Simon tagged me in a Facebook meme (by the way, I now have a Facebook username). I don’t generally participate in these things, and I’m not going to tag anyone else, but I found it sort of intriguing… so here are my results.
The idea is that you shuffle up your iPod and write down the first 15 songs that come up (no cheating, skipping, picking out songs that make you look good!).
Well I actually only have a tiny subsection of my iTunes library on my iPhone – of ~11000 tracks so far ripped, I’ve got 1449 on the iPhone at the moment, which I think is only about 5.5Gb of the 8Gb capacity, the rest taken up by photos, apps and video podcasts.
Here’s how it came out – without any cheating.
The Butterfly Collector, Noel Gallagher and Paul Weller
Loneliness, The Feeling
A Life Less Ordinary, Ash
The Ghost of an Unkissed Kiss, Trembling Blue Stars
Not a Love Song, Uh Huh Her
People Move On, Bernard Butler
Swara Suling, The Schubert Club Gamelan Ensemble
The Sad Day, Jody Talbot
Once Around The Block, Badly Drawn Boy
Deep Water, Jewel
No More I Love Yous, Annie Lennox
Be OK, Ingrid Michaelson
Kung Fu, Ash
Dreamer, Uh Huh Her
This Corrosion, The Sisters of Mercy
If the list interests you, my “social music networks” are Last.FM and, to a lesser extent, MySpace (where I tend to find new and interesting artists, or connect with ones I already know).
Oh, and on a vaguely related note – anyone else massively underwhelmed by “shake to shuffle” on iPhone/iPod OS 3.0? It only appears to actually work if you have a playlist underway, or, say, shuffle all the tracks on the phone, in which case it’s the equivalent to hitting next anyway… what’s the point?
No tagging from me, but I’m assuming Simon will see this so he’ll know I lived up to my part in his meme. Looking down his news feed, I see a 25 albums meme in there too. I abstain
I’ve always known that the options for embedding scripts and things like Flash into WordPress.com blogs were a bit limited – well, at least I thought so. Yesterday I discovered that you can use Vodpod and a special WordPress.com shortcode to capture and then embed various flash objects from around the web… for instance, a Flickr slideshow, or even a blipped track on Blip.fm (not on blip.fm? it’s fun! social music sharing crossed with Twitter)
I went to a quite lovely gig last night – it was the third time I’ve seen my friend Alex Cornish playing live, but the first time I’ve seen him play with a string section, and in a church! The venue was St Giles-in-the-Fields church, which is just around the corner from Tottenham Court Road tube station in London – a cosy place for this kind of event.
There are a few short clips on my YouTube channel… not the best quality as it was dark, and only made with a digital compact camera (plus a few sound clips capture on the iPhone) rather than anything else, but a little iMovie 09 magic has helped here and there
It was all very civilised given the venue, and I was even able to get home at a reasonable hour. The new mix of Alex’s debut album Until the Traffic Stops is great, by the way – highly recommended. It is also worth checking his site for the downloads that he sometimes has available.
I’ve put a few photos up on Flickr as well, again bearing in mind the lighting conditions and my choice of camera for the evening… I noticed a couple of guys with DSLRs moving around the venue so hopefully there will be some much nicer shots available at some stage. Update: here are some really good shots from the gig.
Last week, I finally got fed up with the constant pain of bumping up against the disk size of my MacBook Pro. The largest chunk of space on the 120Gb drive was the ~35Gb taken up by my iTunes library. It was time to move it.
Moving out, making space
I’d previously thought about moving all of my music to the network and serving it out of daap-server on Ubuntu. The issue is that I sync my iPhone with the MBP and therefore I want my music library available locally, rather than streamed. I have a smart playlist which randomly selects about 7Gb of stuff from my library, leaving room for my apps, podcasts, and photos in the rest of the 16Gb space on the iPhone.
The thought of moving my iTunes library has just been such a painful one that I’d been putting it off for ages. I finally found a really good guide to the subject that reassured me, though – I could move the bulk of the library to another drive, and iTunes would still “work” (in the sense of enabling me to rip more, or download new podcasts) even when it was disconnected. I’m not going to go into the steps in detail here, read the iLounge guide to Transferring your iTunes Library – but it was basically a case of attaching a big external disk, changing the location of the iTunes library in the preferences, and Consolidating it; then deleting the local files on the internal drive.
Once all ~35Gb of music, video and podcasts was safely relocated, I decided to try something else. I unplugged the external USB drive, and attached it to my Airport Extreme base station. It appeared as an Airport Disk (with the same name as it had as a local disk) on my desktop. I started iTunes, and… hey presto, It Just Worked. So I now have my main iTunes library on my home network, visible to the iTunes application when the MacBook is on the same network, and can sync my iPhone when I’m there.
Time to rip
Once I’d finally made space, and also got the library into a location with room to breathe, I decided to make a start on something I should have done a long time ago. Up until now, I’d ripped CDs randomly according to when I wanted to hear particular albums or tracks… now, it was time to systematically get the whole collection into digital format. Plus, I don’t actually own a stereo / hifi with a CD player anymore, so the only way I’m consuming music is through the computer. There are about 500 CDs to rip, so this is an ongoing project.
A few people asked on Twitter what format I’m going for. Purely on the basis of convenience and accessibility of format, I’ve decided to go with high quality MP3 rather than OGG, AAC or FLAC. I know MP3s will pretty much play anywhere I might choose to put them. Sorry to the audio aficionados.
Bumps in the road
There are just a few things which continue to mildly bother me:
If I’m not on the home network, iTunes reverts to a temporary/default (local) library location. I tend to Sleep the Mac rather than shutting apps down, so if I go home and reconnect to the network, I have to remember to close and restart iTunes for it to pick up the “proper” library location… otherwise it continues to point itself at the internal location. Selecting “Consolidate Library” by accident when the library preference points to the local disk can have bad consequences (it tries to copy everything back from the external disk to the internal one!)
iTunes has a weird relationship with album art. It can find some, but not others… does it depend on what is in the iTunes store? I’m partway through the D section of my CD library right now, and in general the rippage has been fine, but none of the Beatles or (oddly) Def Leppard albums have album art that iTunes can find. AllCDCovers.com (and, sometimes, my scanner) to the rescue!
There’s another, smaller iTunes library on a Thinkpad that I’d like to be able to merge in. I’ve seen some third-party tools which can apparently do merges and retain play counts and ratings, and also do duplicate checking… I need to look into those.
Generally though – really happy with how this has worked out, and I wish that the solution to my full disk problem had been more obvious some time ago. Now I have some disk space to play around with iMovie 09
Remember MySpace? I guess it was one of the first really mainstream social networking sites… remember, it was all big and fluffy and exciting a couple of years back, everyone who was anyone was flocking there. And then along came Facebook, and Twitter, and a whole range of other sites, and suddenly MySpace was “like, so last year”, and lots of people stopped caring.
I’m still on MySpace, but I can’t say that I’m an active participant. My page essentially acts as a placeholder, provides a link over here to my primary blog, and acts as a way of keeping in touch with a small group of folks who I know over there. If someone searches for me on MySpace, they’ll find at least one way to contact me, and hopefully find my “main” web presences.
I also find that MySpace, along with Last.FM, is one of my key “music networks”. I have discovered a number of new artists through MySpace – particularly Alex Cornish who is increasingly beginning to break through into the mainstream in the UK (looking forward to his London gig in a couple of weeks’ time). I’ve also connected with smallerbands and found more obscure (to the UK) artists I’ve been following for a while. I believe that MySpace is an interesting way for artists to release music, get themselves known, and interact with fans.
The way the music thing has generally worked is that I’ve found and “friended” an artist, and then explored their connections and sampled their music on the site. In a couple of cases other musicians have introduced themselves to me as “friends of xxx” artist that I like, and again I’ve usually at least visited their page to check them out. I’ve bought at least 2 albums by unsigned or minor artists that way, but conversely in other cases I’ve also decided that no, I still really don’t like hip-hop and not bothered with the musician that has tried to friend me.
There’s an iPhone application now, and I guess that has helped me to keep up with the status of folks on there and what they are doing, too. It has rekindled my interest a little.
The annoyances
A couple of things really are not great, though.
First, there’s a the perennial make-your-eyes-bleed-its-so-horrible design of MySpace pages. They really are awful, and although the refreshed header and button design introduced this year makes it a little cleaner, the majority of MySpace pages still look as though a 5 year old has plastered the most gaudy advert they can find onto a computer screen and then scribbled on it with crayon. There’s also the language and slang used by the majority of regular users WHO FINK THAT SHOUTING MAKES U KULER LOL (you get the point).
Today I received 3 emails from a guy who was trying to promote his MySpace profile and music. There were a few annoyances here… firstly he was using some automated mailing list thing to spam me, not using MySpace at all… secondly he sent me THREE of the darned emails, one of which contained the HTML code for a Flash player of his music, which I assume he thought would play directly in my mail… and again, there was that lack of grammar or spelling that characterises certain MySpace users.
Reader, on receipt of the third email, I took a look at the guy’s site.
Not my kind of music, to be perfectly honest. So I sent him a mail on MySpace asking him not to spam, and explaining that although I’m sure he’s a great guy, sending me repeated messages about himself was not going to encourage me to either listen, or tell others to listen – quite the opposite in fact.
The response?
not spam if ya aint sellin nothing, Sry Your pissed off over email, try Being born in poverty and haveing to become somthing with no help, if you got that many that just means im doing my job
*sigh* Well that’s another MySpace user blocked, then…
This will be a first, I’ve not written a gig review before… bear with me…
Background
Somewhere around late summer last year I started listening to the Song by Toad podcast (aka the Toadcast). It’s a brilliant, weekly(ish) compilation of new music, or other random-but-strung-together-by-a-theme music, hosted by Matthew Young. Although Matthew is obviously far more informed and knowledgeable about music than I am – he actually goes to gigs and writes about music exclusively on his blog, whereas I write about anything that comes to hand – it seems as though we have a roughly similar taste and background… although I toyed around with metal and heavy rock in my later years at school, I was pretty much an indie kid at university and have been into a lot of guitar stuff ever since.
One of the first artists I discovered via the Toadcast was Alex Cornish, who was featured in Toadcast #5. I think I downloaded a track straight after listening to the podcast, and bought Alex’s album immediately after it was released on iTunes… in fact I remember exchanging emails with Alex at the time, I was travelling and wanted to get the album on download whereas he we encouraging me to get the CD, which to be honest I should have done. I’ve been following his MySpace ever since. Loved the album and had been hoping to catch him live, so when I saw he was going to be in London playing as part of Curious Generation at the Troubadour, I jumped at the chance to go along.
The venue
We’ve established that I’m not a regular gig-goer, and I’d never been to the Troubadour before. The website describes the venue as “the last 50s coffee house in Earls Court”, which sounded promising from the start. Basically it’s a coffee house / bar / restaurant upstairs with a small cellar for live music and poetry reading underneath. I stumbled in down the wrong staircase behind one of the bands, with the result that I arrived before the doors officially opened and was assumed to be part of someone’s entourage – kind of weird but I don’t think they minded my honest mistake too much. For reference, the way in to the cellar is right at the back of the coffee house! The cellar is an intimate venue – I don’t think there could have been more than a hundred or so people, and the music filled the space pretty nicely. I’d definitely go to other sets at the Troubadour in future.
Alex Cornish
The overall sound of Alex’s album is a bit low-key and acoustic (which, in case you hadn’t guessed, I like). The difference here was that I’d not heard the tracks performed with a full band before, and I have to say that some of them were transformed. For example, one of my least-favourite tracks on the album is “Scotland the Brave”, but having heard it performed live my opinion has changed completely. In fact every track was superb. I was grinning like a mad thing throughout most of the set, and carried on grinning afterwards. It was an excellent gig. If you have a chance to see him on his current tour, I suggest you take it. Apparently the next gig in London is sold out already.
Chatting to Alex afterwards, it sounds like the next album is coming along well and that there is going to be a bigger sound now that he has the band together. We got a preview of one of the tracks, “Look Out” (prompting much excitement from my section of the audience since Alex’s friends have heard it before), and frankly I’m looking forward to hearing more.
Snippets of Alex Cornish
I’m told that Alex is “a talented footballer and an incredibly nice guy”. Well I can’t validate his footballing skills, but I do agree that he’s a tremendous guy. As a sidenote, it’s a bit of a weird experience when you and the artist recognise each other from MySpace! Very cool though. And it’s strange what can happen when you hand out Moo cards and take notes in a Moleskine notebook – apparently people think you’re “the press” or “a proper journalist”. Hardly, but thanks
Apologies for the poor-quality pictures, I wish I’d taken the DSLR rather than a compact.
Joker’s Daughter; Rosie and the Goldbug
It would be utterly unfair not to mention the other bands who were on on Tuesday night, since I enjoyed them too.
Joker’s Daughter kicked off proceedings. They were an acoustic pair who played some really beautiful, haunting folksy tunes. The venue was still sufficiently quiet to make them stand out, too – I think later in the evening as it got busier, they might have struggled to make an impact. I need to check them out in more detail, as I really liked the music.
Snippets of Joker’s Daughter
The third band of the evening, Rosie and the Goldbug, were seriously entertaining. I can’t quite figure out their influences… at times the sound was Tori Amos (“Soldier Boy”), at times nearly Blondie, and the look (glittering minidress and peacock feather) was reminiscent of Moloko. Some fantastic banter in between the tracks, and a lot of energy. Thundering bass and piano, and the lead singer kept demanding “more vocals” from the engineer! Another band I’ll be exploring some more.
Snippets of Rosie and the Goldbug
I wasn’t able to stay for the last artist, Ryan Scott, so I can’t comment. If anyone who was there has anything to add, please let me know what I missed!
The company
Met some fantastic folks, most of whom knew Alex already. I hope I didn’t come across as some kind of MySpace stalker
…
Now, if you want so read what a proper music blogger thinks about Alex Cornish, instead of the inane and under-informed ramblings of a random enthusiastic fan, go and read Matthew’s review of Monday’s gig in Edinburgh. You’ll also find a few samples of Alex’s music there, and on his MySpace page. And once you’ve done that, go get his album Until the Traffic Stops, from iTunes or Amazon or your vendor of choice (eMusic have his singles, but not the album). Do it!
I noticed that Darren blogged about the effort in one of the Last.FM groups to try to get Lucky Soul’s ‘Lips Are Unhappy’ to Christmas number one, in order to prevent a seemingly-inevitable Simon Cowell-created reality TV sub-Stock/Aitken/Waterman pop crap last minute release making it, as would usually be the case.
Last night I was listening to the always-excellent Song By Toad podcast – episode 16, the Birthday podcast, and let me say Happy Birthday to Matthew (aka Mr Toad) while I’m here – and it turns out that there’s also another online campaign to create a Christmas number one. This one is Malcolm Middleton’s ‘We’re All Going To Die’, which seems an unlikely title for song to listen to during a period of peace and joy, but I can see the wry humour.
The thing that particularly interests me about both of these campaigns is whether the Internet has the power to beat mass market television at this point. Last.FM has a loyal following… and probably more than the music blogs who are pushing Malcolm Middleton… but I’ll be interested to see whether either can beat out the TV-anointed tune, whatever it turns out to be (see, I don’t actually watch the shows which tend to create them), even in this age when downloads do count towards singles sales.
Last week I did about 1000km of driving in Poland – the first time I’d driven on the “wrong” side of the road, too. Bit of an unfortunate start to the break, since I managed to leave Ola’s passport at home. Still, it all came together in the end.
I also explored a bunch of interesting new music on the iPod via the Song by Toad podcast, which is worth a listen. Episode 8 is stuffed with new music which I love (Emmy the Great, Monkey Swallows the Universe), Episode 5 has some other cool stuff (Alex Cornish, Thunderegg), and Episode 6 is just hilarious.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been mentioning some forays into organising my digital music collection, and ways in which I’ve been sharing my playlist.
I’m not truly happy with iTunes. I don’t have an iPod, I don’t really want to be organising my library around iTunes, it doesn’t cope well with streaming stuff from my server at home, I’m not sure it tags properly, the album art is held in some kind of horrid proprietary format… you get the picture. And I don’t like DRM, but then neither does Steve Jobs (great counterpoint article to the current hoopla, over here).
Songbird seems to be the perfect answer. It’s a new music player built on the Mozilla platform. Stephen O’Grady talked about Songbird back in December, amongst other things. It essentially lets me manage my music my way. It has extensions, including a last.fm / Audioscrobbler plugin. It is brilliantly integrated with the web – find a page with links to music files, and you can add them directly to the Songbird library… it will download them in the background. You really should check out the screencast for a nice overview. The only thing missing is the whizzy flippy album cover eye candy that iTunes provides.
Well, not quite the only thing. I have issues with Songbird, too. First up is that Mugshot doesn’t integrate with it. I didn’t think that this would be a problem, as Mugshot knows about my last.fm profile… but it actually doesn’t seem to pick up what I’m playing from there, only from iTunes itself when it is running on my laptop. Next, although Songbird has an Audioscrobbler plugin, it is… temperamental… and doesn’t work quite right. It also doesn’t let me browse radio streams from my last.fm neighbours, or mark tunes as ones that I love, both of which the ”official” last.fm client software can do. But hey, Songbird as a whole is only at version 0.2.x, so maybe I shouldn’t be expecting the moon on a stick.
Oh, and on top of all that, I’ve been trying to use Media Monkey to organise my ID3 tags and embed album art. That is a bit hit-and-miss… my eclectic taste in some obscure artists seems to be defeating even the smartest tagging software.
So for now, I’m back on iTunes for ripping and playing, the last.fm client for scrobbling, and Mugshot remains in my life. And I keep Songbird handy for those times I want to leech a whole load of free tunes.
While I’m here, I just want to mention that the latest version of the Mugshot client (for Windows) seems far, far more stable. It integrates nicely with Firefox, and I haven’t yet seen one of the random low-level library crashes that was bringing the app down regularly in the previous version. If you are interested in taking a look, I’d be delighted to have you in my network.
In each case, I only found out about the event days (in the first two cases, just one day) before. Upcoming.org has proven to be entirely useless at letting me know about these things – in many cases I’ve had to create the event entry myself.
I’m particularly upset – genuinely gutted, in fact – about the Ben Folds gig. I saw Ben Folds Five play in Portsmouth about seven years ago, when the band was touring The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner. They were absolutely superb – I’ve been an avid follower ever since.
Clearly I need to find some new ways of tracking what is happening in the exciting world out there.
Following the discussion about managing digital music, I signed up for the free version of last.fm during the week, to see what the fuss was about.
So far: interesting! A little app on the desktop “scrobbles” (tells the last.fm server) what you are listening to, and the information is used to let your friends know. You can also get streams of similar / recommended music based on what you are listening to. If you take out a paid subscription, you can create your own radio streams to share with your friends.
It doesn’t have the immediate fun of “quipping” that Mugshot provides, but it looks like it could be quite interesting. It attempts to work out your musical compatibility with others, based on the similarity of your interests.
I’ve found a few of my contacts from the blogosphere on last.fm already, but if you use it (or feel like trying it out) and I haven’t friended you yet, feel free to friend me instead – check out my profile. I haven’t listened to a huge amount of music yet, but obviously that will grow over time…
