I recently replaced my iPod Mini with a new iPod Nano. I like the updates to the user interface. I think it is good enough to be worth me upgraded. I really like the display.
This is finally a reason for me to try to get cover art for all my MP3s. The interface with the cover art is much better than the generic music note that you get without artwork.
The problem is I have a lot of songs that do not have any artwork. iTunes will get the artwork if the album is available via iTunes. Being a big e-music fan I have a lot of albums from there that are not on iTunes. It is a good deal of work to join up those albums and that artwork. I also have a good number of songs that have no artwork at all. The songs are from all sorts of places. Does anyone know a good place to get MP3 artwork? What do you do when it is a song without an album?
The industry's lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are "unauthorized copies" of copyrighted recordings.
You got to be kidding me. This is the stupidest thing I have heard the RIAA ever do and they have done some stupid things. This crosses the line. Right now nobody is going to be buying music if they cannot listen to it. If you cut off the iPod you cut off every chance people will buy music at all. People might get away from commercial music all together. You might see the death of the album all together.
Sony BMG's chief of litigation, Jennifer Pariser, testified that "when an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song." Copying a song you bought is "a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy,' " she said.
This is over the line. Either the music industry is selling me an individual product which I purchase and can do whatever I want to, like play that product in front of other people without paying a license, or they are selling me an intellectually property and I get to move it from device to device. I can only play one copy at a time, let me do it wherever I am. That is all people are asking for. Until you let people play the content wherever they are, you are not going to see sales improve.
Today I find out that all this might be out of context. The problem is that with everything the RIAA does, no one would put this beyond them.
A few days ago I saw something on Buzz Anderson's twitter stream about playlists. He was quoting someone and I think the quote was "Most people still see playlists as functional objects and not expressive objects." I have been thinking about this quote.
I looked at my iTunes collection. I have a huge music library. It is better that 200 GB and 40,000 songs. i listen to a lot of music, but not enough to even make a dent in my collection. On top of that I am adding more all the time.
I am one of those people that use playlist as a functional device and not an expressive one. I think that 9 out of 10 of my playlists are use to organize my music or to manage my music on my iPod. I am not trying to create the perfect mix. I am not trying to express myself to anyone else.
To be honest, I still like to listen to albums. As often as people say that the album is dead, I have not seen anything replace it yet. I do not know a serious artist who has gone back to singles. There are lots of artists I like that are putting out good albums.
The other reason that my playlists are not expressive is that I am not sharing them with anyone. There are lots of problems with sharing playlists. I know that most of these Buzz has made a new software program to help people share playlists, C86. The only problem here is that the program is Mac only. That cuts out most of the people I want to share playlists with.
Playlists will keep being functional as long as people cannot share them easily.
I have been thinking about Yahoo music. I know that Yahoo has been trying to get its house in order. They are trying to focus there efforts on the parts of the business that works for them. I have heard that Yahoo music is one of the parts of the business that is on the cutting block.
My Girlfriend has Yahoo Music Unlimited and she really likes it. It is one of those music subscription services. She pays a monthly fee and can get to any song she likes. It is an interesting service. I think more people would like it if they tried it.
I decided to buy her a Sansdisk sansa connect MP3 player. I know some of the guys who worked on this thing. For someone who uses Yahoo Music Unlimited it seems like the best choice for an MP3 player. The Sandisk Sansa Connect player has a Wifi Connection. You can download music from the Yahoo Music Service to this player. You can download songs from your playlists, songs from the service or songs that are recommended from your ratings of songs.
The yahoo music service gives you access to just about any song you could want. The Sandisk sansa connect gives you access to this music from anywhere with a wifi connection. Wow, this is finally an MP3 player that gives the iPod a run for its money. This seems like the killer app for this service.
The problem is that Yahoo makes it very hard to sign up for this service. My girlfriend could not upgrade from her current subscription to get access to this. She had to start a new subscription. It just feels very strange. It is like Yahoo does not want to promote this. They have a killer app, but they do not know what to do with it. I wonder if this mp3 player is going to get lost in the shuffle. It is a shame because I would like to see more MP3 players with this kind of feature.
The 2007 SXSW bittorrent is up. This is another good reason to use bittorrent. Better yet it is a totally legal way to get Bittorrent. This is a big way I find new bands. I would say this is one of the highlights of the musical years.
Some year I am going to find a way to be sent to SXSW. Until that happens I will just have to download the bittorrent of the bands that are giving away MP3s. If I like the bands I will buy the album. It is worth downloading even if you do not end up listening to every MP3.
Over the past couple of years I have been keeping track of the size of my music collection. I do it in a way I could never measure before MP3s. I like it that I know just how many songs I have. In college I had a 3x5 card for each album I owned on it. I used that to keep track of what albums had what songs. It did not give me this kind of data.
Here are my updated music collection stats:
Number of Songs 1-Jan-04 --- 28206 1-Jan-05 --- 36026 1-Jan-06 --- 41585 1-Jan-07 --- 46470
Size in time 1-Jan-04 --- 78:04:31:04 1-Jan-05 --- 99:01:07:31 1-Jan-06 --- 144:02:05:25 1-Jan-07 --- 156:19:33:52
Day:Hour:Minute:Second
If I listed to music 24 hours a day the last day to start to get through my whole collection would be Friday, July 27, 2007. If I listed to music 18 hours a day the last day to start to get through my whole collection would be Monday, June 4, 2007. If I started tomorrow I would have to listen to my collection 10.6 hours a day listen to it all.
Right now there are people shaking their head wondering why I would care about these number. I do because I can.
It looks like labels might be seeing the advances of music on MP3. I hope that MP3 or open formats like MP3 win out. I looks like music labels might start treating customers like customers. That can only be a good thing. I think it will be good for everyone in the long run. Lets see what happens.
I just wanted to tell everyone again that I love mp3tunes. I have been using it to back up my digital music collection. I like it because I have access to all my music from the internet. If the file is not protected, I can play it from a browser. Not only is it a good backup, I can get it from anywhere. I often use it when posting songs to my Vox Music Blog.
There are not that many people using this service. I think that everyone who cares about music should use this service. It is cheap compared to buying hard drives for backups. I am currently the user with the 17th most songs uploaded. The one downside is that it takes a log time to upload music. I think I can get into the top 10 when I am done.
I have been using MP3tunes.com to back up my MP3 collection. MP3tunes.com is a great idea, but I cannot say that it has been implemented in the best way. It takes a long time to upload anything. I have been using it for a few weeks now and I only have 8000 songs uploaded. I cannot just have it upload my whole collection because the tool will crash. I have to chunk off part of my collection and upload little by little. If is not set up to use with big collections. If I have to sync everything back down some day I have no idea what will happen.
According to LockerEnvy.com I am ranked in the low 200s in size of collection. If my whole collection was uploaded right now I would be in the top 20. There is something cool about knowing these stats.
MP3tunes.com currently falls in the category of cool web tools I wish where more useful.
I know I am a real computer music geek. I know that must people would not care about this at all. I am so happy with the 5.0 iTunes update. They have finally added a folders system to iTunes. This means I can organize my play lists.
I must have 60 playlists on iTunes now. With smart play list you can do lots of interesting things. I organize the same music over and over again on different themes. Now I can take the play list that I do not use very often and move them off to the side. I think this is a great add to iTunes.
JF Cates at Testzone Blog Report made me think of this quote. JF lives in Charm City (Baltimore, MD). We are both big fans of the TV show Homicide: Life On The Street. In one of her recent posts she answers the question "What's the real reason you get up every morning?" with, "because I love my first cup of coffee in the morning." Instantly I thought of this quote from Homicide.
Det. Frank Pembleton: You know, every day I get out of bed and drag myself to the next cup of coffee. I take a sip and the caffeine kicks in. I can focus my eyes again. My brain starts to order the day. I'm up, I'm alive. I'm ready to rock. But the time is coming when I wake up and decide that I'm not getting out of bed. Not for coffee, or food or sex. If it comes to me, fine. If it won't, fine. No more expectations. The longer I live, the less I know. I should know more. I should know the coffee's killing me. You're suspicious of your suspicions? I'm jealous, Kay; I'm so jealous. You still have the heart to have doubts. Me? I'm going to lock up a 14 year old kid for what could be the rest of his natural life. I got to do this. This is my job. This is the deal. This is the law. This is my day. I have no doubts or suspicions about it. Heart has nothing to do with it anymore. It's all in the caffeine.
I listen to this on MP3 and I am amazed. As a writer, I wish I could capture an idea as well as this.
