Exactly, there is an Aussie gal on there using firefox proxy and she's in. Another from S Africa using a proxy in Poughkeepsie NY. I can't walk you through it because I don't know how, but you would LOOOOOVE this site Nanker!
google music is upload. I wonder how long this will take. It said it wold limit it to 20K tracks but did not let me pick which ones with the itunes option.
So I changed the folders it should look for. Hope that works.
Hmm. This is not an anti-spotify rant (see Doofy's link), as I am sure it has many uses, just thinking aloud about my own relationship to music purchasing. I was reflecting again just the other day on how the benefit of being able to listen to full recordings before I buy (and yes I still want to buy music, not just stream it) - i.e. it reduces the amount of disappointing purchases - is balanced a little by an accompanying defect - it makes it less exciting to buy the album when I have already listened to it a few times. It removes the (these days virtual) feeling of rushing home from the record store to see what the album sounds like, with the added edge of having spent money on it. There is something quite fun about taking the plunge and buying an album having only heard one song or some samples (or even found the art work cool) and embarking on the adventure of hearing the rest. It's like sport - what makes it interesting is that your team might lose, and that you have committed to one of the teams being your team - take away either condition and it's boring. I have a fear regarding joining spotify or another streaming service that even though I am sure it would lead to new discoveries, it might in the end just make acquiring music more boring. From their page: "it's like a magical version of iTunes in which you have already bought every song in the world" - that sounds to me like terminal boredom. Already bought everything? Sounds awful. Where's the thrill of the chase? The tempering of impatience as download day nears? The satisfaction of finally buying that album you'd been after for ages?
Germanprof - Your conundrum reminds me of a column on Pitchfork last week that said:
This is the habit that strikes me as most problematic. Fifteen years ago, the main problem a lover of music-- or film, or television, or other varieties of pop culture-- would experience was scarcity. It took money to get hold of the stuff, and if you liked anything weird, it took effort, too. As a result, the default mode was to like what you could. In fact, the best way to demonstrate to others that you cared and were discerning about music was to like things-- to have enjoyed exploring all these realms that took some effort to get to.
Over the past decade and a half, this situation seems to have reversed. The problem people talk about now is not scarcity but glut: a glut of music available to consume, a glut of media to tell you about it, a glut of things that desperately want your attention. Somewhere along the way, the default mode has taken a hard shift in the direction of showing your discernment by not liking things-- by seeing through the hype and feeling superior to whatever you're being told about in a given week. Give it the attention it wants, but in the negative.
I think that if I had spotify, or something similar, it would have just this effect. Instead of broadening my horizons it would restrict them by putting me into my own personal echo chamber. Example: I'm currently listening to Sunn 0))). I've never been a fan of metal, but I'd heard about them so I grabbed a couple of their albums for basically nothing on Amie Street. I still am not a metal fan, but every so often I put this on and get some good enjoyment out of it. If I'd "already bought every song in the world" I'd probably be listening to something like Austra right now. Austra's debut is an album I've wanted but haven't wanted to pay the Amazon price and it's on Domino so no eMu, and I'd while love to have it it's an awful lot like what I usually listen to and it's far less likely I'd currently be experimenting with something different.
I like novelty too. But I am not actually sure that immediate access to every track in full over the long haul necessarily nurtures the delight of novelty - if any track is as available as any other, then maybe none of them are the brave new experiment, the album I go out on a limb and use my remaining credit to buy even though it's a stretch...like I said, I realize it does make it lower cost and easier to try new stuff and that may lead to discoveries, but what if I discover things and then care about them less because they are so easy come easy go? There's already a tension in my music collection (perhaps large by the standards of some outside present company, but microscopic compared to spotify's collection) between exploring new tracks and listening properly to ones I already have (most things have to be listened to repeatedly to be able to know them properly). If my effective collection becomes 8 million tracks or something, is that only adding value or also taking it away?
Of course an obvious answer is: depends how you use it, and I may well use it as a selective sampling service for things I'm really not sure whether I'm brave enough to download. But new services/technologies also bring their own undertow with them. @cafreema - that Pitchfork quote was interesting - the first part, about liking, caring, effort, and scarcity being linked is exactly what I'm worried about losing as access expands exponentially. A big part of me would rather own a finite amount of music that I sought out and sacrificed something for than continuously interface with an effectively infinite (=finite but infinite for me because impossible to listen to it all) amount of music. (Of course the other part of me goes through spells of downloading free stuff like the proverbial monkey on crack. But I am not sure that's the part of me most conducive to my long-term love of music.)
I've had that problem too the last few years of having more music then I ever listen to. I still get plenty of free music, but still feel like a consumer too often instead of a listener. That's been one slightly positive effect of the eMu money for credits change, less new albums each month, though I know I'm supplementing through the library, amazon, and elsewhere.
Gp, I've pointed this out more than a few times, but in case you're unfamiliar, I think a lot of the feeling you describe is based on the (very real) endowment effect, an interesting cognitive bias.
I get your reservations about full streaming services, but think you might neglect one great aspect of them - the ability to listen once to albums you want to or should hear, but know you probably aren't interested in acquiring them. That applies to being able to hear lots of classic albums of all sorts (e.g. I use Rdio and napster to listen to a lot of selections from Tom Moon's 1000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die, especially slotted for dinnertime), and also a good way to track the musical zeitgeist, one-off listens of albums gettings lots of mentions but that you probably wouldn't buy.
I agree there's a risk of the downsides you note, but personally find them manageable, and think you might too. For example, though I do use streaming to sample albums I'm on the fence about grabbing, stuff I know I want I don't stream in advance just to "peek", so to speak.
Yes, that sounds about right - and probably roughly where I'll end up in actual usage terms. And I agree it can be a way of listening to something I have no intention of buying (the only downside there still being budgeting of listening time). I do remember you mentioning the endowment effect before; I'm sure that's part of the picture. I too will have to resist peeking if I do sign up. As I said at the start, nothing against the services per se, just trying to figure out my own psychology and how they might affect it.
Personally I like Spotify. It gives me the opportunity to listen to things that I might want to buy to check them out first. It is reaaly good for those borderline choices where 30 seconds per track is not enough. We don't hace access to all the sites you have in the States to do that. It is also useful when I am working away from home to listen to music on my laptop and not through the headphones on my ipod. Like GP I do like to own albums, even if in digital download format, and there are certain artists I must have as a CD! But it is my age that does it...
The same thing happened to me, I logged out and when I logged back in it just picked up the downloading where it had left off. Go figure. Oops, I think uploading is the correct term
It is most definitely Google Music BETA. Unlike other Google services, there seems to be some major issues so far. Sadly everybody widely releases their betas now which means people don't understand that the software is still in a buggy state of mind. I'm guilty of this, too, which is why I keep getting frustrated with the client.
Well, I just got a "thermal event" on my PC and it has to have been from the GM beta. After I turned it down to slow, 256K. It was hogging CPU time @ 24% even after I throttled it.
Now I have killed its process. It has angered the queen.
I came across some interesting fine print for the Amazon Cloud Player:
unaltered Amazon MP3 purchases uploaded to Cloud Drive are stored for free and will not count against your Cloud Drive storage space
This works if the Amazon Id stored in the MP3 matches an Amazon ID you bought with the same account. So it's not necessary to "re-buy" stuff to get it stored in the cloud for free. I wish they'd get the Cloud Player working on Crackberry. I can load up the web player and see the tracks, but they don't play. I suppose I could download what I wanted to listen to.
edited to add:
I just finished uploading a bunch of old amazon stuff. Only one wasn't recognized and was assessed storage. It's Don't Mess With Texas: SXSW 2011 New Music Sampler Don't Mess with Texas: SXSW 2008 New Music Sampler and the Amazon IDs are missing. Amazon shows that I bought it June 9. Amazon doesn't have this album currently. Maybe the Amazon IDs weren't in use back then. I have some truly ancient single tracks from Amazon. I'll have to take a look at them.
Observations: The critical item is the Amazon ID in the comment of the ID3 tag. The song ids on album tracks I looked at were sequential. This let me fix several tracks that had lost their ID3 tags. I also noticed that tracks where I had changed the genre showed up as separate instances of the album in the player's album list. Here's an example:
No automatic uploads for Linux users. Only Windows and Mac. I had to upload them to my Music folder on my Cloud Drive. The main annoyance was making all the album folders and navigating back and forth. Also the cloud uploader wouldn't let me select folders to upload. I had to open each folder and select the tracks.
They've done it one better. Now any MP3 and unencrypted m4a music files are stored free on any paid cloud drive plan. The files have to be music and can't be lossless m4a. Details about Amazon unlimited music storage.
Great feature, but too bad for those of us who edit the comments box! I routinely input personnel in jazz albums...thus wiping out those Amazon IDs, at least for my jazz AMZ purchases.
Comments
exactly what is turntable Fm and why would I want to join
Sounds like my kind of thing
google music is upload. I wonder how long this will take. It said it wold limit it to 20K tracks but did not let me pick which ones with the itunes option.
So I changed the folders it should look for. Hope that works.
I think that if I had spotify, or something similar, it would have just this effect. Instead of broadening my horizons it would restrict them by putting me into my own personal echo chamber. Example: I'm currently listening to Sunn 0))). I've never been a fan of metal, but I'd heard about them so I grabbed a couple of their albums for basically nothing on Amie Street. I still am not a metal fan, but every so often I put this on and get some good enjoyment out of it. If I'd "already bought every song in the world" I'd probably be listening to something like Austra right now. Austra's debut is an album I've wanted but haven't wanted to pay the Amazon price and it's on Domino so no eMu, and I'd while love to have it it's an awful lot like what I usually listen to and it's far less likely I'd currently be experimenting with something different.
Craig
Of course an obvious answer is: depends how you use it, and I may well use it as a selective sampling service for things I'm really not sure whether I'm brave enough to download. But new services/technologies also bring their own undertow with them.
@cafreema - that Pitchfork quote was interesting - the first part, about liking, caring, effort, and scarcity being linked is exactly what I'm worried about losing as access expands exponentially. A big part of me would rather own a finite amount of music that I sought out and sacrificed something for than continuously interface with an effectively infinite (=finite but infinite for me because impossible to listen to it all) amount of music. (Of course the other part of me goes through spells of downloading free stuff like the proverbial monkey on crack. But I am not sure that's the part of me most conducive to my long-term love of music.)
I get your reservations about full streaming services, but think you might neglect one great aspect of them - the ability to listen once to albums you want to or should hear, but know you probably aren't interested in acquiring them. That applies to being able to hear lots of classic albums of all sorts (e.g. I use Rdio and napster to listen to a lot of selections from Tom Moon's 1000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die, especially slotted for dinnertime), and also a good way to track the musical zeitgeist, one-off listens of albums gettings lots of mentions but that you probably wouldn't buy.
I agree there's a risk of the downsides you note, but personally find them manageable, and think you might too. For example, though I do use streaming to sample albums I'm on the fence about grabbing, stuff I know I want I don't stream in advance just to "peek", so to speak.
The same thing happened to me, I logged out and when I logged back in it just picked up the downloading where it had left off. Go figure. Oops, I think uploading is the correct term
Now I have killed its process. It has angered the queen.
Very soon virtually my entire music collection will literally be at my fingertips where ever in the world I find myself
Bwahahahahahahahah, bwahahahahahahaha
edited to add:
I just finished uploading a bunch of old amazon stuff. Only one wasn't recognized and was assessed storage. It's Don't Mess With Texas: SXSW 2011 New Music Sampler Don't Mess with Texas: SXSW 2008 New Music Sampler and the Amazon IDs are missing. Amazon shows that I bought it June 9. Amazon doesn't have this album currently. Maybe the Amazon IDs weren't in use back then. I have some truly ancient single tracks from Amazon. I'll have to take a look at them.
Observations: The critical item is the Amazon ID in the comment of the ID3 tag. The song ids on album tracks I looked at were sequential. This let me fix several tracks that had lost their ID3 tags. I also noticed that tracks where I had changed the genre showed up as separate instances of the album in the player's album list. Here's an example:
No automatic uploads for Linux users. Only Windows and Mac. I had to upload them to my Music folder on my Cloud Drive. The main annoyance was making all the album folders and navigating back and forth. Also the cloud uploader wouldn't let me select folders to upload. I had to open each folder and select the tracks.