Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Spotify Vs iTunes
I've had Spotify installed ever since Gail Porter reviewed it on the Gadget Show in April. I've used it increasingly since then until right now when I realised I've not used iTunes (in which I have a lot of purchased music) for weeks! Over the past few years I've scrobbled all the music I've played in iTunes and on my iPod to last.fm and now this suggesting new music for me to listen to in Spotify!! I'm loving the combination of Spotify and Last.fm.
I've not used my iPod since my holidays as in the UK I listen to Spotify over a 3G connection on my Dell mini 9 netbook as I'm usually on the train or something!
I'm now considering the monthly subscription to Spotify which gives better quality music and no adverts. Though at £9.99 it is a hard sell over the free version - perhaps at £5 a month I'd jump.
My iTunes collection is looking rather lonely now...
Labels: apple, itunes, last.fm, music, spotify
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Eurovision Song Contest
I went bowling on Saturday night to intentionally miss the Eurovision Song Contest since it had shunted Doctor Who off the schedule...
However, we arrived back to watch the last couple of songs with a few beers and see the final scores and of course Terry "We won the Cold War but we lost the Eurovision" Wogan's fantastic commentary. After watching the short clips we seeked out the Ukranian song 'Dancing Lasha Tumbai' and hoped it would win! A bit of a crappy song, but catchy and I am sure destined to be 2007's Macarena! Personally I think it's a perfect 'eurovision' song - a lot of effort's clearly gone in (doesn't that star sparkle) and in fact it's moved from 43 on the iTunes chart this morning to 16 right now and (hopefully) about to overtake Britain's lame attempt with 'Flying the Flag', which sounds to me more like a bad advert for British Airways and how much better the UK is to the rest of Europe (what?)
I was so disappointed that Malta gave the UK 12 points!?! Ireland of course did the neighborly thing and gave a couple of points to the UK - and of course the UK didn't reciprocate - surprising, given the fact that this week marked the restoration of power sharing in Northern Ireland... It would have been so amusing to see the UK entry 'scooching' off with no points.
Watch the Ukraine's 2007 Eurovision Entry (Verka Serduchka) on YouTube
Link to the Eurovision 2007 Final Scores
However, we arrived back to watch the last couple of songs with a few beers and see the final scores and of course Terry "We won the Cold War but we lost the Eurovision" Wogan's fantastic commentary. After watching the short clips we seeked out the Ukranian song 'Dancing Lasha Tumbai' and hoped it would win! A bit of a crappy song, but catchy and I am sure destined to be 2007's Macarena! Personally I think it's a perfect 'eurovision' song - a lot of effort's clearly gone in (doesn't that star sparkle) and in fact it's moved from 43 on the iTunes chart this morning to 16 right now and (hopefully) about to overtake Britain's lame attempt with 'Flying the Flag', which sounds to me more like a bad advert for British Airways and how much better the UK is to the rest of Europe (what?)
I was so disappointed that Malta gave the UK 12 points!?! Ireland of course did the neighborly thing and gave a couple of points to the UK - and of course the UK didn't reciprocate - surprising, given the fact that this week marked the restoration of power sharing in Northern Ireland... It would have been so amusing to see the UK entry 'scooching' off with no points.
Watch the Ukraine's 2007 Eurovision Entry (Verka Serduchka) on YouTube
Link to the Eurovision 2007 Final Scores
Labels: music, politics, video
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Nine Inch Nails
One of my favourite bands, Nine Inch Nails recently released their album 'Year Zero'. The past few singles have also been released in GarageBand format to allow remixing them. They've just released a few more tracks on their site which is cool.
Whilst reading that page I noticed a couple of things which I found quite amusing - first of all:
Secondly for the those that don't have GarageBand, they have linked directly to a 'generic' version of the file - on thepiratebay.org as a torrent file...
Whilst reading that page I noticed a couple of things which I found quite amusing - first of all:
As a reward for stealing Year Zero, we've prepared the next batch of multitrack audio files for you to download.
Secondly for the those that don't have GarageBand, they have linked directly to a 'generic' version of the file - on thepiratebay.org as a torrent file...
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Music Recommendations
I was trying a new piece of software for my mac called 'CoverSutra' which is quite nice application. It offers a little icon of the current track being played on the desktop and has Growl support.
One of the features I didn't know much about was submission to a site called last.fm which is a music recommendation site. Coversutra will automatically upload the music you play (names of tracks only) and compare it with other people with similar listening tastes. Eventually it'll recommend local concerts and music based purely on your listening history! Sounds good to me - and it's free.
If you visit my actual website (rather than reading my newsfeed) you'll notice a little icon on the right hand side which displays my most popularly listened artists over the last week! Pretty cool - this updates live too!
Check out CoverSutra - it's only 10 euros!
Link to last.fm
One of the features I didn't know much about was submission to a site called last.fm which is a music recommendation site. Coversutra will automatically upload the music you play (names of tracks only) and compare it with other people with similar listening tastes. Eventually it'll recommend local concerts and music based purely on your listening history! Sounds good to me - and it's free.
If you visit my actual website (rather than reading my newsfeed) you'll notice a little icon on the right hand side which displays my most popularly listened artists over the last week! Pretty cool - this updates live too!
Check out CoverSutra - it's only 10 euros!
Link to last.fm
Labels: coolstuff, music, software, web
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Apple TV like Sync on a Macbook Pro
I was wondering earlier when and if someone could write a piece of software which makes any mac pretend it was an Apple TV. One of the features I like about the new Apple TV is the ability to 'push' and 'sync' music and video onto the device from any iTunes library, So.... if someone could figure out how to emulate an Apple TV's response to iTunes - you could possibly make any computer pretend to be an Apple TV and sync your music to any computer!
There are programs out there like SyncOTunes and SlingShot, these are all rsync based with some AppleScript to update iTunes' library - no disrespect to their authors, but they are separate applications. The Apple TV emulation would make the whole thing seamless and integrated within iTunes.
Perhaps I should have a look at this, although this may mean purchasing an Apple TV, which, until it supports DivX out of the box (or post installable without warranty voiding) I'm not interested in :)
There are programs out there like SyncOTunes and SlingShot, these are all rsync based with some AppleScript to update iTunes' library - no disrespect to their authors, but they are separate applications. The Apple TV emulation would make the whole thing seamless and integrated within iTunes.
Perhaps I should have a look at this, although this may mean purchasing an Apple TV, which, until it supports DivX out of the box (or post installable without warranty voiding) I'm not interested in :)
Labels: apple, computers, music
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Steve Jobs on DRM
This is quite an interesting post by Steve Jobs about the state of play with DRM and online music.
With many European companies complaining directly to Apple about the restrictions employed by the iTunes music store, Steve points out that 2.5 of the 4 big music companies are based in European companies so the finger should be pointed in their own backyard. Looks like Jobs' is fed up with getting the flak...
Another concern which I have heard time and time again is 'DRM locks you into a specific device'. Steve counters this by providing the statistics that about 22 in every 1000 songs in each iPod is from their iTunes store - I agree with this - 2% of your music isn't going to stop you from ditching your iPod and picking up a Zune... In fact, looking at my iPod, I have 34 protected items on it - and 3561 of 'normal' music and videos on it. The number of songs purchased from iTunes will be a little higher as before I had an iPod I burned the music to CD and reimported it, but it still well under a few percent. I could easily switch to another device if I wanted to.
It really looks like DRM music is a complete waste of time, especially when the majority of music is being sold on CDs - although contrary to Steve Jobs' argument record companies are trying to inflict 'compatible' copy protected CDs upon us.
I think it is refreshing that the largest retailer of online music is taking the attitude that DRM is bad! You have my support.
I found this in an article on TUAW
Here is the original posting on Apple
With many European companies complaining directly to Apple about the restrictions employed by the iTunes music store, Steve points out that 2.5 of the 4 big music companies are based in European companies so the finger should be pointed in their own backyard. Looks like Jobs' is fed up with getting the flak...
Another concern which I have heard time and time again is 'DRM locks you into a specific device'. Steve counters this by providing the statistics that about 22 in every 1000 songs in each iPod is from their iTunes store - I agree with this - 2% of your music isn't going to stop you from ditching your iPod and picking up a Zune... In fact, looking at my iPod, I have 34 protected items on it - and 3561 of 'normal' music and videos on it. The number of songs purchased from iTunes will be a little higher as before I had an iPod I burned the music to CD and reimported it, but it still well under a few percent. I could easily switch to another device if I wanted to.
It really looks like DRM music is a complete waste of time, especially when the majority of music is being sold on CDs - although contrary to Steve Jobs' argument record companies are trying to inflict 'compatible' copy protected CDs upon us.
I think it is refreshing that the largest retailer of online music is taking the attitude that DRM is bad! You have my support.
I found this in an article on TUAW
Here is the original posting on Apple
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]
