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The Cloud Music Battles Have Begun

// July 31st, 2011 // 1 Comment » // technology

When Napster effectively killed the music industry so many years ago, who’d have thought that it would be digital music that would signal the resurgence of the very same industry a few years later (albeit with a completely different look)? While the music industry would prefer that you buy each track individually (or worse, by the antiquated ‘album’ bundle), there are a host of subscription services that give you buffet-style access to all the music you can listen to.

Mashable put together quite an interesting infographic recently, comparing new-to-the-U.S. Spotify, MOG, Rhapsody, Slacker, Rdio, and Grooveshark. Interestingly, Last.FM, Pandora, and Zune were left out of this comparison, though perhaps because they’re all so limited in one way or another.

Spotify is the darling of the tech world right now, and honestly, it’s pretty cool. While I live in the U.S., I was able to test Spotify out back in 2009, and was quite impressed, mainly with the social playlist feature.

While I’ve used (and still periodically use) Last.FM, Pandora, Spotify, Zune, Google Music, and a few others, I still fall back on my locally-stored music collection. Sure, at 23k tracks, I don’t have nearly the selection that some of these services do, but I have plenty, anyways. I can also listen to them on my iPod Classic, which I bought for very specific reasons. I only have to charge my iPod Classic twice a week or so, and I listen to it literally non-stop at work all day. I can also listen to all of my music on my iPod Classic without having to worry about connectivity, which is a huge bonus.

Unfortunately, the problem is that it’s difficult for me to discover anything new. My iPod isn’t connected, as mentioned above, and I don’t listen to FM radio anymore, ever (if I can help it). The biggest benefit of these subscription services is the ability to easily check out new music, risk-free.

What’s your take? Do you also prefer your own curated, private collection of music, or do you think the freedom of these new batch of subscription music services is too good to ignore?

Why I Bought An iPod

// August 27th, 2010 // 5 Comments » // annoying, Mobile, technology

In college, I bought a 4th generation 20GB black and white iPod at Sam’s Club (the HP Edition, actually). Back then, my music collection was only 10GB, and I figured that gave me plenty of room to grow. While using that iPod, I developed a pretty simple, yet strict method for keeping my music library clean and fresh. This system requires two pieces of metadata – star ratings and playcount/last played – to be synchronized between my portable device and my desktop computer.

For star ratings, I use this differently than most people. When I’m listening to music, if I come across a track that, for whatever reason, I don’t want to have in my library, I give it 5 stars. Why 5? Because on an iPod, that’s the easiest rating to give something, no matter what else you’re doing (driving, walking, etc). I can use my iPod all day long, rating tracks, and then synchronize with my computer, sort by star rating, and delete the 5′s. Super easy, and I’ve still got 1-4 stars for an actual rating system.

Playcounts/last played come into effect when I want to keep things fresh. My music library is now coming up to 20,000 tracks, and let’s face it – there’s no easy way to manage that. What I’ve done is setup playlists for each genre – these smart playlists are automatically populated with tracks that I haven’t listened to in the past XX days. The timeframe isn’t really important (sometimes it’s 30, sometimes it’s 60), but what’s important is that it’s music I haven’t heard in a while, conveniently packaged in a playlist.

These playlists are also useful on phones that have limited storage – rather than painstakingly trying to figure out what to transfer (or worse, risk the ‘random’ sync and take up space with junk), I can limit these playlists to ~1GB in size and have several of them on an 8GB microSD with plenty of extra room.

Since that original iPod died several years ago, I’ve tried in vain to replicate that system using various phones as MP3 players. I’ve tried every version of Windows Mobile since 2005, Symbian (various versions), Android, and even BlackBerry, and no phone that I’ve found is able to synchronize star ratings and playcounts/last played back to the desktop, which is the core requirement for my system to work.

Windows Mobile does synchronize this, but Windows Media Player on the desktop is such a pain to use, I just couldn’t handle it. My last-ditch effort was to try the new DoubleTwist player on my Nexus One. They advertise full synchronization of both ratings and playcounts back to iTunes, so I figured it was worth a shot. I’ll be honest, I never synced my phone twice. The DoubleTwist app on my computer is slow as molasses – it has to re-load *ALL* of my music every time I launch it – that takes quite a while when you have 120GB. Further, once it’s done loading all your stuff, it has to talk to iTunes to find out any changes to your media there. It’s easily 30-45 minutes of ‘loading’ before I’m even able to use the app, much less synchronize anything with it.

Thus, after fighting it for several years, I finally broke down tonite and bought the 160GB iPod Classic. I’m not really happy about it, and I’ve had to switch from MediaMonkey back to iTunes for my desktop solution, but I finally have just that – a solution, instead of a clunky workaround. I bought the 160GB iPod Classic mainly because it’s pretty mellow – there’s no frills, and this is purely a functional toy, I don’t need a touchscreen or any apps and such. Second, I bought it because, at least currently, I can fit my entire 120GB music collection on it – which means I always have my entire collection with me, which is something I’ve missed since I’ve been using my phones, even the N97 which had 32GB of internal storage and a microSD card slot.

It’s really unfortunate, honestly. There are so many benefits to using your phone as your MP3 player that it’s not even funny. I really find it quite depressing that no one in the mobile industry is working to address these two small (but incredibly important) issues. I’ve spoken at length with the http://blog.ovi.com/2009/11/12/welcome-to-nokia-ovi-player/ team about this, and they’ve simply (repeatedly) said it’s just not on their roadmap right now.

I’m keeping my eye on DoubleTwist, though – with a few speed improvements, they could finally be the key that I’ve been looking for. In the meantime, I’ve got my 160GB iPod Classic, and I’ll be using it to weed out the crappy music tracks I’ve accumulated over the years, until someone else is able to compete.

Have you found a way to synchronize ratings and playcounts/last played with anything other than an iPod? What do you use to keep your music library fresh? Have you given up on locally-stored media and gone cloud-only with Last.FM or Pandora?

How To: Properly Sync Music To Android With MediaMonkey

// July 10th, 2010 // 23 Comments » // android, Mobile

My love for MediaMonkey is not a secret – I found this desktop music management app quite some time ago and it quickly replaced Winamp for me due to the countless ‘extra’ features that make managing my music a better experience. You can read my full review of MediaMonkey here.

While MediaMonkey synchronized with my Symbian-powered devices quite easily, I noticed that it was a bit more stubborn when trying to synchronize with my new Nexus One. No matter how I changed the configuration settings, MediaMonkey insisted on dropping all my music into the root of my memory card, which is really messy, and didn’t sync my playlists properly, either. After a bit of Googling, I found the answer on the MediaMonkey forums.

You can read the full guide here, but this is the breakdownt:

• Mount your phone in USB Mode to your computer, and note the drive letter that it is associated (mine is H:)
• Open this drive in Windows Explorer and create the appropriate folders where you want your music stored. I have one called ‘Music’ and one called ‘Playlists’, but you can do this however you want.
• Now launch MediaMonkey, and make sure it shows your phone’s memory card in the left sidebar (separately from the MyComputer option)
• In MediaMonkey, click on ‘Tools’ up top, then choose ‘Options’ and go down to ‘Portable/Audio Devices’
• Uncheck *all* of the plug-ins except ‘d_USBMass1.dll’
• Highlight ‘d_USBMass1.dll’ and click on the Configure button to the right
• Choose the ‘Device Configuration’ tab in the dialog box that popped up
• In the middle of this tab, you’ll see a box called ‘Device Name’, which is where you’ll type the name of your phone (mine is ‘NexusOne’)
• Below this, choose the appropriate drive letter from the drop-down
• Below this, enter a Drive Label (again, mine is ‘NexusOne’)
• Leave the ‘USB Device ID’ box empty and don’t click the ‘Find Device’ button

While you have this dialog box open, you can tinker with the other tabs, if you want. This is where you can specify a folder hierarchy and adjust your sync settings. I would recommend creating a small playlist (~15-20 tracks from various artists/genres/albums) to test with – you don’t want to do a full sync only to realize you don’t like your sync settings.

After changing the Plug-in to d_USBMass1.dll, everything works beautifully. My music is synced to my device with the folder heirarchy that I specified, and my playlists properly show up on the device, as well. I’ve also noticed that there are more options available when I right-click my device in the left sidebar on MediaMonkey, too.

This also solves my problem of being able to browse my music by genre (sort of). While I have yet to find an Android music player that supports genres (aside from the HTC Sense UI one), I can now have MediaMonkey automatically organize my tracks into folders by genre by adjusting the configuration settings. Then all I need is a music player on my Nexus One that lets me play an entire folder – these are available in abundance. Here’s a screenshot of my configuration tab:

I also noticed that this plug-in also makes the reverse-sync option available in MediaMonkey, where it will sync a music track back to my computer if the one on my device is deemed to be newer – I’m really hoping this will support star ratings and playcount meta back. I’ll report back when I’ve been able to test this. I’ll also have a full post with my thoughts on the Android music experience soon.

What do you use to synchronize you music with your device?

What Are The Best $100 Earphones?

// August 2nd, 2009 // 4 Comments » // toys

A few years ago, at the Nokia Go Play event in London, I received a pair of the Bose In-Ear earphones in my ‘goody bag’. These were the first pair of earphones I had ever owned that were worth more than ~$20, and I’ve been incredibly impressed with them. Unfortunately, they’ve gone out, and so I need to purchase a new pair. These are the three important things that I liked about the Bose:

1. They keep sound in. I can have the heaviest techno ever pulsating into my brain, and be sitting right next to my wife, and she can’t hear a thing. This is crucial for using them on airplanes and such, and ranks high in importance for my next pair of earphones.

2. They keep other sounds out. They’re not complete sound barriers, but with the music loud enough, I can have these in and not hear a dang thing. Again, excellent for use on airplanes and long flights, but also good for other situations, like when I really just need to get some work done.

3. They’re not completely in-ear. This is tough to explain. I also have a pair of Creative something-or-others that came with my Dell XPS M1330. While they possess the previous two features, they’re extremely uncomfortable to wear. To put them on right, you’re supposed to reach around with the opposite hand and gently pull the top of your ear up, to open the ear canal. Doing so, however, creates an odd experience that I find really uncomfortable, specifically with heavy bass. A good example is, when wearing these and walking normally, my footsteps pound in my head, as if I was a freakin T-rex. I want to avoid this type of experience as much as possible. The Bose In-Ear set fits into my ear, but not uncomfortably so, and do not produce the experience described above.

I’m not interested in any suggestions for full headphones, regardless of the price/quality. These need to be able to easily fit in *any* of the small pockets on my gadget bag or other bags, which the Bose set does nicely. My budget for headphones is $100 – the price of the Bose. I’m really tempted to just go with those, but I figured, since they were my first pair, that some of you might have better suggestions. Please make them, and I’ll try to go check them all out. Thanks.

Spending Time With The Normobs

// July 28th, 2009 // 8 Comments » // Time With The Normobs

While I’m still exploring other job opportunities, I realized that, since I’ve worked from home for the past 2 years, I’ve somewhat lost touch with normobs, and the things that the normal American cellphone consumer is using their phones for, and what they look for in their new phone. You may recall, a few years ago I wrote a 2-part series called ‘Confessions of a Cellphone Salesman‘, based on my experiences selling phones at a kiosk. As such, I decided it would be interesting to revisit this, so I’ve taken up working at the cellphone kiosk once again, in order to observe, 2 years later, how the American consumer has changed.

Granted, this is not an entirely scientific study, given that I’m only checking out one geographical region, etc, but it’s still good to be among ‘the great unwashed’ and see how ‘real’ people use their phones, rather than the power users I’m often surrounded by. I’ve been tracking various things, and will report observations periodically over the next few months. I am also compiling this information, and in a few months hope to put together a report showing the things that I’ve observed.

The first thing that I’ve noticed, rather astonishingly, is the way that young people (under 30) are getting music nowadays. I’ve had at least 5-6 people/week tell me that they get their music from YouTube. Yes, that’s right – not P2P, not torrents, but YouTube. They’re using various applications to download the audio from music videos that get posted to YouTube. Completely fascinating. They note that it’s cheaper than paying $3 for a ringtone, and the plus side is that they get the music video, too.

Given the RIAA’s fanatic path of self-destruction over the past few years, I found this completely fascinating. Artists are increasingly putting their music videos on YouTube, counting the views with lust, and tossing a link to download the track from Amazon or iTunes, as well, to garner additional royalties. I wonder if they realized that they were setting themselves up for piracy?