liked to have included, like tracks from SOAK and Shel, that I enjoyed and tried in the list, but ultimately took out if only to keep those looking for a conventional Zep fix from leaving too soon.

Some of these kinda stink, but think of it less as a Zeppelin cover than some almost-made-it-also-rans using each track as a sort of audition for some real work and they're over-doing it like mad on these quick gigs a friend of a friend of a friend got for them.

 For instance:

In a career that spans nearly 40 years and includes over 60 album credits, Joe Lynn Turner remains one of rock and roll's most distinctive, soulful and expressive vocalists. 

Really? But sure enough, if you listen closely to his track, you can tell that's exactly what he's trying to prove -- at some expense for the track as a whole. But also each guitarist and drummer and... Every one is playing not as a team but for themselves. Each track is another bizarre rendition of "Who Isn't Who in LA" at the fringes of rock and roll -- and they're not all half bad.

1. Joe Lynn Turner
2. Smokestack
   • There's a pretty neat blues history on Since I've Been Lovin' You
3. Voidoid
   • Immigrant Song from the Thor soundtrack (Vahalla, after all). A number of covers of this one.
4. Dweezil Zappa
5. Glenn Hughes
6. Great White (2)
7. The Lovemongers (Heart's side gig)
8. Phil Lewis
   

Grade D: Zeppelin Cover Bands (9 now 8 now 9 again)

By the time I was done, some names kept coming back up. Over and over again. Search for a song name, boom, "Hello, usual suspects!"

These bands are definitely trying to sound like Zeppelin, but often just plain miss the mark. I know they want to sound like Zeppelin, but it's like that scene from The Social Network: "If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you'd have invented Facebook." Some of the covers are, unfortunately, Winklevossed. There's a reason cover bands often get a bad rap. That said, the tracks I've included seem pretty good to me.

That's not to say every inclusion is 100% merit-based. I did try to mix things up. If LA Thunder was already in the list, I made sure they didn't go back-to-back if I could help it. And that's why Letz Zep is there for Trampled Under Foot, which is actually a pretty annoying cover. Unf. it's the least annoying of Letz Zep's works. Nothing else they've got on Amazon was close to palatable. /shrug

Though Led ZepAgain snuck in four tracks, which, honestly, surprised me when I started counting. Clever bastards. But it turns out even Jimmy Page reportedly likes Led ZepAgain. 

But as LA Weekly says, "the vast majority of the acts are not very good — a reality tribute artists and promoters readily admit to"...

1. Zepparella (1)
2. Lez Zeppelin (1)
   • The above two are both all-female cover bands!
3. Led ZepAgain (4 now 5 now 4 again)
4. Letz Zep (1)
5. LA Thunder (2)

Grade E: Any port in a storm (3)

And then there were a few songs where I couldn't find anything in Grades A through D. I took anything I could find.

And for one track, In the Evening, I couldn't find a single cover on Prime.* In its place, I put in a few songs at the end that weren't on Remasters (Lita Ford doing The Lemon Song and Page & the Crowes covering What Is and What Should Never Be). Okay, I also cheated and recently moved What Is to the first spot, breaking the whole Remasters theme because, well, the first few songs weren't high quality enough for you to stick around. With Jimmy and the Crowes first, I think you'll be more likely to find the patience to stick it out.

* Okay, now that Zeppelin's on Amazon Prime Music, I stole the real In the Evening and put it on the list too.

I also snuck in one track I really wanted to include in the main list but didn't because it wasn't quite Zeppelin enough: Dolly Parton's incredibly interesting Stairway to Heaven.

But for the Grade E sources, it's one track a piece.

1. The Backing Tracks
   • This "band's" tracks are meant to help you learn to play drums, but this one is also a good pretty instrumental version of Achilles' Last Stand.
2. Cool & Classy
   • Whatever that is. Good instrumental of The Rain Song. Works, I think.
3. Chords of Chaos
   • Whatever that is, but their Black Dog was just good enough to include them in the mix instead of yet another Grade D selection. Keep it mixed up, man.
   • I mean, come on. The name of the album is Les meilleures chansons de Rock des temps, which my high school French tells me mean "The best rock songs OF THE TIMES" or something. Now I wonder if whoever named it speaks French.

And there you go. Led Zeppelin on Amazon Music Prime. It's a good collection. Remembering beggars can't be chosers, I'm pleasantly surprised.

Enjoy.

If you've got a comment about what I should've included, you can comment on the single-post, permalinked version of this post.

Labels: amazon, music, Other Stuff

Ah, what to do about music. I like music. I've joked that different companies I've worked for owe The Black Crowes or The Sounds or Metric or Halestorm -- or, in extreme periods of lethargy, Rob Zombie -- for 30% of my productivity while I worked there. I listen to music while working more often than not, and there's no perceivable detraction from my ability to be "in the zone". Music has been only a positive wrt productivity.

In other words, I consume music. Lots of music. Often lots of the same music. I have a "morning" playlist that I play through at least partially a quarter to a third of my working days.

Is a subscription right for me?

The Selfish Caveat

So look, there are lots of reasons not to carry a subscription. One is that the people who make the music don't seem to get as much of the dough from streaming as an outright purchase. That's bad.

You might also like supporting your local record store so that these experts can continue giving you good recommendations. Or maybe you just like 'em as people. Or maybe you really enjoy perusing physical artifacts. It's a particularly relaxing experience for some. Buying music allows your local store and employees to keep some cash too.

But I'm going to be really selfish below, ignoring these "altruistic" sorts of bonuses, for now.

Argument for buying your music

The argument against subscription is my "morning playlist" argument. If the music you listen to doesn't churn a ton, why not buy?

If you're spending less than or equal to a monthly subscription price on new music, it's a no-brainer.

If you buy your music, you're buying an asset... of sorts. Maybe you can't technically share it with anyone, but you have a never-ending license to listen to your music, and if you ever did stop your monthly buying, you still have your entire collection of favorite tunes.

Having a perpetual license for music without any ongoing fee is very good!

Argument for renting/subscribing

But what if you're buying is equal to or greater than a monthly unlimited music subscription every month? Now we've got an issue. If you're spending that much every month and you're absolutely sure you won't stop buying music for your entire life, well, a subscription makes sense.

There are, of course, risks.

What if your streaming service dies off?

Well, as long as any service is in business, you're fine. As long as both services are unlimited and the catalogs are essentially the same, all you really stand to lose are playlists, etc. That stinks, but you don't lose the music.

I guess at some point music subscriptions could go the way of the 8-track. It's a real possibility. That's a Worst Case for this choice, of course. Consider it.

What if the price goes up?

I don't find this super likely. If the services are $10 a month now and you're spending $15 a month on music, I bet both numbers go up at give or take the same rate. But this could happen. Spotify and Apple and friends could go to $35 a month in a cash-grab after feeling they'd killed off music purchases. It's a risk, though I wonder how likely.

What if I stop listening to new music when I'm old?

That's possible, and, like term life insurance, not whole, you don't get that subscription money back. It's burnt. You're not building an asset. You have to be into the subscription whole hog, for life, or you're potentially losing money.

But the counterargument is that you got to listen to so much more music than you would've if you'd purchased a small subset, your life was better for it. ;^) I mean, you have a copy of REM's Automatic for the People, but when's the last time you listened to it? (It's not that bad. Maybe you should. But you get the point.) If you're not going to listen to your old music and a subscription helps you discover new music with no serious opportunity cost (the opportunity cost being REM mp3s gathering dust bits on your cloud drive somewhere), well, who wins? (The subscriber, that's who. Probably.)

Winner?

Oh, okay. Fine. I still buy music. But I cheat. I have Amazon Prime, and hog the single license to stream from there when I'm working, using it to discover new music. This has also suckered me into buying lots of my digital music from Amazon, as their player mixes purchases in well with their subscription service in the player, meaning I don't have any (many?) files on my work box, but can still access playlists via streaming. And I use Spotify with ads to listen to new music to see if I like a new album before buying if the music isn't on Prime.

But I'm probably getting close to wanting to buy three or four albums a month, and, at some point, maybe it's worth trading one album purchase a month to also have adless streaming. (The ads do kill my productivity a bit. And they're annoying.) Though, currently, knowing I have to stay under $10/month to easily justify purchases is probably putting a ceiling on those purchases... that may or may not total a little above $10 a month. I'm also a sucker for releases on cassette for some reason. Ah Bandcamp. You're killing me.

So trick question, I guess. The answer isn't buy or rent for me, it's buy and rent and listen to ads.

But this Circle K ad during a Green Leaf Rustlers album is making me reconsider.

Labels: Apple Music, hats of money, music, spotify

From recode.net:

The big labels provide Spotify with the music that makes up 87 percent of the company’s streams. Spotify provides the labels with billions in revenue, which is starting to replace the vanishing money the labels used to make from CD sales and digital downloads.*

But Spotify’s plans for the future do involve changing that relationship in the long run.

The idea, according to people familiar with the company’s plans, isn’t to cut out the big music labels, or compete directly with them by signing acts to recording deals.

Spotify does imagine, however, that over time, a growing tier of music acts, or small independent labels, won’t use the big labels for distribution. Instead they’ll work directly with the streaming service.

(Let's take a second to note that that last sentence really does say, "Compete directly with them by signing acts to recording streaming deals." Though obviously what they're trying to avoid is what recode mentions further down... "If Spotify goes after our big acts, we’ll go nuclear. Good luck running a streaming service without our songs — not just the new ones, but our old catalog, which accounts for the majority of our streams." And there's the anachronism that explains why we have striated music services today.)

I'm waaaay late to the bandcamp party, but I finally mainlined it a bit a few weeks ago. It's not knock-down, drag-out great music, but there's a lot to discover in there. The search interface is exceptionally limiting, for some reason, not allowing complete freedom to pick from what's a pretty nice set of music types, but once you invest some time, you'll pull out a few good bands, seemingly whatever your preference.

And if Spotify could be the music recommendation service I wish Apple Music was, it'd be on to something.

This really is a Reese's Cup commercial. All the parts are out there, and working well. More important than bandcamp is what it represents: indie music has the tools to release high-quality music to the web with hundreds of dollars worth of gear. No longer do they need radio and labels. And there are services that do a good job with music discovery.

Somebody just needs to get that last barrier to entry -- having "all the musics" on the same competent discovery service -- out of the way so that they can move on to Step 3. Profit.

Labels: Apple Music, bandcamp, business, music, spolsky, spotify

From mjtsai.com:

I’m not quite sure whether iTunes LP was a bad idea or simply one that neither Apple (aside from Steve Jobs?) nor the music producers actually had much interest in. 

I think this signals less "whether iTunes LP was a bad idea" (though the skeuomorphism Jobs loved is slowly dying our from the `OSes) than "someone's paying attention to scaling down iTunes". I think they're slowly moving towards killing music sales, no matter what Sellers at AWT thinks. ;^D

I tried to think of why this is happening now, and believe it falls in with a general deprecation of non-Apple Music (qua the streaming service) features in iTunes. Here are a few data points...

• Cesium's author points out that playing music on your own phone is increasingly difficult via Apple Music in iOS 11.
  • That is, where Apple Music API used to be an easy way to access files and streams, it's now neither. A change is coming.
• HomePod is an obvious push towards subscriptions.
  • The only music you can play that doesn't require at least an Apple Match subscription is stuff you bought directly from Apple.
  • In a sense, those files are delivered via streaming too... the only twist is that you sometimes save the bytes.
• This useless Android Apple Music app, which can't even play what you've purchased from Apple. It's only streaming.
• As Michael Tsai remarked recently (and I mighta mentioned), Amazon recently ended its song hosting.
• Microsoft stopped its streaming service and replaced it with Spotify.
• And Microsoft stopped selling online music completely.

The writing's on the wall. Heck, Apple Music on iTunes has a whole second UI...

After cashing in a $100 for $85 Apple Music gift card (<<< I'm not an affiliate, but it looks like it was legit), iTunes asked me if I'd like to put that towards an Apple Music subscription.

No, no I wouldn't. But I did drop into the Apple Music UI side of iTunes, which is obviously different than the normal iTunes Music Store. I bet there's some crossover with the Android app. After looking around the posh store of which I wasn't a member, I slunk out, knowing there's a new side to iTunes I don't get to experience.

Follow the money

I don't blame Apple, much. Streaming revenue continues to grow like mad, and 36 million x $100 or so is lots more than $600 million in digital sales.

The number will continue going lower. And subtract from that number the cost to support the mammoth mess that is iTunes and the iTunes Music Store. Microsoft's Groove is a small-scale test of the economics of supporting music sales. There are better places to spend that development time.

The Apple Music side of iTunes will eat the iTunes Music Store. We're getting rid of the cruft of the Store now. In a year or two, the iTMS will be a clear second fiddle to Music. Then we'll get a warning, like I did on Groove, to download all my purchases by a certain date, or they'll be unavailable.

And finally, acceptance

After years of hang-wringing, I find that by now I don't really mind that online track sales is dying. I have a good collection.

And I'm lucky enough to have a local record store. Here's what they wrote to all of their newsletter subscribers when Best Buy said it was closing down CD sales...

From Monster Music:

The whole point of all of this isn't to slam Best Buy...  But what invariably happens when the media reports an item like this is that the general public totally misconstrues what's going on.

 

What's going on, as it affects you, is... well, not much.

 

Except for this - not only are we going to continue to sell CDs, we're actually adding to our CD inventory.

I don't see vinyl getting less hipster. And, as they say later in their letter, "Three, there will be a CD resurgence one day, you know there will. It might not be as drastic and fantastic as the vinyl resurgence, but I'll bet it'll be stronger than the cassette revival." That's probably a good call too.

After the iTunes Music Store closes its doors, I'll still have music to buy. And rip. And mix. And burn.

Labels: Apple Music, business, iTunes, music, obsolescence, subscriptions, vinyl

I realize I'm old, but I still haven't swapped from buying music to streaming all of it.

Seems like folks like me are being underserved. It's not that we don't like to buy music. In many cases, it's the opposite. I buy more albums & tracks each year than I'd like to count.

Why don't any of these music cloud services provide good, ad-free recommendation services for music buyers, not renters, like me? They're sitting on millions of people's listening habits. Why not convince me to buy more with spot-on suggestions?

For Apple, Spotify paid, and Amazon Unlimited, I've yet to find that I need to pay $10 a month or so to listen to everything. That's about ten new albums a year plus a few guerilla tracks, which seems enough, so far.

These are closed ecosystems. I can't easily get just the recommendations. I hear Spotify has great recommendation playlists, but ads are too annoying to listen to when I use my music (and I do, mostly to give myself a little more energy when coding). I'm not going to pay for recommendations if I don't know they'll be pretty good, and I'm not excited about listening to music with ads. I'd rather buy the good stuff. Nor do I want to pay so much for recommendations that I can't afford to own anything new. I'm not a fan of subscriptions in general... Enjoying music shouldn't be a capital addiction, just an emotional one.

And why don't I trust recommendations? I used & enjoyed Pandora for a while, and it was initially great for giving me suggestions for new music, but once good suggestions ran dry (and they did dry up -- at first the suggestions were great, but then they became repetitive and/or reaches that didn't quite fit), the honeymoon, as they say, was over.

Ads plus the same rotation of songs, plus a few new misses when I sign back in every few months? No thanks. If they were as good as they once were, I'd consider $5 a month for "personalized radio with no ads". But I'm afraid that because they're doing this with "curation" (human and algorithmic) rather than actual listeners' habits, the recommendations simply aren't as good as they should be.

Here's an easy example: For the most part, I like hard rock with female front'men. Why do they give me so many whiny dudes? NO WHINY DUDES, PANDORA, KK? THX. Apparently the music genome has no concept of XX.

Three services I actually use

Amazon Prime hits a sweet spot. In one app, I can listen to all of my own music that I've uploaded, and its catalog is just big enough and its recommendations are just good enough for me to occasionally discover new artists without ads when my ear starts wanting to wander. This is sort of how the radio used to work, but adless.

(It's worth mentioning that I listened to a lot of cassettes when I started driving. I don't like ads. And that means I've known a few albums -- Knowledge is Power, Pump, Aftermath -- really well for decades.)

Occasionally, I hear of something new that's not on Prime or an artist that I've "discovered" on Prime doesn't have their entire discography there, and that's where Spotify's free tier pops in.

Yesterday, I bumped into Samantha Fish on Prime (a follow-on from listening to Halestorm, I think), but the most recent record, Chills and Fever, that was on Prime, wasn't nearly as good as Black Wind Howlin' from a few years back, at least not for a Halestorm fan.

A little sleuthing later determined that she has two albums from last year, and that the Chills & Fever one was a little experimental. Belle of the West is a little more like her earlier stuff.

Spotify lets me take a quick listen with minimal ads to see if this I'm buying a track or two or the whole CD.

And where did I do this research? The last of the three services I use: YouTube. I really thought this one was "just for the kids", but, newsflash, it's MTV. This is not new, no matter what the internets are telling you.

I hate the ads (hello Grammarly and Wix. I code native javascript, dangit, and host my own servers! Stop advertising to me!), but I really enjoy the videos. I realize this dates me again, but I could deal with an adless YouTube streaming related music videos in the background while I worked, but I'd need a third or fourth monitor (depending on the office) to host it. ;^)

And YouTube's related videos list is a pretty good place for discovery too.

What can Apple learn?

As a stockholder, this pains me a little. Probably the coolest picture of Steve Jobs is the one when he's sitting, cross-legged on the floor, at home, with his albums, hifi on the floor behind him, fancy-pants light over his head, drinking tea. Minimalist. Relaxed. Big honkin' speakers. Good sound. Good albums.

^{(image from geeksandbeats.com)}

You know what's most important to folks listening to music? Good music. Knowing which albums to buy. Why do I use Amazon streaming? Because it's all of my music plus more, and that more is curated for me in a way that's not annoying to access.

But, like Jobs, at least in 2007, said, [some] folks prefer to own music.

Why can't folks who are stuck in 2007 get good recommendations from Apple Music? Why can't I play even the stuff I've purchased from Apple on the Android Apple Music app? Why doesn't Apple try to sell and sell me good music? Why does Apple Music feel like a closed system, and the iTunes Music Store feel a little like Tower a month or two before they started discounting for clearance?

Good recommendations are out there. Apple has them. Why can't I hear the recommendations without ads or a monthly access charge?

And if you hooked me on enough recommendations, enough that it'd far exceed my album budget to keep up? I wonder what I might finally do...

That's all.

Aside: Why do gal blues guitarists feel the need to dress so, um, not relaxed? It's not everyone, but let's just say B.B. King didn't wear an analogous wardrobe. It's a little embarrassing when I'm recommendation-rabbit-holing and pop up some of these NSFH[ome] album covers.

The worst part for me is that it's not even clear self-aware [and therefore often self-]exploitation like, say, Maria Brink in In This Moment, which is easier to ignore, because you know she's in on the game: This is not her. This is simply and obviously a brand. (That said, they made their best album before the brand went, well, over the edge with "branding".)

I was going to include some samples, but if I pixelate them at the same time, it kinda kills the point. Maybe folks are more comfortable making images with less on, which is fine, natch, but, eg, Ana Popovic doesn't seem to want to wear anything while she poses for covers. I know, I know, it's anti-feminist and Puritanical to suggest someone should put clothes on, but here's one vote to please wear whatever makes you most comfortable when you jam, and slap that on the cover -- if you want yourself on the cover.

I'm buying the music, not your picture. Like, literally, if streaming has done nothing else, it's given us the ability to hear everything we're considering buying. I'm just buying the music.

Painfully, I've ironically spoken too soon.

Labels: algos, apple, Apple Music, iTunes, music, pandora, spotify

I like to listen to artists by album, and I like to pick which album to start from. No luck in iOS Music-land. From macrumors.com:

OMG Seriously! Far out, Apple have done bad! 

Thanks for that though 

That was not particularly discoverable.

But it gets worse...

That certainly works, but the albums are still sorted in reverse chronological order (and have been since iOS 7).

So bad. Big league! This has driven me crazy for years. You'd think Apple could get the iPod part right by now.

I tried Cesium. Something eventually talked me out of it... I think, in addition to the fact that Siri only uses Music, that I recall a few nasty crashes.

Doesn't seem like a music app would be this difficult to get right. There were lots of decent ones on OS 9-, for instance.

Labels: apple fail, ios, iTunes, music

I've been listening to and reading from a number of reviews about the Apple AirPods, and they all seem pretty similar. The things are very well made, and do exactly what they're supposed to do.

But there are three recurring problems:

1. The first everyone admits is a problem: There aren't good controls. Siri isn't a good enough stand-in for the lost volume and skip buttons.
2. It seems like many are trying to talk themselves out of the second problem's mattering: Battery life could be better. That dental floss case is neat, but it's a hack at best. I realize AirPods are insanely small. That's cool, but battery life still stinks.
3. The third is that, though AirPods apparently fall out of your ear less than the old wired EarPods, they do fall out: And, often elided, when they do fall out, BAM, they're on the ground.

From joecieplinski.com:

I have dropped the buds a few times (one onto a subway platform, which was frightening, to say the least)...

Eeeeew. That's gross. You're putting it into your ear, man. ;^)

It seems there's a pretty obvious answer. From 9to5mac.com:

You’ll be happy to know that the Beats Solo 3 features on board controls for music playback, volume, and Siri invocation. The left ear cup features all of the needed controls, along with a microphone for sending commands to Siri.

Guess what else?

Then there’s the 40 hours of battery life, 3 hours of battery life from a 5 minute charge, and that glorious long range connectivity. Lastly, the on board music and volume controls, Siri controls, and the ability to use these headphones like normal wired headphones is a definite win.

About the only negatives I've heard about the Solo3 is that 1.) They're big, and 2.) They're too bassy.

I like 1.). Big is good. I usually carry a pair of Hesh 2's, which I know most think are pretty crappy, but they're a lot better than what I used to tote around. They're about the same size as the Solo3. I put them into my bag's handle when I'm using the shoulder strap and take off.

The second, that the Solo3 is too bassy, makes me suspicious folks are trying to be audiophiles. I mean, it depends on the music you want to listen to, of course, but I bet there are a fair number of folk who are listening to pretty bass-friendly tracks via "neutral" headphones, and suffering for it.

Oh yeah, and though the Solo3 is $300 from Apple, guess what? Amazon has 'em for $220. That's $60 more than AirPods, but we're getting close.

In fact I bet the biggest reason why you should prefer AirPods is that the fancy mics are head and shoulders above the one on the Solo3. But I haven't heard that many laud the mic. Maybe we're not making that many calls with headphones in?

In any event, I ran down to the Apple Store and tried the Solo3. They were paired to an iPod touch, but it was easy enough to unpair and use the W1 to magically pair to my iPhone. (It really was as easy as advertised to pair them up.) I played some Black Crowes. Not too shabby.

Then I tried some Metric -- you know, serious techno-pop. HEL-lo. The bass sounded great. Seriously, it blows (not surprisingly) my [corded] Heshes' away. The sound reminded me of when I've got the stereo blasting pretty loudly at home, EQ towards the bassy bias I tend to prefer.

So you might not like that "sound signature", but if you do... these things are freaking incredible for electro-dance/pop/EBM music. Nice. So let's cut out the audiophile complaint. At worst, it's not a blanket complaint. These give some nice sound. As The Verge says:

THE BEATS SOUND SIGNATURE IS TAILORED FOR UNCRITICAL LISTENING OF MODERN ELECTRONIC MUSIC.

Yes, they used all caps. Yes, when I'm programming, that's what I'm listening to.

I'll still give the Solo3s a ding for still being $60 more than the AirPods, even "IRL", and a similar price as some pretty well-made headphones, which these plastic-y beasts apparently aren't, but the only other serious flaw I see (other than wondering about mic quality) is this one, also from theverge.com:

If you’re keeping track at home, charging Apple’s range of new 2016 products requires: a Lightning connector for the iPhone 7, a USB-C plug for the MacBook Pro, and a MicroUSB cable for the Beats Solo 3s. Top marks to Apple for not making me miss the wired connection for conveying sound, but that should have carried over to a more unified setup with charging cables too.

Seriously?

Labels: AirPods, Beats, music

From latimes.com:

On Monday’s Billboard Top 200 album count, the Apple Music-released “Blonde” debuted at No. 1, with a first-week tally of over 275,000 “equivalent album units” sold — note the wording in quotes.

So, what, exactly, is an equivalent album? It’s a complicated mash-up of streaming and sales data, where 10 digital-track downloads sold and 1,500 songs streamed are equal to one album. 

Hrm. I'm not sure that this is a great idea, as it gives some misplaced incentive to chase streams rather than sell albums.

I'd bet some trivial amount of money that streams on Amazon Prime count towards this number, as two albums from bands I like, Who You Selling For by The Pretty Reckless and Strange Little Birds by Garbage, hit Amazon Prime's streaming the day they were released. For a streaming service that costs me zero dollars a month (after the sunk cost of Prime), having release-day access from reasonably major bands was surprising.

Why is that bad? Well, I've gotten to try (and I mean fully try; I can put them on constant replay for hours if I want, and even download them to my phone so that I'm not using cell data) before I buy. And neither album is as great as my favorites by either band. Playing what I already own whenever I want, supplementing with Amazon Prime's streams of the new stuff, is plenty for now -- for me.

Usually, though, those are both bands where I'd strongly consider running by the record store or hitting iTunes/Amazon to buy a CD or AAC's of the album on release. (The local store has a store-wide 20% off sale today, and I was planning to grab Who You Selling until I listened a few times.)

What's wrong with Who You Selling? The really short story is that it's not straight rock like Going to Hell, and has enough different styles on it to not deliver on my expectations. I'm not saying they have to hit my expectations, but when I'm looking for steak and you serve seafood, well, I'm not as eager to eat dinner.

Take exhibit Back To the River with Warren Hayes. It immediately sounds like a Gov't Mule/Allman Bros/jam band track. I like it, I'll probably buy it if I don't get the album, and I look forward to the Chris Robinson/Taylor Momsen duet, but it sure ain't Absolution.

Which, speaking of duets, actually isn't a bad idea at all. If you want to get this "creative" and diverge from the sound your fans expect, it's probably better to do a duets or covers album (like Halestorm's Reanimate: The Covers). I like Who, but I'm not sold yet. Thanks to Amazon Prime Streaming, I'm not sure if I ever will be.

I did test drive a little on Spotify before Amazon Prime added limited music streaming, but the ads made things annoying enough that I usually wouldn't listen but once or twice.

I get making the album as universally available as possible, but let's just say I haven't streamed songs from either album 1500 times. That means both bands...

1. Lost money because I could take the albums with me (via Amazon Music) and play as much as I want.
2. Lost "equivalent albums" because I'm not streaming these things 1500 times.
   • I'd have to listen to them nearly for over 100 hours, if my math's right, to get to an "album's worth".
   • Who You Selling For is 51 minutes for 12 songs, so 51/12 == 4.25 mins each. 1500 * 4.25 == 6375 minutes, which is 106 and a quarter hours. That's a lot.
   • Does anyone listen to all of all [sic] their albums 125 times? Not sure I do except for a few particular favorites, and that's over years and years...

I'm not sure if chasing stream counts like this is great for business. I like that I get this stuff on Prime, but if we're so cheap we're listening to Prime and not paying to stream, we're probably also cheap enough that we'll buy music we really like. Strangely, that's the cheapskate way to listen to commercial-free music these days.

Labels: amazon, cheap, music, streaming

There's only one word for Apple's strategy after watching yesterday's keynote: Untethered.

We've seen the start of this with Handoff, but we saw the carry-through yesterday with the watch, with its built-in GPS and the disconnected hiking app demo, and particularly in the AirPods -- but also sneakily in the Lightning port. More on that last one in a second.

The AirPods obviously constitute the cleanest vision of untethering. First, Apple's embraced and extended Bluetooth. Forget nasty pairing, but also say hello to pair once, access anywhere, as long as you’re in your personal niche of the Apple ecosystem.

And the AirPods do access. They’re not secondary to hearing sound, not limited like even your fanciest 3.5mm headphones. AirPods are more than just a set of controls to pause & skip, maybe answer and end a call (and what a hack it is getting just that much interaction to work over the 3.5mm).

No, the AirPods are much more than earphones. AirPods are an interface. They are your Star Trek communicators. You tap, you get Siri, you ask whatever [Apple] device is near you to do what you need. They're commoditizing device access.

The AirPod isn't just a decent earphone, though it is that. It isn't just a silly salesman's Bluetooth earpiece, though it is that too (you can use one at a time, if you want, and it's Jawbone city all over again). It's not just a way to listen to music on your computer, though it is that too.

The AirPod is Apple's interface to audio-augmented realty. This is the HoloEar to Microsoft's HoloLens.

What really clued me in was my own absolute embrace of Lightning-only input. Now look, I love the legacy audio port. When I called the Beats acquisition as the end of the 3.5mm in 2014, I said the following:

I've often thought of the 3.5mm headphone jack as one of the most impressive wins for open standards. Everything I've used to listen to music portably since I was listening to a tape of my Falco album during runs as a kid to my iPhone today has had one, which means that there's one type of hardware with the potential to last even longer than my monitors -- my headphones.

I still appreciate that, but it's simply not the way Apple's does design. The 3.5mm port is a distraction. Why would you have two audio-out ports? Lightning works fine for audio, and, much more importantly, the Lightning port allows [digital] data to go both ways. Note when the keynote talked about the way the JBL headphones could adjust the amount of noise cancellation based on communication with the phone over Lightning. That's not a great example, but it gets across Apple's point:

For Apple, headphones should no longer be passive. They should be full players in your digital life. They should be interfaces.

Whether that's Apple's Bluetooth++ or Lightning headphones or an Apple watch or macOS Handoff, what's important is that every device works both ways with every other, that every device is literally an I/O port. The new digital hub is completely distributed.

This increasingly distributed digital world is exactly what we should expect to get more of from Apple. You, untethered from any one specific device, with a wealth of ways to access any of them. And as that interface gets less and less substantial, less and less cumbersome, the interface will gradually fade until it converges with what we now conceptualize of as augmented reality. But when it actually hits, we’ll just call the augmentation our phone. Or watch. Or PC. Or nothing at all.

This freedom is what device & software integration — that is, having Apple provide all of your devices — buys us, and it’s impressive seeing how what, on their face, appear to be such minor advances (“Oh wows. Apple’s made Bluetooth headphones. Yays.”), really are small pieces moving on a much, much larger chess board.

How I put it at Michael Tsai's blog:

"The way Apple justified this was pretty disappointing—no real reason was given."

I think this is a softball. Apple likes [imo, etc] to design without concern for legacy when they can. If you were going to design the perfect iPhone today, would it have two audio-out ports? No. Even more, would you add a legacy port that was inferior -- at best equal -- at audio-out? Goodness no.

And we should've seen it coming. Buying Beats signaled the end of the 3.5mm. This seemingly small move has been a long time coming, and Apple has much bigger plans for what you can do with what you wear on your head than the control hacks we've seen with 3.5mm. The JBL example at the keynote, though weak, was telling. Think of headphones as interface, not as audio-out devices limited to music control and a mic for calls.

Though I totally agree with the lack of courage. If this is better, quit with the adapter as a pack-in. If everyone needs an adapter, you screwed up.

Labels: apple, augmented reality, business, interface, iphone, music, W1 chip

Hello, kudos to Windows. Groove Player is playing FLAC format out of the box, as advertised, apparently.

I'm not an audio snob, but I sure do enjoy downloading free and legal shows from etree. They're usually in FLAC format now (no more shn, I don't think), and not having to convert them is wonderful. And it's nice not having to load a new codec to get things to play like I did on macOS for so long (thank you for years of use, Perian).

I've gotten to the point that I enjoy using the Windows Groove player okay. It's so much more straightforward than iTunes now, and its Metro style/UWP GUI is a huge improvement over Windows Media Player. Lighter-weight, less resource hogging software is good, though I'm afraid it's going to keep creeping up as they try to sell more and more stuff (lots of streaming stuff in "Your Groove" now). FLAC support just adds to the enjoyment.

Labels: flac, iTunes, music, windows

Labels: design, hardware, iphone, music

From MacRumors:

Lightning-equipped EarPods and wireless EarPods are two rumors that have been bandied about, but a new report from Japanese site Mac Otakara suggests Apple may ship the iPhone 7 with standard 3.5mm headphones and a 3.5mm jack to Lightning adapter to allow them to connect to the new devices.

If that's the case, I think we've really walked back the boldness of removing the 3.5mm jack.

If third parties "should" (in AppleThink) make Lightning headphones, so should Apple, right? And if Apple thinks an adapter is a quality solution, even the implicit preferred solution, well, they've got a design problem. Adapters are not cool.

So we're back to a design issue?

When's the last time you thought Apple had a design problem? Complain all you want about thinness, at least it's an ethos, dude.

That is, when's the last time you heard Apple say, "Don't do as I do. Do as I say do" when it came to hardware?

Labels: apple, hardware, iphone, music

Labels: Apple Music, business, music

Labels: ads, amazon, business, music, spotify

Labels: formats, music, noteToSelf

Following their announcement of a new headphone module for the all-digital Lightning connector at WWDC, Apple could now be on the verge of killing perhaps the most legacy of legacy technologies: the analog audio jack.

Labels: apple, hardware, hats of money, iphone, music

Labels: apple, hardware, hats of money, iphone, ipod, music

Just for giggles: I compared how many people followed Beyonce and Taylor Swift on Spotify and the numbers were 1.59 million and 1.55 million. On Beats, Beyonce had about 80,000 followers and Taylor Swift had about 26,000 followers. In other words, for now, Spotify is a better place for musicians to make a push.

Labels: apple, business, hats of money, music

Labels: ipod, iTunes, music