Hopeless Geek

If you haven’t read Steve Jobs’ recent essay on DRM and the music industry then you really should read that before this. Needless to say, having the head of the largest purveyor of DRM-encoded music files speak out about the technology and instruct users as to how to effect change in the industry is quite landmark.

In short, Jobs makes the following key points:

• The music companies required and require Apple to use DRM.
• If that DRM is broken and remains broken, Apple loses the ability to sell their music.
• DRM-encoded music occupies approximately 3% of any given iPod, with the other 97% being from CDs, other stores, or other sources.
• The largest source of sold music is the CD, which has no DRM.
• Thus, DRM can’t solve the problem of piracy when a user can take a CD, encode it, and share it.
• As such, DRM serves no purpose and Apple would immediately cease using DRM if the music companies would let them.

For the most part, I believe him. There is, however, something fishy with the statement and reality.

It looks like I got a birthday gift and didn’t even know it. A fellow going by “sticktron” posted a nifty infographic detailing my previous Do-It-Yourself Smart Radio Station post. It’s certainly a bit easier to understand when you look at it this way. Note that the playlist detailed in the screenshot is unworkable due to them all being in one window, but the criteria are valid when used as detailed on the right.

This approach is based on the idea of a master playlist, which feeds off of several pools of potential songs. Each pool is created by a dynamic playlist—called Smart Playlists in iTunes/iPod—and updates itself constantly.

As your songs get listened to, rated, weeded out, given priority, etc., you will be continually upgrading the mix. It is TRULY your own personal Radio Station experience.

deviantART: Advanced Playlists for iTunes by ~sticktron,

More and more people seem to misunderstand the recent products from Apple. It’s like people see them and go, “I wouldn’t buy that, so why did they make that? Apple is [dying|dead|bankrupt|Republican]! The horror!”

Umm, so, yeah. There’s approximately 5,999,999,999 other people in this world and I’m guessing, it’s just a wild guess, that some of them might have different opinions.

A while ago I read a tip somewhere about how to make a few smart playlists work with each other to make a mix of music for a smaller iPod. After thinking for a short time I realized I could make a perfect little ever-changing radio station out of iTunes with a similar methodology. Start by considering what makes a good radio station (I know, it’s been a while…):

• Your favorite music.
• A balance of new and old music.
• A moderate variety. You want to hear some songs repeatedly, but not at close intervals.
• New old music. Don’t just play the same old songs, cycle them in and out.
• Old new music. If a newer song is really good, keep it in rotation as an old song.

iTunes has a way to handle all of this. The core here is that you’re going to have to rate all of your music for this to work. Unrated music will not make it into rotation. It doesn’t have to be accurate right now. You can go find a favorite artist and mark all the tracks as fives or find all your audio books and mark them twos or something. Just get some ratings in. As your ratings change, so will the station.

Edit menu, Show Duplicate Songs.

Rockin’.

In the same pen-stroke as the author of The Audio War writes:

Apple is making corporate enemies by refusing to license FairPlay.

He also writes:

Except Hewlett-Packard (which has an agreement to sell HP-branded iPods) and Motorola (which plans to launch phones compatible with songs from Apple’s iTunes Music Store).

Make up your mind. Either they’re not cooperating or they’re not cooperating with the people you want them to. There is a huge-ass difference between the two. Apple seems to want a dead-end, no transfer device that only works with iTMS. If that’s what they want, make it and offer it to them. They are, contrary to the opinion of self-important “digital rights activists”, under no obligation to license FairPlay to anyone that is willing to cough up cash. This isn’t Microsoft, the literal whore of the software world, willing to sell itself out for any penny you have under the couch (and then find a way to take the couch once you’re “in”). This is Apple, for which there is no phrase that consistently fits these days other than “Holy shit, look at the stock today!”

You know what I want? I want iTMS bookmarks. I want to be able to bookmark a band’s page (in iTunes, not by making a URL for Safari) and be able to just go there. I want to bookmark the new releases page instead of getting the email or RSS feed (or the music videos page for an artist, or whatever else). I want to browse and browse and press a button that says “I’ll review this later” and have it stuff the link away. If you’re going to look like a web browser, act like one.

Hell, I want full-on iTunes bookmarks. I want to bookmark a certain view in the browser so I can return to it (like command-clicking on artists to hear them mixed together). Past that, I want to be able to take a browser view (like three artists and six albums of theirs) and press a button and have it make me a Smart Playlist with those settings, too.

You know, I want more than that. Tiger has to have a way of uniquely-identifying data since Spotlight can open anything in any program, so let me bookmark that, system-wide. Let me bookmark Mail, music, photos, files, web pages, AFP shares, whatever I want. Store it in a system-wide bookmark service. Then put it on Rendezvous based on kind so I can share my music bookmarks to others listening to my iTunes, or my photo bookmarks to those viewing my iPhoto libraries.

They were right with Tiger: the future of computing lies not in storing information, but finding it.

Microsoft is selling music. The leading software manufacturer (by volume) is now on a quest to dip into the supposedly lucrative pot of gold that is music downloading. The question on everyone’s mind is: Can they beat Apple?

In an amazingly hilarious twist on an old rivalry, Microsoft is now in the submissive position in a market share battle with, of all companies, Apple Computer. Expect Microsoft to pull some old tactics out of the war chest on this one, such as making MSN Music your Start Page, including a link to it in your first Outlook email, flashing it a dozen times during Office 200X installs, or even making Windows Media Player for Mac support playlists and DRMed WMA files.

Of all the tactics that Microsoft can use to get a good share of the market there’s one thing they can’t do and, again, this is irony at its best: Microsoft’s product won’t run on the most popular platform out there.

Isn’t that just painful funny?

After all this time flaunting their superior market share (in a passive-aggressive fashion) over the rest of the world, Microsoft is now the baby entering a market well behind the other players. This time, however, good marketing and leaving horse heads in competitor’s beds won’t give them the market. Apple is the gatekeeper this time.