If you read my book, The Ultimate Digital Music Guide, you know I'm cautiously enthusiastic about so-called cloud music services, where you upload your own music to cloud-based music servers and then have it served back to you, on any connected device. One of the first and most popular of these cloud music services is Amazon Cloud Player. As I noted in my book, the original Cloud Player service wasn't perfect (limited to just MP3 and AAC files, not WMA), but offered some pretty good features, all in all.
Well, Amazon just upgraded the Cloud Player by giving it "scan and match" functionality. What this means is that instead of having to upload all the tracks in your digital music collection, Cloud Player scans your collection and tries to match it with tracks in its official digital collection. If a match is found, Cloud Player doesn't have to upload your version of the track; instead, it serves you back the copy of the track housed in Amazon's library. If your track doesn't have a match in Amazon's library, then Cloud Player uploads your track to its servers. This is the way iTunes Match works, and it definitely saves on upload time, assuming most of your tracks are common enough to be included in Amazon's master digital library.
With this new functionality comes higher-quality playback. All scan-and-match tracks are served back to you at 256Kbps, which, while not lossless quality, isn't bad. Pricing, however, changes. The free service is now limited to a paltry 250 tracks; if you have more than this in your library (and you do), you'll have to subscribe to Cloud Player Premium for $24.99/year. This lets you store 250,000 tracks, not including any Amazon MP3 purchases, which don't contribute to the limit.
(BTW, Amazon is pushing the new 256Kbps streaming as an upgrade to its previous service, but it's not, not really. Previously, Amazon would play back your tracks at the original bitrate they were ripped at, so if you ripped at something higher than 256Kbps, this new option is actually a downgrade. Of course, if you ripped or purchased a track at a lower bitrate, then the new 256Kbps playback is an improvement. I guess it all depends, eh?)
To add scan-and-match functionality, Amazon had to work out licensing agreements with all the major record labels, as they view any serving of their content as something they get to charge for, even if it's your own purchased music played back by you, personally. (What a bunch of asses.) Hence the new subscription scheme; Amazon has to pay the labels, and this is how.
Anyway, this positions Amazon Cloud Player, even with the Premium option, quite favorably compared to Apple's iTunes Match service. iTunes Match charges the same $24.99/year but only lets you store 25,000 tracks. You also get the new ability to scan-and-match not just MP3 and AAC files, but also WMA, FLAC, and OGG format files. (You can't upload these formats to serve from the cloud, but Cloud Player will find them on your hard disk and match them to other-format versions in its library.)
If you want pure cloud service from the original tracks stored on your computer's hard drive, the Google Play Music cloud service is still the better choice. It's free (for now, anyway), and uploads all the major formats -- MP3, WMA, AAC, FLAC, and so forth. You are limited to 20,000 tracks, however, which could be an issue for those of us with larger libraries.
Then there's the serve-it-yourself option, which you have with apps such as Audiogalaxy and Subsonic. These programs turn your home PC into an always-on cloud server, and thus let you serve your own library from your own PC to any connected device, no middlemen involved. This option is a bit more technical, but worth checking out.
Still and all, Amazon's new Cloud Player developments are interesting and make sense for a lot of music lovers. That $24.99/year fee is a small price to pay to access your whole library from the cloud, and get up and running quickly.
Friday, August 3, 2012
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Ultimate Digital Music Guide: One of Que's Editor's Picks
Hey, my Ultimate Digital Music Guide is one of Que's 11 Editor's Picks for Summer Reading 2012. (So's another of my books, My Pinterest.) Check out all the picks and order a copy online!
Find New Music with Spotify and Last.fm
Check out this recent article for Que: Using Spotify with Last.fm to Discover New Music. It really works!
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Top Five Portable Music Apps for the iPhone
If you use your iPhone to listen to digital music, you'll appreciate my latest article for Que: Top Five Portable Music Apps for the iPhone. I cover Spotify, Last.fm, Pandora Radio, Shazam, and TuneIn Radio. Plus the iPhone's built-in Music app, and some alternatives to that. Enjoy!
Monday, July 16, 2012
Bob Babbitt (1938-2012)
We lost another great today. Bob Babbitt was one of the main bass players for the group of Detroit studio musicians dubbed the Funk Brothers. Not quite as famous or as influential as the legendary James Jamerson, he came to Motown a little later than James and outlasted him well into the 70s and 80s. I tend to think of Bob as a little new-school funkier than Jamerson, with a little sharper tone.
Bob had plenty of work before and after his Motown days. His pre-Motown tracks include several dates for Del Shannon, "With This Ring" by the Platters, and "Cool Jerk" by the Capitols. (To be fair, that one had a lot of Motown players on it; it was kind of a Motown-in-disguise cut.) For Motown, there was "Ball of Confusion" and "Masterpiece" by the Temptations, "Band of Gold" by Freda Payne, "War" by Edwin Starr, "Losing You" by Rare Earth, "Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I'm Yours)" by Stevie Wonder, "Stoned Love" by the Supremes, "Tears of a Clown" by Smokey Robinson, "Smiling Faces" by Undisputed Truth, "Touch Me in the Morning" by Diana Ross, and Marvin Gaye's "Mercy Mercy Me" and "Inner City Blues."
Bob's post-Motown work included "Mind Body and Soul" by the Embers, "Somebody's Been Sleeping in My Bed" by the 8th Day, "Give Me Just a Little More Time" by the Chairmen of the Board (all three produced by Holland-Dozier-Holland after they left Motown), "Midnight Train to Georgia" by Gladys Knight and the Pips, "Just Don't Want to Be Lonely" by Main Ingredient, "Scorpio" by Dennis Coffey, "Dynomite" by Bazooka, and Barry Manilow's "Copacabana." He also did a lot of work for Philadelphia International Records, including "Games People Play," "Then Came You," and "Rubber Band Man," all by the Spinners.
You can find a more complete discography here. It doesn't take a lot of listening to know that Bob was a terrific talent, one of a select group of studio musicians who made the bulk of the music that we listened to in the 1960s and 1970s. I have a deep respect for those cats who went to "work" in the studios day in and day out and created such memorable sounds. Whether it was the Funk Brothers in Detroit, the Wrecking Crew in Los Angeles, the Stax cats in Memphis, or the pros in New York and London, they defined rock and pop music for a generation. It's amazing what Bob and his colleagues did, truly amazing, and any serious student of popular music should be appreciative.
RIP, Bob Babbitt -- you will be missed.
Bob's post-Motown work included "Mind Body and Soul" by the Embers, "Somebody's Been Sleeping in My Bed" by the 8th Day, "Give Me Just a Little More Time" by the Chairmen of the Board (all three produced by Holland-Dozier-Holland after they left Motown), "Midnight Train to Georgia" by Gladys Knight and the Pips, "Just Don't Want to Be Lonely" by Main Ingredient, "Scorpio" by Dennis Coffey, "Dynomite" by Bazooka, and Barry Manilow's "Copacabana." He also did a lot of work for Philadelphia International Records, including "Games People Play," "Then Came You," and "Rubber Band Man," all by the Spinners.
You can find a more complete discography here. It doesn't take a lot of listening to know that Bob was a terrific talent, one of a select group of studio musicians who made the bulk of the music that we listened to in the 1960s and 1970s. I have a deep respect for those cats who went to "work" in the studios day in and day out and created such memorable sounds. Whether it was the Funk Brothers in Detroit, the Wrecking Crew in Los Angeles, the Stax cats in Memphis, or the pros in New York and London, they defined rock and pop music for a generation. It's amazing what Bob and his colleagues did, truly amazing, and any serious student of popular music should be appreciative.
RIP, Bob Babbitt -- you will be missed.
Friday, June 22, 2012
Paying for Music
There's a big debate going on about whether or not we should be paying for the music we listen to, fueled by a somewhat thoughtful blog post by Emily White, intern at NPR's All Things Considered; and general manager of WVAU, the radio station at American University. (Read her post here: I Never Owned Any Music to Begin With) There are a lot of impassioned responses online, most notably this one from musician David Lowry, of Cracker and Camper van Beethoven fame. (Read it here.) Come back when you're done reading.
The gist of all this kerfluffle is that Ms. White, who works in the music industry and should know better, owns 11,000 tunes, of which she has paid for very few.To be fair, her post was meant to be more about the convenience of living in the world of on-demand digital music instead of buying CDs, but in there she definitely advocates the position that it's okay to download music for free -- in part because it's just so easy to do so. Like, it's hard work to actually go to a store (or click to Amazon) and buy a physical CD, or whip out your credit card while online to buy a track from the iTunes Store. Don't bother us with that inconvenience; we want access to an unlimited library of music right now, and we don't want to have to pay for any of it!
I actually agree with the first part of that supposition; the idea of immediate online access to every track ever recorded sounds pretty sweet to me, and is coming close to fruition with some of the newer streaming music services. But expecting all that music to be free? Not really.
Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I expect to pay for the goods and services I receive. I know lots of folks disagree, but there's no such thing as a free lunch. If I want the snow plowed from my street or my grandkids to receive a decent education, I expect to pay for it (via taxes, of course). If I download an album from my favorite artist, I expect to pay for that, too. That's because the people who produce these things deserve to be compensated for their hard work. I don't work for free, and I doubt that you do, either. We want to be paid for the work we do. Same thing with musicians; they produce this great music that we enjoy listening to, and they have bills to pay just like us. We should pay them for their music. End of argument.
When you download music from an unauthorized file sharing site or BitTorrent, you're depriving those musicians of much-needed income. That's stealing. You're also devaluing their work; you're saying that the great music they produce is worth nothing. Zero. Zilch. No value at all. I find that insulting.
I have a lot of problems with illegal file sharing sites, both as a music lover and as a musician. As a music lover, I'm appalled by the low quality of most of what's available, and also by the inconsistency; since you're relying on what other people upload, you never quite know what it is you're really getting. There's also a big problem with spyware and viruses, which are rampant among pirated files; I can't tell you how many times I've had to clean up my stepson's computer when he was big into the file sharing thing.
As a musician, I view these sites as what they are -- pirates. Every track downloaded from one of these sites steals money that should be going to the musicians who created the music. And if the musicians don't get paid, they'll eventually quite making the music. Let's see how everybody feels then.
Now, a little bit of sharing is to be expected. Hell, I did my share of taping friends' albums when I was back in college, but that was small scale stuff -- and I still bought a lot of music, including a lot of the albums that I'd previously taped. You'll get no argument from me that passing a CD from friend to friend is a great way to sample new music, and often results in legitimate purchases from new fans.
But to build an 11,000-track library, little of it obtained legitimately, is a problem. Even though Ms. White is an intern now (meaning she's working for free -- at least for the summer), she will eventually venture out into the real world of rents and car payments and such, and desire (nay, need) to be paid for her work. I don't think she'd appreciate the rest of us "sampling" her work for free and expecting her to pay the bills by selling t-shirts on the side. If Ms. White does her job, she should be paid for it -- just the way hard-working musicians should be paid for the job they do.
Bottom line, downloading music for free is stealing, and puts the musicians you love out of work. Don't do it.
The gist of all this kerfluffle is that Ms. White, who works in the music industry and should know better, owns 11,000 tunes, of which she has paid for very few.To be fair, her post was meant to be more about the convenience of living in the world of on-demand digital music instead of buying CDs, but in there she definitely advocates the position that it's okay to download music for free -- in part because it's just so easy to do so. Like, it's hard work to actually go to a store (or click to Amazon) and buy a physical CD, or whip out your credit card while online to buy a track from the iTunes Store. Don't bother us with that inconvenience; we want access to an unlimited library of music right now, and we don't want to have to pay for any of it!
I actually agree with the first part of that supposition; the idea of immediate online access to every track ever recorded sounds pretty sweet to me, and is coming close to fruition with some of the newer streaming music services. But expecting all that music to be free? Not really.
Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I expect to pay for the goods and services I receive. I know lots of folks disagree, but there's no such thing as a free lunch. If I want the snow plowed from my street or my grandkids to receive a decent education, I expect to pay for it (via taxes, of course). If I download an album from my favorite artist, I expect to pay for that, too. That's because the people who produce these things deserve to be compensated for their hard work. I don't work for free, and I doubt that you do, either. We want to be paid for the work we do. Same thing with musicians; they produce this great music that we enjoy listening to, and they have bills to pay just like us. We should pay them for their music. End of argument.
When you download music from an unauthorized file sharing site or BitTorrent, you're depriving those musicians of much-needed income. That's stealing. You're also devaluing their work; you're saying that the great music they produce is worth nothing. Zero. Zilch. No value at all. I find that insulting.
I have a lot of problems with illegal file sharing sites, both as a music lover and as a musician. As a music lover, I'm appalled by the low quality of most of what's available, and also by the inconsistency; since you're relying on what other people upload, you never quite know what it is you're really getting. There's also a big problem with spyware and viruses, which are rampant among pirated files; I can't tell you how many times I've had to clean up my stepson's computer when he was big into the file sharing thing.
As a musician, I view these sites as what they are -- pirates. Every track downloaded from one of these sites steals money that should be going to the musicians who created the music. And if the musicians don't get paid, they'll eventually quite making the music. Let's see how everybody feels then.
Now, a little bit of sharing is to be expected. Hell, I did my share of taping friends' albums when I was back in college, but that was small scale stuff -- and I still bought a lot of music, including a lot of the albums that I'd previously taped. You'll get no argument from me that passing a CD from friend to friend is a great way to sample new music, and often results in legitimate purchases from new fans.
But to build an 11,000-track library, little of it obtained legitimately, is a problem. Even though Ms. White is an intern now (meaning she's working for free -- at least for the summer), she will eventually venture out into the real world of rents and car payments and such, and desire (nay, need) to be paid for her work. I don't think she'd appreciate the rest of us "sampling" her work for free and expecting her to pay the bills by selling t-shirts on the side. If Ms. White does her job, she should be paid for it -- just the way hard-working musicians should be paid for the job they do.
Bottom line, downloading music for free is stealing, and puts the musicians you love out of work. Don't do it.
Choosing the Right File Format for Your Digital Music
AAC, MP3, WMA, or FLAC? Lower or higher bitrate? Lossy or lossless compression? If you're at all interested in the best way to rip your digital music, check out my latest article for Que: Choosing the Right File Format for Your Digital Music. Your ears will thank you. (Hint: There's no one best solution; every situation is different, and there are compromises to be made.)
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