Sometimes the only way to break the silence is by playing music at a ridiculously loud volume. Now is one of those times. I’ve been absent for the blogosphere for quite some time, tending to incredibly important things like a life that is altogether new, amazing, and fulfilling thanks to the love of my incredible wife, an affectionate puppy, and many supportive friends. I’m well, and I hope to write more now that the dust (good dust!) has settled.
In hopes of making this post more than a typical “I swear I’ll blog more often….starting NOW!” vow (I’d love to see statistics on how many blog posts start with some variation on this theme), I thought I’d share a mix that I created tonight for my friend Sam. Sam hasn’t received his mix in the mail just yet (is it possible to ever find a blank CD lying around when you need one? I think not), but it’s ok because there are a a few surprises left out of the online mix.
Enjoy the tunes. I might blog more often, and I might not. You’re busy people. You understand.
I recommend listening to this playlist in a car at night or under headphones, just because those are my two favorite ways to listen to music.
A while ago, I suggested that physical books may become to reading what vinyl records have become to music: produced in limited numbers, used by the very few who know it to be the best quality experience, but mostly collected for their nostalgic value. It appears that this comparison may be inapt, because record companies, with some help from Apple, are trying to bring the vinyl experience back to life.
I am a pretty rabid fan of a little music ensemble called Dave Matthews Band. You might have heard of them. I just returned from a trip with my brother to the ostensible Mecca of DMB fandom: the band’s annual three-night stand at The Gorge Amphitheatre in central Washington. Counting this weekend, I have been to 16 of their concerts. I have all of their studio albums, most of their official live releases (they number in the double digits), and countless (legal) amateur recordings of other shows. The total track count in my iTunes library for the band and their side projects numbers over 800.
But if you think those numbers are sickening, try these on for size. I am such an unabashed fanboy of the band that when they released their latest studio album, Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King, I ended up buying it in two different formats:
the iTunes Pass version ($20), because along with the album tracks it also came with (so far) 16 extra pieces of exclusive video, studio audio, and live audio content delivered piecemeal over time;
the (physical) Deluxe Box Set ($60) which included the same extra studio audio as above, did not include video or live audio, but added in extra artwork and photos.
Let’s pass over the rather obvious and self-admitted fact that I have obsession issues. The interesting thing about the information above is that I had to pay $80 – eight times the album price – to get what might be called the total media experience available in physical or digital form. Isn’t there a way to merge these two, and make it less expensive (and therefore more attractive) to feel like you truly own not only the music, but the album experience itself? This is the question Apple has asked as sales of entire albums in the iTunes Store have dwindled, with consumers instead opting to buy tracks piecemeal. Their first answer was a service called iTunes Pass.
iTunes Pass was Apple’s first attempt at solving the riddle of how to replicate the experience of buying a box set or, to go even further back in time, a vinyl. You pay twice the normal album price, but in addition to the entire album itself, you get extra “special” content: early track releases ahead of the full album sale date, demo tracks, live tracks, the entire cover leaflet, videos, and more. What makes it more interesting is that this extra content is not delivered all at once, but it is sent to you over time. So every week or two, you have a nice little mini-Christmas when you find a new video or exclusive track to enjoy. This rolling delivery method also enables access to content that might not otherwise be available on the album release date — like, say, live versions of tracks from the band’s tour.
I am not aware of how successful iTunes Pass has been, but it apparently was not satisfactory. Yesterday, Apple supplemented that service with the long-rumored iTunes LP. Both Apple and the record labels were interested in going beyond iTunes Pass to renew the “retro” experience of going to a store and buying a big, beautiful LP, and combining that with the feeling of exclusivity that comes with owning an exclusive content-filled box set.
Everybody feels the need to write top 10/15/25/100 lists as the year winds to a close. Some of these lists I find interesting…most I do not. The problem, as I see it, is that so many lists rely on an artificial division in the way most of us consume music, movies, software, or anything else. Many great things/works come out in a given year, but each of us consumes or learns about those things on different schedules. So, my lists this year will be of things that I discovered in 2008. Not necessarily things that came to market this past year, but rather things that I either finally listened to/watched/used or discovered with the rest of the early-adopter-but-not-quite-cutting-edge public. I like to think of this and future lists of ‘What I Couldn’t Do Without in ‘08.’
Music comes first. Tunes I couldn’t do without in 2008:
Fleet Foxes–Fleet Foxes. A mellow sound and a singer reminiscent of My Morning Jacket with great harmonies. The whole LP is good, but this song is pretty representative:
There are a whole lot of companies and products trying to be “The Next Big Thing” in digital music. Apple’s iTunes is clearly dominant these days, a combined result of its deep (and sometimes exclusive) catalog offerings, easy-to-use software, and killer hardwarelineup. Add to that the tight integration between those three, and you truly have a killer combo. Amazon seems to have posed the biggest challenge to the Apple machine so far, competing agressively with lower prices (around $0.79/track and $5.00/album as opposed to $0.99 and $9.99 respectively for Apple) as well as DRM-free tracks. One area in which both Apple and Amazon have failed to innovate, however, is universal accessibility to your music.
The Problem
First, let me describe my music set-up and listening habits:
My music, currently totaling 4,415 tracks, lives on my laptop’s hard drive. That corpus of music is duplicated in its entirety in two other places: my backup hard drive, and on my iPod. I use my iPod primarily to play along with music on the drums, but also in the car through an audio-in jack.
Using a playlist, I’ve designated a subset of that music (right now, 850 tracks, or about 20% of my total collection) to sync onto my iPhone; when I walked/bused/metroed for an hour every day in D.C., this came in handy. Now that I bike to work most days in about 15 minutes, I have a no-music commute.
While I could take my iPod to work and have all my music on hand, I know that inevitably I’ll leave it there one night and want it for the drums, or it’ll run out of juice and I won’t have a cord, or something. And given that there seems to have been a rash of disappearing devices at work recently — including my G1 and a coworker’s iPod — I try to minimize the gadgetry I have (and perhaps accidentally leave) at the office. So, until recently, I would just fire up Pandora.
So the biggest question I’ve faced with regards to music is this: “How do I access my entire collection of music remotely without having to bring along a separate device?” Earlier this year, I tried a product from SimplifyMedia that let you listen remotely through iTunes (or the iPhone), but I encountered too much lag. For the past month or two, however, I’ve been trying out a new service called Lala. Lala is a completely web-based music jukebox and storefront. While that’s pretty standard, the real beauty of Lala can be found in two key offerings: the Lala Music Mover and web-only purchases.
There are a whole lot of companies and products trying to be “The Next Big Thing” in digital music. 
Subscribe by feed
Subscribe by email
Follow on Facebook
