Online Music Phase II
When I was younger, much younger, I always had this idealistic technological day-dreams about how a better tech-world could look like.
One of them was about the perfect file format for music. Of course it would contain all the metadata like lyrics, BPM, or crowd-sourced genre information. While on pause it would display the cover art, while playing it would show the video (only on devices with screens that support it and only if there would be a video available).
The reason I’m thinking about this now is the recent shutdown [1] of Grooveshark in Germany, which leaves a hole unfulfilled: Rdio, Napster or simfy stream music to you as much as you want, but let’s face it, because of the costs of round about 10 €/month they shut out a lot of customers, which aren’t that music-savvy. Spotify offers a free version, but it’s also not available in Germany and it needs the desktop client.
Even if you could afford the money, a ne plus ultra-solution looks slightly different. We already see labels withdrawing their music from streaming services due to low income. And if you would want to share a tune with a friend, you have to watch out if he/she has also a subscription on this specific service.
The hypothesis: YouTube is the best player in the field to fill this gap. They already have the reputation to be the best site to play music. Let me repeat: Even not intended by the YouTube founders, it became the 1st place young people go to when they want to play their favorite song on a party or even at home.
The striking difference between Grooveshark and the YouTube of 2012 is the simple fact that a huge portion of uploaded content is legal, meaning uploaded by the artist or label themselves. Only in addition, you get a lot of fan-uploaded tracks (with often rare material). It would be interesting to see how the music catalogue of YT compares with the one from e.g. Spotify.
And it seems I’m not the only one with this thinking. Take a look at Cantio. Basically the service leverages the YT music library and wraps it into an audio player interface.
There are other services that try to do the same, but Cantio is the most promising because:
- it has good UI design
- it has its own Radio mode (based on genre)
- it lets one import playlists (in M3U format)
- it has easy sharing with custom short URLs built right in
- it has keyboard shortcuts (a hooray for the nerds)
What I miss is the integration of other services: First and foremost Vimeo or Dailymotion - because they don’t have the same strict DRM system like YT in place (yet) - and audio-only services like SoundCloud or the HypeMachine.
Nevertheless, I found my Grooveshark replacement.
[1] I think the reason for the inevitable closing of Grooveshark is and will be the deja-vu to common services: Grooveshark looks exactly like an iTunes (or other music player of your choide) version on a webpage - but for free. This is the kind of radical change major labels will never ever agree with. Maybe that’s also the reason why YT doesn’t do something like audio.youtube.com on its own.
I don’t like the word process
The fun part working for a carrier is that you sometimes get to touch the new stuff before it is introduced to the market.
At the moment I’m carrying a Samsung Galaxy Nexus as my primary device. It’s a cool gadget, maybe on par with the iPhone. But that’s not what I want to talk about today.
The Samsung phone showed me with brutal honesty how settled I am in the iOS ecosystem. The established processes makes it harder to switch sides.
Let me give you one example.
I listen to a lot of music on the go & everywhere. So I’m eager to get the relevant music from my large music library to my little companion (iPhone 4S). On the one hand I want my favorite songs, on the other hand I want to discover new music to my liking.
That’s where the old fellow iTunes comes in. Since Version 3 you can create Smart Playlists (they update automatically based on selected criterias).
For my purpose, I build two lists which accompany each other:
The playlist “Fresh” displays all songs that have been added to my iTunes in the last 3 weeks, that I haven’t listened to.
The second one, named “Hot Right Now”, lists the songs that I’m currently listening to a lot, means they’re my favs right now.
The only thing left for the setup is to select the playlists to sync with my phone:
I also include the Genius Mix “Indie Rock” made by iTunes and tick the box “Automatically fill free space with songs”. From my experience the last option gives you the songs that have the highest playcount in the library.
Of course one can tweak the parameters to their satisfaction, but I accomplished my goal: Everytime I sync with iTunes I get the music I like best, mixed with a bunch of new stuff I haven’t heard before, always maxing out the storage capacity, automatically.
Now show me the Android way of doing this task. (There is none.)
And that from the guy who told you 15 months ago how to stay iTunes free. Oh, irony.
[Update]
I recently re-discovered the iTunes alternative doubleTwist. It should be noted that doubleTwist offers the import of existing iTunes playlists (inlcuding Smart ones) and can sync with Android devices.
Embedded above is a slightly re-edited version of John Siracusa’s devastating review of Steve Jobs one and only authorized biography.
To summarize his criticism: Walter Isaacson did a poor job because he simply didn’t care. While for us the work of Jobs has influenced our live in so many ways, for him it was just another book to publish. He doesn’t have the technological understanding to ask the right questions, neither he tries to learn it. At one point Siracusa basically says every graduate with a fascination for Apple could have written a better biography than Walter Isaacson.
That for me, was the key point which you could apply to everything you do. Enthusiasm, commitment and passion are of such importantance for your job that you should’t work without it. “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.”
For the detailed analysis, listen to the almost 2 1/2 hours long edited podcast or go to the source files at 5by5.tv.
The only thing I did, was to merge the two pieces together, cut out other topics and move the feedback part to the end.
