Observations Along The Road... at Dreamwidth

[Excuse the barrage of posts today — I’m finally catching up after a busy two weeks]

This week, Apple finally announced a refresh to the remaining members of the iPod line. The new refresh brings a faster processor, updated display, and multiple sizes. Commentators are going on and on about its benefits, and the major drawback discussed deals with its place in the new Apple streaming ecosystem.

Color me unimpressed.

Mind you, I seriously would have thought about getting one of these beasts had Apple deigned to increase the memory to 256GB, or at least made the memory a micro-SD card that was capable of taking the largest micro-SD card currently made (2TB).  But 128GB? That’s less memory than my current iPod Classic at 160GB (148.79GB capacity for music). I’d have to delete music just to fit on a 128GB memory. As it is, I’ve only got around 13GB free on my iPod Classic, and that will be going down in a week or so (Amazon order going in on Monday).

Folks, we’re seeing industry trying to push us back to the future. They’ve successfully convinced people that you can do everything in the cloud — computing, storage, etc. Us old timers realize that’s just a move back to time-sharing on a central computer — the way computing was done in the 1970s. Apple and the rest of the music industry is attempting to convince us that we don’t need to own our music, we can listen to whatever we want by streaming; in fact, if we don’t want to pick what we listen to, they’ll do it for us. Us old timers realize that’s just pushing us back to the AM/FM model, where you would hear DJs programming a playlist of tracks out of a station’s vast library. Any music you had wasn’t portable. That’s the model of music we had until cassettes hit the market in the 1970s.

I’m sorry, but I like to have my own computing power that I control. I like to own my music, and I love the freedom to listen to whatever I want, whenever I want, and most importantly, whereever I want without worry for data usage or streaming capabilities. I want a dedicated music player so that it does not consume my phone’s battery, and that tries to do one thing right instead of many things wrong. Most importantly, I want a dedicated music player that has room for all the music I currently own AND all the music I will purchase in my lifetime. Most players cannot handle that. [Oh, and it would be a plus if it worked with the iTunes ecosystem so that I could preserve my play counts and all my smart playlists.]

Currently, there are NO music players currently sold that do this. Sorry, updated iPods, but 128GB doesn’t cut it. I’m sticking with my 160GB iPod and its twin.

Still, with only 13GB left, I keep exploring replacements. Here are the likely contenders:

• Fiio X5 2nd Generation. Fiio focuses on the sound quality, aiming at the high-def market. Me? I focus on the fact that it has 2 128GB microSD slots, giving a total capacity of 256GB. What I don’t know about the Fiio is whether it views the two cards as unified storage, or you have to pick where to store things. I also don’t know whether it can handle playlists (esp. smart playlists), or work with the iTunes ecosystem. The price is reasonable: $349 for the player; microSD cards extra (~$80 for 128GB).  According to one review, “Fiio is confident that there should be no issues handling larger capacity cards as they are released, so expansion options look good for the future.” However, the internal software usability seems markedly below that of the iPod Classic. [Edited to Add: It looks like there is software to help connect with iTunes for both the PC and MAC; the MAC software looks more polished. You can shuffle all music, but it looks like smart playlists are not supported and support for podcasts is unclear. Here’s the Fiio X5 Manual. Note also that the Fiio X3 2nd Generation is a possibility if they truly comply with the SDXC standard, and update the firmware to handle 256GB-2TB cards (such support would also make the Fiio X1 viable as well). Now, just imagine an X5 with 2x2TB cards. Wow!]
• Astell and Kern. These are the high-end products from iRiver. The upper end (AK240, AK380) all have 256GB internal and support a 128GB card (the AK Jr is also a possibility if they up the SDXC card supported; however, it is only at 64GB onboard + 64GB Mini-SD). These have gotten good reviews; however, they require the user to determine what music is onboard and what music is on the card. I also don’t know a lot about the interface, but I suspect it is album oriented and not smart playlist oriented.
• Sony 64GB Walkman. Although 64GB is in the title, it can also support a 128GB microSD card, giving 192GB. However, you have to indicate where music is stored, and I haven’t heard that much good about the user and software interfaces. However, at $299, the 64GB is much better than the $1200 128GB player. The $1200 player is overpriced (plus, once you visit the Sony site, adds for Sony start appearing everywhere).
• Pono Player. $399 for a 64GB internal plus 128GB microSD. Pono got a lot of buzz when they started as a Kickstarter, but they seem to be being eclipsed by the competition both in form factor (they are Toblerone shaped, not deck-of-cards), and the interface. They have their own iTunes replacement called Ponoworld that appears reasonable; I’ve seen no mention of whether it can import from iTunes. It is also unknown whether Pono can be managed through MusicBee or other managers. Pono has gotten mixed reviews (Ars Technica, C|Net, Stereophile, Stereogum); the conclusion isn’t that the Pono is bad but rather that it isn’t significantly better than the others. I’ve seen some comparisons with the Fiio and AK, and the Pono does not eclipse the competition. The major advantage of the Pono, truthfully, is that the company is headquarted in the US. All the other players are Asian: Fiio is China, Astell and Kern is iRiver from Korea, iBasso is Korea, and Sony is Japan. If that is important to you, Pono may be the choice.
• iBasso DX50. It looks like this product can support up to a 2TB microSD (i.e., it supports the full SDXC standard). The manual is here. Interface looks a bit rudimentary. Price is reasonable, but you need to add the card (still, having a single card is an advantage). It has gotten some good reviews.

None of these have good software for the computer side of the management interface. However, I’ve done some searching, and it looks like MusicBee is a great alternative (at least if you’re on Windows, as I am).  I’ve read a number of reviews and writeups (Lifehacker, GHacks, Softpedia, Wikipedia), and it looks like it can import from iTunes, build smart playlists, and synchronize to DAP (digital audio player) devices.

I looked at the Cowon X9, but it seems to only take a 64GB memory card, and have a maximum file limit of 12,000 songs — I have triple that. The Sansa Clip+ is also recommended, but doesn’t appear to have sufficient capacity, even when Rockboxed.

My conclusion at this point is… wait, and if I get closer to filling the iPod Classic, move more of the less popular music off the iPod (or only sync playlists). Moving it off does lose playcounts and ratings — I’ve done that for some music already that I hadn’t liked at all, or stand-up comedy I rarely listen to or do not plan to listen to any more (Bill Cosby, I’m looking at you. Thump. Thump.)

I really wish Apple would wise up, and come up with a 256GB iPod Touch. It’s not that I want the touch screen — I want the larger storage in the iTunes ecosystem. Hell, come up with an iPod Touch that takes a microSD card. But I fear Apple will never do this; large capacity devices go against their current market, which is streaming, not stored, music.

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It’s Saturday, and that means it is time to clear out the links. These are articles I found interesting during the week, but either didn’t have the time or the inclination to write about then:

• The Lastpass Hack. One of the big security items last week was the hack of Password Manager “Lastpass” (which happens to be the password manager I use and recommend). There was word about how hashed Master Passwords may have been leaked, as well as password reminders. But as usual, Lastpass provided the best explanation on why and whether you should worry, and showed why people still don’t understand risk — In response to the question “Was my master password exposed?”, their response was:
  “No, LastPass never has access to your master password. We use encryption and hashing algorithms of the highest standard to protect user data. We hash both the username and master password on the user’s computer with 5,000 rounds of PBKDF2-SHA256, a password strengthening algorithm. That creates a key, on which we perform another round of hashing, to generate the master password authentication hash. That is sent to the LastPass server so that we can perform an authentication check as the user is logging in. We then take that value, and use a salt (a random string per user) and do another 100,000 rounds of hashing, and compare that to what is in our database. In layman’s terms: Cracking our algorithms is extremely difficult, even for the strongest of computers.” In other words, what may have been exposed was a deep one-way hash of an already deeply one-way hashed password. You’re really only at risk if they could guess your password, and that comes from a dumb password reminder. Still, they recommended changing your master password. I did so, and I changed it in the few other places I use it (none of which are web accessble; it is for similar non-web application vaults).
• Going to Waste. We are an incredibly wasteful country. Two articles from NPR on that subject. The first deals with a grocery chain in Northern California, that has decided to sell “ugly produce” that would otherwise go to waste at deeply discounted prices. The second deals with a landfill of lettuce — salad tossed because it might not make it to market in time. In this time of drought, and considering the amount of water that goes into growing and raising food, we should work hard to make sure that all food, ugly or not, is put to good use. We have loads of families in need that could benefit from just-in-time delivery of fresh, but ugly, vegetables and similar food products.
• The Celiac Cry. I’ve been pressing this point for a while, but this article expresses it really well: why the gluten free fad dieters are a bad thing for Celiacs. People think they know GF, but don’t do complete checking and poison those for home it really makes a difference.
• Buying Music Is For Old People. This article really saddened me. It posited the notion that only old people buy music these days. The “younger generation” wants more and more variety, and they can get that by streaming their music from music services anywhere anytime. Of course, this is like AM radio of old, but we won’t tell them. The problem is that streaming doesn’t work everywhere, doesn’t cover all audiences, and tends to cost money (both subscriptions and data). It also puts what you listen to in the hands of the streaming services. No thank you. I’ll keep owning my music, making copies of my digital music as backups, and listening to it whenever and whereever I can.
• Architecture in the West. Two architectural articles. The first deals with interesting undiscovered architecture in Tucson. The second deals with another product of the 50s to go away: first it was drive-ins, not it is bowling alleys. There aren’t many left in the valley; Mission Hills Bowl is now gone. Bowlers will miss it.
• Sons!. My first live theatre that I saw on stage was the LACLO’s production of The Rothschilds, which I still love to this day. This week news came out that a revamped version is in the works.

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Yesterday, one of the big pieces of news out of the CES show was Sony’s announcement of a $1,200 MP3 player. In addition to all of the sonic high-quality stuff that really boost the price, what caught my eye was this: “The NW-ZX2 features 128GB of memory — and can be expanded to 256GB — and a battery that’s expected to last up to 60 hours.”. Details are scanty, but I’ll note that you can currently get a digital Walkman that has 64GB onboard and the capability to support a 128GB Micro-SD card (for a total of 192GB) for $299. I’m not sure who is going to pay an extra $900 for the additional 64GB.

However, this got me thinking about my previous post on large-storage iPod Classic replacements. I’ve noted before one of the key drawbacks about moving away from the iTunes/iPod universe is… well… iTunes itself. Just like your electronic relationship with your bank makes it harder to change banks, so too does long-term use of iTunes make it harder to move off of iTunes. Just consider the potential loss of play counts, ratings, smart playlists, and potentially carefully crafted album art. What you would want is a solution that allows you to preserve that additional information. I did some musing and research over lunch yesterday and today. There appear to be two potential winning approaches:

1. Figure out a way to make iTunes work with a non-iPod device, such that it can not only copy music to the device, but bring play counts and ratings from the device back into iTunes.
2. Figure out a way to move iTunes data into a non-iTunes music manager — one that can handle all the iTunes capabilities and synch information bidirectionally from the non-iPod device.

Looking into the first option, I’ve found mention of two different solutions: Notpod and iTunesFusion. It is hard to find detailed information on either, although C|Net has a good writeup on using Notpod. It appears that both of these make your non-Ipod device appear as a playlist (not as an iPod). In particular, from the Notpod description, it looks like it just copies over the music files that are on a particular playlist. There’s no interaction with the player’s OS to retrieve play counts and changes to ratings. Further, Notpod does not seem to support syncing multiple playists or smart playlists — in particular, making it so that you have smart playlists on your non-iPod device. iTunesFusion seems similar — its description talks about syncing playlists to the iPod. Neither of these products have extensive screenshots or manuals online that permit further investigation.

Looking into the second option, there are tons of non-iTunes music managers out there. Most of the pages discussing them, however, focus on using a non-iTunes manager with an Apple iDevice — I don’t care about that. I’m curious about products that permit importation of an existing iTunes database (songs, play counts, ratings, playlists) into their own format, and that then provide the syncing ability with non-Apple players. I found one called MediaMonkey that looks interesting, but I need to investigate this further.

So, I’m curious…. has anyone out there in Internet-Land experimented with non-iTunes managers, or syncing between iTunes and non-Apple players?

[ETA: Here’s an interesting analysis of the need for dedicated Media players. I generally agree, but he missed one additional niche: players with sufficient storage to hold an entire music collection. Such storage is found on the high end audio players, but those looking for storage don’t require the high end audio — they are just stuck with it (just as those, to use his analogy, who require film and not digital are either stuck with cheap disposables or high-end SLRs — the mid-market affordable film cameras are gone.)]

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Today’s weekly news chum stew leads off with a few items related to radio and items on the radio…. and goes rapidly downhill from there:

• Living By The Clock. This is an article from a few weeks ago, but it’s still interesting: On November 18th, NPR changed their news magazine clocks. Now you probably have no idea what this means. The clocks are the second-by-second scheduling of what happens when during the newsmagazines, including newscasts, music beds and funding credits. They also affect when stations can insert their own local content. In announcing the date for implementing the clocks, NPR also said that it will not impose limits on stations’ ability to replace newsmagazine segments with programming from other producers. That proposal had prompted criticism from station programmers, who argued for control over programming choices, and producers, whose programs would be excluded under the rule. This directly relates to the next article: some of those producers are podcast producers, whose segments are often included in NPR news magazines (and thus, it brings them in money).
• The Podcast Is The In-Thing. If you listen to podcasts (as I do), you know we’re in a new era of podcasts. The “This American Life” podcast has spun off a new #1 podcast, “Serial“. Roman Mars, of 99% Invisible (who was very concerned about the above clock change) used his Kickstarter success to create Radiotopia, and expanded it with this year’s Kickstarter to add new shows. Producer Alex Bloomberg left Planet Money to found a new podcast company, Gimlet Media, and is documenting the process in a new podcast. The Verge has an interesting article on this phenomena: “The New Radio Star: Welcome to the Podcast Age“. Never mind the fact that the “pod” has been discontinued, and no one really “casts” anymore. That’s like saying television is confined to networks over the air.
• You Can Get Anything You Want. Traditions are funny thing. Who would think a TV show would span a tradition that revolves around a pole? Here’s another one for you: A tradition of listening to a particular song on Thanksgiving, simply because the event described in the song happened on Thanksgiving. This latter one, of course, is referring to Arlo Guthrie’s song “Alice’s Restaurant”. Here’s an interesting article about Arlo looking back on the song, which turned 50 this year.
• Shaming and Discrimination is Never Acceptable. The events in Ferguson and in New York have finally started to make people aware about White Privilege, and being aware is the first step to doing something about the problem. But there’s another type of privilege people aren’t talking about: Thin Privilege. Our society is biased towards the thin — all it takes is one airplane ride or sitting at a booth in a restaurant to realize that. Thin Privilege can also be life threatening. Here’s an interesting article that explores that aspect of fat hatred: the particular fact that the auto industry refuses to make large-sized crash dummies, and so crashes are more likely to be fatal to the obese than the thin.
• Fighting Antisemitism. Here’s an interesting Indiegogo project: Yaakov Kirschen of Dry Bones is fundraising to turn Dry Bones into an antisemitism fighting engine. If you’re not familiar with Dry Bones, look here. I haven’t yet decided if this is an effect tool in the fight, or an attempt by Yaakov to obtain steady funding (after the success of his Dry Bones Haggadah). Still, anything that fights is a good thing.
• Your Username is Invalid. We’ve all been taught in security that you shouldn’t give away information in the login error message, and so you don’t indicate whether it was the user name or the password is bad. But here’s an article that points out that such care doesn’t buy you anything. It’s an interesting point of view.
• Should I Upgrade? For years, I’ve been using Paint Shop Pro. I’m currently on the last JASC version, Paint Shop Pro 9. PCWorld has a very interesting review of the current Corel Paint Shop Pro X7,  and I’m debating upgrading. Thoughts?

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…not to praise it. During its revamp of the Apple Store this week, Apple quietly and without ceremony removed the iPod Classic from the line up. There have been wistful reminiscences, but most have just been nostalgia. The belief from much of the world — especially the connected and early adopters — is that one no longer needs to carry all your music in your pocket. Who needs storage when you can have streaming. In my opinion, these folks have “drunken the kool-aide” of the music industry. Here’s why this is deluded thinking:

• Not every location can stream. You can’t stream music when you’re on an airplane, in a subway, or far away from modern communications. Often, these are the times when you most want your music.
• Not everyone has unlimited free bandwidth. Streaming often uses limited cellular bandwidth or requires you to pay for wireless (if free wireless is not available, such as on an airplane). This is one reason why the cellular providers don’t want phone manufacturers to put lots of storage on phone and to have bandwidth heavy apps. They make money off you.
• You don’t physically possess your music. When your music is in the cloud or streamed, you don’t own it — you lease it. The cloud storage provider could delete that music at any time, and you would have no recourse. When you have the music stored on your device you possess it. You can copy it. You can make backups. You can make CDs or cassettes or other physical media. It is yours to edit and play with.

Further, the death of the iPod Classic is a movement away from the single purpose device. Single purpose devices can be devoted to doing one thing very well. Multi-function devices, such as phones, often do multiple things at varying levels. The 128GB of storage on your phone may sound large, but it means your music is competing for space with your photos, text messages, videos, and applications. So why don’t they give you more storage? They would rather you back up your data to the cloud (using bandwidth, possibly using storage you pay for, and making it susceptible to security breeches).

The iPod Classic was a simple device. It played music, video (and a few games). It had a simple interface which was notable less for the click wheel, and more for the fact that you didn’t have to look at it to use it. This made the device usable by the visually impared — something that is not true for smart phones today, which have no tactile feedback

Did the iPod Classic have its problems? Sure. There are those that complained about the hard disk, but the hard disk is suitably reliable if you realize it is a hard disk and treat it carefully. SSD may be more robust to vibrations, but it has more significant wear issues over time. There are iPods from its first introduction that are still being used. How long does your SSD device last?

There is a complaint about sound quality, but that comes from people who want lossless audio. You could store lossless audio on the iPod, but space limitations rapidly hit you. There is the Pono player coming out that encourages lossless, but it has a horrible form factor and doesn’t solve the space problem: you have 64G internal, and up to 128G on an SSD card that you can swap for different libraries.

Apple has written off the true music collector. Had they come up with a simple update to the iPod Classic that moved it to the lightning connector and a 500GB or 1TB drive, they would have had a significant sales bump as all those people currently owning Classics replaced them. They opted not to, because they see their future in streaming and leasing music, not selling music and supporting the listener.

As for me? I truly love having my entire music collection with me at all times. It allows me to listen to all of it — and to all of it I do (I have playlists that help). My iPod is with me on the van in the morning, in the background playing while I work, providing podcasts on the way home, and playing music to put me to sleep. It plays and is used in environments where a phone cannot stream — on the LA Metro underground, on an airplane, and in other isolated locations. As such, I’ve already got a backup iPod Classic 160GB in the shipping stream — I’ll alternate it with my current player, which I play 8-10 hours daily, and which has 34,606 songs (and 34,899 tracks overall). I’ll look into other players if they offer the same storage and can move my iTunes metadata. Of course, I could always just upgrade the drive to 240GB. Once I have a backup, that might be an option. That might just do me for a while…

…a few months, at least  :-).

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Yesterday, the great Apple in Cupertino spake, and the good news was… no, not the iPhone 5c… no, not the iPhone 5s… and no, not iOs 7. The good news was the fact that the iPod Classic remained for sale in the Apple Store. You see, shortly before the Apple announcement (and even shortly afterwards) there was story after story after story after story … after story about how Apple would kill the iPod Classic this year. Even the few stories (here and here) that acknowledged its non-death seemed surprised that it was still around, and that people still use it. The assumption seems to be that everyone wants multipurpose phones, that everyone doesn’t care about music storage, and that everyone wants to stream their music.

The iPod Classic does not require an Internet connection to play music. It is ideally suited for the person in environments without such connections (such as government workers in sensitive environments, people in isolated environs). It is also ideally suited for the people in environments without the necessary bandwidth, or who cannot afford the necessary bandwidth. I’d imagine that the iPod Classic does quite well in countries and areas with less developed Internet infrastructures.

The iPod Classic also does well for people who love music. It has the space to be able to store your music in a loss-less format, if that’s what you want… or to store lots and lots and lots of music (I’m coming up on 32,000 songs, and I still have about 60 GB free). The largest capacity of the iOS devices is 64 GB, and that’s quite pricey ($399 for 64 GB, vs. $249 for 160 GB). I, along with many others, enjoy having my full music collection with me at all times.

The iPod Classic, together with the remaining click-wheel device (e.g., the Shuffle) are also the only devices suitable for the visually impaired. The iOS devices not only disenfranchises the poorly connected, they disenfranchise those who require tactile feedback and cannot maneuver a touch screen.

The only drawback for Apple (but not for consumers) is that the iPod Classic is also well-made, and people are still using their devices purchased in 2001. When treated well, these devices last. Of course, Apple does have iTunes to screw up the ecosystem (which is why I’ve stayed at iTunes 10.7, and will not purchase a newer Apple device that forces me to a newer iTunes).

I’m not the only one who feels this way. Read the comments on the Entertainment Weekly post on the subject. People love their iPod Classic, both for its capacity and the fact it is not a streaming device. Streaming, despite what you hear, is not the way of the future.

Perhaps Apple has realized that there is a niche that isn’t always connected, or work in places where continuous connection is not possible. Perhaps Apple has realized that prices on SSD have not yet come down to the point yet where a solid state device (SSD)-based replacement for the iPod with sufficient storage will sell. I’m sure one day the iPod Classic will be replaced by an iPod Touch equivalent with more storage, 256GB SSD minimum, but that hasn’t happened yet. I’m sure there are those that would jump for an iPod Touch or iPhone that had not only enough space for all of their music, but all of their apps. A 1TB SSD iPhone. Wow. But that’s not affordable yet.

So the iPod Classic will continue to do what it has always done. Keep reliably running in the background, doing what it does superbly. Apple will keep it around as long as it is still selling in sufficient numbers to keep it manufactured… or they will manufacture sufficient numbers  to have anticipated supply for 5-10 years, and just quietly sell from that stockpile. As long as they do, I’ll be happy.

When the day comes that Apple finally removes the iPod Classic from the Apple Store, I’ll be sad. I’ll also run right out and purchase a second iPod Classic to replace mine when it goes. Well, unless that 1TB iPhone or iPod Touch is announced.

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A number of articles I’ve read in the last week have highlighted an increasing digital divide in our society. This subject and these articles have been running around my head all week, so while I eat lunch I’d like to share them with you and get your thoughts.

What triggered the subject was Harry Shearer’s Le Show. Its host station, KCRW 89.9 FM in Santa Monica, abruptly yanked the show off the airwaves and moved it to be Internet-only. KCRW believes that growth is going to be on the Internet side, and those that listen to the show will find it there. Now a number of broadcasters have done this in the past — think Adam Corolla or Tom Leykis –but arguably the audiences for those shows is very different than the NPR/Public Radio audience. I think Shearer captured my concern very well:

People are sawing the legs out from under the idea of radio as we speak. Television, when it came to prominence, was supposed to kill radio outright, and it didn’t. The question is: Will online audio kill radio broadcasting? I listen to about 80 percent of my audio content online, and I look at a lot of my video content online, so I’m not a Luddite in any sense of the word. But that doesn’t mean I don’t believe in radio broadcasting.

A lot of people driving in their cars don’t have the facility or haven’t mastered yet getting online audio into their car’s audio system. A lot of poorer people don’t have the wherewithal for broadband everywhere that they might want to hear something, and older people don’t want to mess with that stuff. Radio better be around, because in any kind of emergency, my experience has been the first thing that goes down is the electric grid, and the second thing that goes down is the telephone grid. And if you don’t have a portable battery-powered radio, you are seriously out of luck. People who are trying to dismantle this system are way in front of themselves, and may not be doing the public a service.

I, too, have seen a growing number of articles predicting the demise of terrestrial radio. NetFlix is predicting the death of the TV channel. The problem is that the movement to Internet  based approaches for TV and Radio are not available to all — due to either the financial or intellectual cost of the new technology. Do we have the right to disenfranchise these people?

But the problem is not just radio. Look at music in general. iTunes is turning 10, and there are numerous articles on the changes iTunes has brought. One article notes the following:

The iTunes store dominated by downloads “is on its last gasp,” says Bob Lefsetz, a former music industry lawyer and blogger at the Lefsetz Letter. “YouTube is where most young people listen to music now.” (More than 1 billion people visit the site each month.)

“When iTunes turns 15 years old, we won’t be talking about downloads, because Apple won’t be selling them,” he says.

Here’s another quote from the same article:

Ten years ago, Apple’s most popular iPod was the largest-capacity model with 80 gigabytes of storage. Now the top seller is the 32 GB iPod Touch starting at $299. The entry-level iPhone comes with 16 GB of storage.

“If downloads were still important, we’d all need more storage,” Lefsetz says. “Apple knows which direction this is going.”

Yet again we are creating a community of digital disenfranchised.  Not everyone wants to stream media — they may not know how to do it; they may not be in a location that permits it; they may not have the signal to do it; they may not be able to afford the cost of doing it. Yet the assumption seems to be that it is something the public wants. What this is really doing is hurting the public: no longer can you own a personal copy of your music you can listen to at any time in any place. You become tethered to the (for profit) streaming service, who can dictate if you can listen to your music and where and when. Is this the right direction for society?

We all know technology is everywhere, and in increasing cases, it is not serving to help but to hurt. What used to be broadcast is now exclusively on the web, eliminating as a potential audience those lacking the financial or technological wherewithal to find it. Others are starting to embrace a return to old media.   We need to make sure that in our rush to embrace the latest and greatest technology, we don’t cut off those not quite as nimble.

Disclaimer: Even though I know how to listen to podcasts, I still like the radio sometimes. I like to physically own my music (in fact, I’m looking to buy some LP storage crates and a media center), even as I have over 31,000 songs on my iPod (160GB). Further, I do not have a smartphone. I feel cut-off everytime I see a QR scan-this discount code.

Music: Destry Rides Again (1959 Original Broadway Cast): “Overture” [recorded from LP to MP3 using Roxio Easy Media Creator, loaded into iTunes, currently playing on my iPod]

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A number of articles over the last few days have gotten me thinking about how technological innovations are going to affect my favorite music player, the iPod Classic, and digital music in general. I’m not the only one thinking about the future of the ‘Classic; Stuff magazine says that now is the time to buy the iPod Classic before it goes away.  So I figured I’d ruminate a bit over lunch.

What got my mind awhirl were two announcements from this week’s shindig in Vegas. In the first, Kingston has announced 512GB and 1TB flash drives, with a very small size. In the second announcement, Crucial has come out with a 960GB SSD for just $600. This is probably the handwriting on the wall for the current hard-drive based iPod Classic. Its hallmark was storage, and a max of 160GB. I can now envision an iPod Touch-like device, with a range of sizes (probably 256GB and 512GB, but perhaps 128GB), at price points similar to an iPad or iPad Mini. I’d expect something this year or next. The iPod Classic is a dead-MP3 player playing.

Another interesting digital music announcement came from Amazon. They have announced an AutoRip service that delivers digital copies of CDs along with the physical copies.Supposedly, they are going to offer free MP3 versions of your Amazon CD purchases including any discs you’ve bought since 1998. The free MP3s will be stored in Amazon Cloud Player after you purchase a new CD and are available for playback or immediate download. Past purchases that are eligible should automatically show up in Cloud Player. The free digital tracks do not count against your Cloud Player storage limits as with purchases from Amazon’s MP3 store. Supposedly, more than 50,000 CDs are AutoRip eligible. You can find the list here.

This is an interesting announcement, as I buy most of my music from Amazon. It also raises a question: If you purchase an album through Amazon Marketplace (that is a used or new album from a 3rd party retailer, potentially fulfilled by Amazon), shouldn’t you be able to download it as well if Amazon has that version digitized? After all, just as with a new CD, you have the physical possession of the media. If that’s the case, it will be, as Arte Johnson once said, very very interesting.

ETA: I just got an email from Amazon that said “Songs from these 107 CDs you purchased from Amazon in the past are now available for you in Cloud Player for FREE…” Followed the links, and loads of songs are now there. In fact, I’ve noticed a number of albums purchased for my daughter (and perhaps others) as gifts are also in that list. Given that the Amazon Cloud Drive then permits (from the Cloud Player view, not the media library) me to re-download those albums, it appears I can get a copy of anything I purchase as a gift (not that I ever would ). Seems like that’s a flaw in the system that does not exist for iTunes; it will be interesting to see if the Music Publishing companies realize this potential abuse of the rules.

This entry was originally posted on Observations Along The Road (on cahighways.org) as this entry by cahwyguy. Although you can comment on DW, please make comments on original post at the Wordpress blog using the link below; you can sign in with your LJ, FB, or a myriad of other accounts. There are currently comments on the Wordpress blog. PS: If you see share buttons above, note that they do not work outside of the Wordpress blog.

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Well, Apple has finally released iTunes 11 (Gizmodo, PC Mag, ReadWrite). This means it is time for the eternal question:

I have an iPod Classic. Should I upgrade from iTunes 10.4 to iTunes 11?

I’ve hesitated updating from 10.4 to the later 10.x versions because of problems reported on the iPod Classic forums. But iTunes 11 looks to be a complete rewrite. I know that a number of my friends and readers have iPod Classics. If you have “bitten the bullet” and gone to iTunes 11, I’d love to know your experience. Did you have any problems? Does the updated iTunes work well with the classic? Please reply whether you have had problems or not, and let me know what operating system you are using.

I do have the option, when I do the upgrade, of using the Acronis “Try and Decide” feature to back out the change if it doesn’t work. Of course, that wouldn’t address the new iTunes corrupting the iPod Classic. To address that, I’d need to use Acronis to do an image backup of the iPod Classic, and I’m not sure that works (although CopyTrans does seem to have a product that works ($20)).

So what are your thoughts? Upgrade to iTunes 11 or not?

Music: Capitol Collectors Series – Louis Prima (Louis Prima): “Buona Sera”

This entry was originally posted on Observations Along The Road (on cahighways.org) as this entry by cahwyguy. Although you can comment on DW, please make comments on original post at the Wordpress blog using the link below; you can sign in with your LJ, FB, or a myriad of other accounts. There are currently comments on the Wordpress blog. PS: If you see share buttons above, note that they do not work outside of the Wordpress blog.

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