Tag Archives: music

Today I choose to cleanse the palate (TIC00035d)

The PolyBlog
August 26 2020

I’ve been working on my basement redesign for a good part of the summer in varying forms and degrees of engagement. In particular, I’ve gone hard on the setup and redesign in the last five days, with a complete revamp, new wiring for internet connections, design hacking of Ikea designs, and even taking a jigsaw to literally hack three desks for cord management notches (thanks to Andrea for the inspiration!).

And while I’ve enjoyed the success of the new layout so far, there is still lots to do. I had hoped to finish this weekend, but that is looking unlikely at this point. Maybe by the end of next week. I was very happy to see three large pieces of furniture vacate the premises today — two large coffee tables that Jacob used to use for train setups and the old TV stand that I replaced recently. Again, thanks to Andrea.

But I’m getting close to “reorg-ed” out. I really just wanted to play with something simple tonight. I needed a palate cleanser. Something mildly interesting yet still productive.

Cleansing the palate

I checked my never-ending to do list, and Apple Music jumped out at me.

I blogged not too long ago about the fact that I uploaded all of my music to Apple Music, and I have to say, it was a complete sh** show by Apple Music. Oh, sure, the files UPLOADED. All of them, which is more than other hosting agents did (I’m glaring at you, YouTube Music!).

But the resulting library was TERRIBLE for organization. Tons of files got moved around, album information was lost, it was “mucho meh”. And totally unusable. The resulting library in Apple Music looked like file storage created by monkeys on typewriters trying for the works of Shakespeare. Heck, they might have been writing 50 Shades of Gray and got a little too excited, I don’t know, but it was messy.

So, tonight, just for fun amongst the file nerds, I reverted the uploads i.e. I deleted all of it from the iTunes upload. Sure, I kept a bunch of playlists and anything I’ve purchased directly, but the rest? Gone. I’m starting over with my separate music library, and rather than upload all of the songs at once, I’ll do a bit at a time over the next year. If your memory of earlier posts is good, you’ll recall that I do not let Apple manage my whole music library, no matter how much they promise they won’t mess it up. Instead, I keep a folder of my Music Masters that is totally separate from whatever Apple and iTunes insist on doing.

Just to get me started, I pulled up a simple Christmas Collection by Bing Crosby. All of the songs are by Bing, there is ONE song on it that includes Danny Kaye. When I uploaded the collection the first time, it separated it into four different folders. One folder under Bing’s name with about 7 songs in it, one folder under Various with about 3 songs in it, one folder under Danny Kaye (it overrode Bing) for just their one shared song, and another folder for about 5 songs where it decided the artist was White Christmas, there was no album name, and the years etc. for all of them were different.

Now, in fairness to Apple Music, I know WHY it did it. Because it isn’t a real album. It’s a collection I got from someone at some point, or maybe Andrea did, I don’t know, and it has 16 songs by Bing. About 10 of them overlap with the White Christmas soundtrack, so Apple liked matching to that album. Even for songs that WEREN’T on the soundtrack. The one with Danny Kaye was partially right. And it was perhaps random guessing on the rest.

Can I stop it from guessing? Sure. I just have to fix all the metadata fields BEFORE I upload it into the library.

Which I did. And then Apple Music decided that “Christmas Collection” was REALLY “The Christmas Collection”, an album by the same name, relabelled everything to Various Artists at the album level, kept everything at the song level to be Bing as the individual artist, and basically filed it in weird ways so that I will never find it. Grrr…again, maybe not all Apple Music’s fault. I didn’t fix ALL of the metadata first.

Okay, so I need to work the bugs out of the workflow. I deleted it from iTunes, went back to my Music Masters, opened up ALL the meta data in one box, assigned and tweaked it for the full collection of 16 songs, recopied it over to Apple’s intake folder, let Apple’s algorithm have wild monkey sex with the files, and voila, one collection safely ensconced in Apple Music. Just in time for Christmas.

Now that I know the “secret” process to do, many of the others will be able to be done in bulk. Still, a bit annoying. On the other hand, all my metadata will get cleaned up, as well it should be, right? Or at least so says the archivist in me as it rattles its cage and whispers for freedom, food and unlimited tags.

In the meantime, I wanted to also see how well things worked for downloads. I’ll have to be a bit vague or opaque here as I am not entirely sure that what I did was completely legit. There are a few extra steps involved, a few clicks here and there, and a couple of new pieces of software to help me manage the collections better, but it all worked reasonably well enough.

For some reason, I thought I would start with the album called Best of Sass Jordan. I’ve been listening to Alannah Myles’ self-titled album, and Apple Music thought I might enjoy BoSJ. I thought, “Probably not”, as my musical tastes are, umm, eclectic at best (or as my wife says, non-existent), but I actually quite like it. I wouldn’t have thought she’d have a full album of material that I would like, I’m often more about individual songs than an artist, but I can listen to it quite easily while working on other things. If anything, it is too short! I’ll have to expand my Sass Jordan repertoire.

Resetting my brain

While the above likely seems really nerdy, or anal-retentive and time consuming, it actually wasn’t. I was doing other stuff while some of the files were processing, like playing some turn-based word games with Jacob and Andrea, finishing laundry, etc. But I wanted a small puzzle to solve to just clear the cognitive pipeline and fixing my Apple Music setup was just the thing.

I even risked going down a rabbit hole to try adding some customized artwork for personal collections as I have some templates in Powerpoint that I am using for another purpose that would work great here, and Apple let me use my OWN artwork quite easily. Two clicks, done. Sweet.

Today I choose to cleanse the palate with a small puzzle to be solved to take my mind off the basement re-org that I’ve been working on for awhile.

What choices are you making today?

Inventing a new game – Apple Music Trivia

The PolyBlog
July 28 2019

Before you go searching for an app, there isn’t one. This is just a DIY trivia game that requires nothing more than a streaming service, a streaming device (like your phone) and preferably a second person to make it fun. My wife and I invented the game by accident, but now we’re playing in the car all the time to pass the commute or part of long trips.

We have Apple Music, although any streaming service will do. All of them have genre playlists or radio stations, and with Apple Music, we go for the radio station option for the variety. We click on RADIO STATION / GENRES / YEARS and then we often choose 1980s POP (one of the few years where we both have a good chance). We press PLAY, and then turn the phone away.

As the song starts, we play NAME THAT TUNE and try for the title and artist. A few notes in, we almost always recognize it, but putting that recognition to use to name a title or artist is way more challenging. Sometimes it’s obvious, like the opening notes for a Madonna song. Other times, it’s a mid-80s rock ballad and they all sound the same! Fun is when in the first few notes, we have a strong guess…and then five notes later, that guess is CLEARLY not right. Once we get it, since I’m driving, my wife turns over the phone to check title and artist, then turns it back and I press the advance button on the bluetooth controller (she could press it on the phone but the next one comes up so fast, often her eyes end up reading it and spoiling it before she can look away, the same problem you have if you play by yourself, obviously not when you’re driving though).

We occasionally listen to the whole song, but most of the time we don’t, we get it and then skip to the next one. Here’s the REALLY weird part. I know diddly squat about music. It has come up often in my relationship with my wife, seriously. I might know a song, but I rarely know the title exactly, nor even the artist. U2 is a regular failure, but bands in general I never know. I have a shot at the title, not so much the band. Which actually works out well sometimes when we’re playing — I might get the title, but she’ll get the band afterwards.

As I said, we play ’80s Pop the most. For ’70s Pop, Andrea doesn’t get many of them. And one day last week I was on fire — I had titles and the artists for a whole bunch in a row! For ’90s Pop, Andrea knows almost every one, many of which I’m not sure I’ve even ever heard (I listened to radio at home in Peterborough up until ’91, but in Victoria and Ottawa in the ’90s, I was more likely to listen to Country than Pop…reminds me of the classic line, “We have BOTH kinds of music…country AND western”, but I digress).

Jacob helps too and seems to enjoy it…he takes over the phone, and since he can’t guess them, he’s happy to be the one to tell us the answers if we can’t get it, or confirm when we’re right. Other times, he controls the music choices which tend towards Weird Al, Imagine Dragons, Bob Seger or Elton John/The Who for Pinball Wizard. Don’t ask about the eclectic nature of his choices or the weird musical world that has him memorizing all the words to American Pie. As long as he’s happy, that’s all that matters, except we limit Weird Al after about two songs on long car rides and no John Denver, Gordon Lightfoot or Kim Mitchell. If Andrea hears Patio Lanterns, it’s not good for anyone in the vicinity.

We haven’t tried 2000s Pop, but we enjoy trying for ’50s and ’60s Pop. Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, Petula Clark are popular…At some point, I’m hoping to play in a larger group up at the cottage, not for competition, just a broader group of people trying who know different eras.

We seem to have default guesses for some decades. Andrea guesses the Four Tops, Four Seasons and the Temptations a lot for earlier years. I can never spot Stevie Wonder. I surprisingly think more people sound like Rod Stewart than is humanly possible, something Andrea is happy to ridicule me for, as she should.

It’s fun, it’s frustrating, and then out of the blue you’ll nail One Fine Day and that it’s the version by the Chiffons. Mind. Blown. What esoteric part of my brain is holding on to THAT info?

But I think I enjoy it most when one of us gets the first part, and the other comes up with the second part. Teamwork makes the dream work. And yes, I say that when it happens. Just to be annoying. Andrea just skips to the next song. After we do a ridiculous fist bump.

Give it a go. Bet you can’t stop, not even in the name of love. Note: Ear worms are commonplace. Proceed at your own risk.

NAC Pops – Women Rock

The PolyBlog
January 13 2019

My wife and I had tickets for the latest NAC Pops show this week, and unlike the odd one last time (NAC Pops – Holiday Swing), this was a bit more their style when it comes to non-orchestral “modern music”. They’ll do Broadway or rock or a host of other “pop” sources for music, stick the orchestra in the back playing the music, and throw some good singers up front. I confess, at times, they bury the orchestra. But it’s still fun.

This one was along that line, with eighteen fantastic songs made popular by female artists. To handle vocals, the program had three female ex-Broadway-calibre performers — Katrina Rose Dideriksen (Hairspray, Rent, Grease, Legally Blonde, etc.), Cassidy Catanzaro (American Songbook, backups for big rock stars, songwriter), and Shayna Steele (Rent, Hairspray, Jesus Christ Superstar, huge backup opportunities with larger stars, etc.). Katrina is the young relative newbie, Cassidy is a bit older and richer voice, and Shayna is a bit older still with more experience and a more vibrant voice. They also portrayed themselves that way throughout the night — Katrina was the “rocker”, Cassidy was the experienced singer, and Shayna was the aging (but not old) master with some down-home funk.

The show opened with Katrina singing “Piece of My Heart” (Janis Joplin), and while it was okay, I found her a bit off-putting. It seemed like she was singing it, not embodying it, and some of her vocal stylings didn’t seem to fit the song. This trend would continue for most of the night.

Next up was Shayna with “Dancing in the Street” (Martha Reeves), and she knocked it out of the park. It’s a bit odd to hear the song with a full orchestra backing it up, but it was great.

Cassidy came out to do “So Far Away” (Carole King) and it was clear this girl could sing. The song didn’t challenge her much, and she was holding back, but it was great.

Then it was back to Katrina to do “Flashdance…What A Feeling” (Irene Cara). If you remember the movie, and the scene where this is sang, you know that it starts off REALLY slow. In fact, I remember reading a short article about how the opening slowness is deliberately meant to represent “holding back”, but while I find it TOO slow in the full recording, this version seemed EVEN slower. And worse, when Katrina was singing the slow or up-tempo portions, there was almost no emotional content in the song. The first part is meant to be pain (“It hurts when there’s nothing…”) followed by the joy of dance and music sending all of that pain into oblivion. If she was a B-stage singer at a concert hall, it would have been fine. In an NAC hall with limited audience reaction and energy, it fell kind of flat. And there was something familiar about her that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. More later.

Shayna came back to do “Both Sides Now” (Joni Mitchell) and I hate to knock her, but it was the wrong choice for her age and voice, in my opinion at least. She did a great job, but the Joni Mitchell version at age 25 captured the innocence in the voice, a youthful spirit. Hearing a 40-something woman with a full rich voice doing it seemed odd to me. Good, but not awesome. By contrast, she followed it up with “Freeway of Love” (Aretha Franklin) and it was AMAZING. In addition, hearing the orchestra come in on the horns section was awe-inspiring. It’s not often you hear an orchestra really do justice to some of the simpler stylings in the rock anthems, but when you need a horn or string sound, these are the guys and gals to do it. Fantastic.

Cassidy came back out for another Carole King song, “Up on the Roof”, and it was solid, but not out of the park.

The last single song for the set was “Love is a Battlefield” (Pat Benatar) done as a ballad. Apparently it was originally a ballad, but Benatar turned it into an uptempo rock anthem, and Holly Knight would only license it to them to do a ballad version in the show. It was interesting, and Katrina did a great job (best one of the half for her), but it was a very strange version to hear. Not a Katrina problem, just a song I didn’t enjoy.

The first half closed off with the three of them doing “You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman” (Carole King), and the three of them together are a pretty impressive sight. I was hoping there would be more of that in the second half.

As I mentioned above, often the orchestra doesn’t get a whole lot to do on the nights where there are singers and dancers in front of them. I don’t mean they’re not playing, I just mean they are only lightly showcased. Often the conductor throws them a bone and they do one or two instrumentals to show off, but they aren’t usually true showcases for their talents. Tonight’s “bone” was “Pick Up the Pieces” (The Average White Band), and you’ve heard it a thousand times for TV shows and movies probably without having any idea what it was. Here is a version on Youtube:

But for a “bone”, it was kind of fun to hear the orchestra play it in full.

Katrina did the lead for “I Love Rock and Roll” (Joan Jett) with the other two handling backup duties, and while Katrina was trying to sell herself as the “rocker”, I was still feeling like she was reminding me of someone I’d seen before. And it suddenly hit me, because I’d read her bio at the start of the show. She wasn’t just IN the show “Rent”, she played Mimi. For those of you who aren’t obsessed with the show like I am, Mimi is basically a very young-looking 19 with the possibility that she is lying about her age, dancing in a strip club (it involves a lawn chair and handcuffs apparently), and hooked on drugs. She is extremely immature despite claiming to be otherwise, and her sole purpose in life is to feel good (hence the drugs). Her big number? She is a “cat” who wants to go out and “howl at the moon” — “I want to go oouUUTT tonight”. And one of her signature moves is to dance really hard and shake her legs like she can’t sit still, along with a staccato singing voice. Which is EXACTLY what it looked like Katrina was doing. An older version of Mimi singing rock songs. And why I was seeing her as familiar — I hadn’t seen Katrina before, I was seeing an echo of the Mimi character.

And while I like Mimi, I wouldn’t want to be friends with her. She’s shallow, immature, flighty, etc. Not what you’re looking for in a “power ballad singer”. But I digress.

Next up was a solo for Katrina, “These Dreams” (Heart). The song slows it down a bit, a bit more of a softer ballad. And out of NOWHERE, comes this fantastic voice. She did an AWESOME job of it. No Mimi, no playing like a wannabe 30-something ex-rocker chick, just Katrina singing normal. Freaking awesome version.

The next three were quick hits…Shayna doing an okay job with “Best (Simply The Best)” (Tina Turner), Cassidy doing a good job with “I Feel The Earth Move” (Carole King), and Cassidy again giving a solid rendition of “You’ve Got A Friend” (Carole King) with okay audience sing-along for some of the verses.

Katrina came back out, I was hoping for another awesome song, and we were back to Mimi doing “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” (Pat Benatar). The horns were great in the song, while the string section seemed mostly along for the ride.

Then Shayna closed out the solos with “What’s Love Got To Do With It” (Tina Turner). It wasn’t the best song she did all night, and I wondered if part of it was the repetitive nature of the second half of the song. She just seemed to fizzle a bit. Might just be me.

And then the finale.

All three came out and did “Proud Mary” (Tina Turner) with all three of them taking a turn as lead vocals (Shayna, Cassidy and Katrina). Great way to end, including for the obvious encore.

So overall, a much more enjoyable evening than the last time where we saw a scat version of the Dreidel song. 🙂

NAC Pops – Holiday Swing

The PolyBlog
December 9 2018

Andrea and I went to see one of the National Arts Centre (NAC) Pops series last night entitled “Holiday Swing”. As the name suggests, it is a “swing” / big band version of Christmas music. While the series is almost always a good time, it is much improved when Jack Everly is conducting himself as opposed to designing the overall program for the year. Unfortunately, in that regard, it was not Jack, but Byron Stripling performing as conductor, trumpet, and vocals.

I confess that I’m not a big band aficionado, nor a jazz specialist, and was not familiar with Byron Stripling directly. You can see him online in a popular YouTube video:

His trumpet playing is awesome, but that’s about almost where the kudos end for the evening. The night was so inconsistent, it’s hard to know where to begin.

Overall, there were 14 songs during the night, and the NAC Orchestra was sitting twiddling their thumbs for far too much of the show. In addition to Stripling, jazz pianist/organist Bobby Floyd was joining the orchestra for the evening and his talent is made obvious by his long jams, improvisation and complex mixes. And he’s fun to watch too…in the video below, jump to the 2m30 mark and see how animated his face is while planning. Last night, it was even more so…he reacts to every note.

But as great as he is, after an almost 10 minute solo jam, I was more than ready to see them move on. Later in the show, he did another long session in one of the songs, and again, while impressive, two minutes in and I was looking at my watch.

The group opened with What Child is This and Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, and while both were okay, they were not spectacular. Or maybe it was just that by the time Floyd finished, I had forgotten what came before. Enjoyable, sure; impressive, absolutely. Needed, no.

The third song, Blue Christmas, was divided into three sections, an opening that was mainly the trumpet, a middle section with Floyd highlighted on organ, and an ending with everyone (whole orchestra). The opening “third”, with just the trumpet, was freaking awesome. The song is MEANT to be “blue” / sad…and so many turn it into a content-less upbeat tempo. Stripling did it totally downbeat and blue, and as I said, did an amazing job.

Then we came to the fourth song. I Have A Little Dreidel. When I saw it on the program, I said to Andrea, “Well, that should be interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a jazz/big bang version of the Dreidel song.” I was not optimistic, but I thought, okay, it’s on the program, might be okay. And if it had been just a jazz-y / Big Bang version, and they moved on, I’d probably just think “meh”. But when he threw in a few scat verses, it went from “meh” to “WTF?”. It was ridiculous.

The fifth song was Angels We Have Heard On High. I was raised Catholic, and I never knew that the song had a different name than the tune underlying it (a hymn simply called Gloria…when I was growing up, I only ever saw it listed as Gloria in excelsis Deo – Glory to God in the Highest). It started fine, and then I have no idea where the song went. It was unrecognizable to me for a good portion of the version.

Silent Night was fine, and I was looking forward to the last song of the first half, Go Tell It On the Mountain. Stripling did the vocals, and it was just lacking some oomph. My impression of the song is that it works best as truly a “celebratory” song — it should be practically raising the roof, literally singing it out on the mountains, which is how a few gospel versions do it, even if most contemporary recordings (at least on YouTube and iTunes) tend to treat it as this slow almost mournful hymn. This was somewhere in between.

For those keeping score at home, those 8 songs ran a full hour. Sure, there was some talking and announcements, but most of those songs wouldn’t normally run over 3-4 minutes on their own, so you can see how much “padding” there was in each song.

After the intermission, Sleigh Ride, Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town, The Skater’s Overture, and even White Christmas were rather “ho hum”. Certainly nothing to write home about, unless it was “Meh, listened to some average music.”.

And then the full orchestra did O Holy Night. Just plain wow. There’s a version online of orchestra and trumpet by Adolphe Adam, and about the 1m10s point, it sounds like the version the orchestra did. I felt the NAC version was a bit faster version, and I liked it more, but the strings were uplifting.

The next song up was one I was looking forward to…Amazing Grace. Now, I’m willing to accept that some people can’t do justice to the song with the lyrics, sure. And there is no “one way” to sing it. It is as individual as the artist. Even if you love the song, you might not like every version, including the Oak Ridge Boys version at George Bush’s funeral last week. But no matter whether you prefer one that is heartbreaking or uplifting, fast or slow, male or female singer, I am hard-pressed to think of any preference that would have been satisfied by the version they did. With a large Bobby Floyd organ solo in the middle, it was unrecognizable for good portions of the song. If I hadn’t heard the basic opening and ending, or read the program in advance, I would have had NO idea what the song even was that they were playing. It was THAT badly done. Individual styling is one thing, destruction of a classic is another.

The show ended with Joy to the World, which was okay, nothing special.

The program promised at the end of the show there would be a “surprise” that would have everyone dancing in the aisles. And when the show ended, all the musicians rushed off stage left, taking their instruments with them. I assumed they were going out to the lobby to play while some busked for the Snowsuit Fund or Food Bank charities they support. I have no idea. No opportunity for an encore, no idea where they went, and when we went outside, we didn’t see them playing anywhere nor hear them. I have absolutely no idea what the “surprise” was supposed to be unless it was “Surprise, we sucked tonight and we’re leaving before you throw rotten fruit and vegetables at us!” and the dancing in the aisles was because it was over.

Extremely disappointing. Stripling did a couple of stock jokes about bad audiences, but after the intermission, he thanked everyone for coming back in as he said that the night before, a lot of people left at the intermission. While that is often a stock phrase rather than a true story, I actually believed it was possible. If this was their third night and they had tweaked anything to get it right, the other nights must have really sucked.

But the wonky part is that in the end, it’s still a night at the NAC with a great orchestra and live music. And O Holy Night was beautifully done, as was any of the smooth trumpet playing by Stripling. So despite my ranting above, I come out only a little bit below my wife’s take, which was that overall she enjoyed it. Too bad the rest of the program didn’t match those few gems.

#50by50ish #38a – Share my music on mobile and home devices

The PolyBlog
November 11 2018

I’ve blogged before about a desire I have to be able to listen to any of my music anywhere in the house. My network-attached-storage (NAS) options didn’t really work out (The joys of network attached storage or not) and although my needs aren’t that complicated (Articles I Like: Top 10 Pervasive Tech Myths That Are Only Wasting Your Time), they have shifted a bit. As have the options available to me.

Here is what I want:

  • All of our (Andrea and I, and eventually Jacob) music available to all of us all the time;
  • Available in our bedroom (i.e. the nightstand);
  • Available in J’s room (likely the nightstand or at least near his desk);
  • Available in the office on our computers (likely a desktop app of some sort);
  • Available in our playroom/kitchen area (likely through the stereo system, or not, as the case may be);
  • Available on any of our mobile devices (A’s iPhone, my Android phone, my Android tablet with LTE, J’s iPad on wifi, possibly an old iTouch, iPhone, Android tablet, and a Sony MP3 player); and,
  • Ability to stream new songs and old songs, and even store them offline.

If possible, I’d like to have podcasts, audio books, and DJ-based radio.

Yeah, I know, it’s a big wish list.

A. Eliminating home solutions

So I thought I had a plausible working solution. I was going to buy Amazon Kindle tablets, 7 or 8″, and put them in the various locations around the house. Then I would upload all my music to the Amazon servers to be able to stream, while also copying the various music files over to a series of SD cards that I could plug in to the Kindle tablets, and every location in the house would have its own little media centre to kick music out to external speakers or as LINE-INs on existing devices. I would plug them in permanently (rather than charge them occasionally), and I would be good to go.

Except I would want to be able to occasionally use the Kindle tablets for other things. Like maybe playing a networked version of Ticket to Ride. However, I found out that the Kindle tablets are NOT running stock Android and thus the Google Play Store is not available, just Amazon Apps. Most of the time that wouldn’t be a problem, I’ve used both in the past, but here’s the kicker. The games I wanted to play? They’re not available on Amazon Apps. So if I go this way, I’m limited to mostly just the music functionality I was looking for. Okay, no problem, just music. Except the sound from a tablet isn’t awesome, particularly those ones. Oh, and none of the stock Google apps are available, including Google Play Music. Okay, I’ll just use Amazon Music.

Except it won’t let me upload all my music to the cloud anymore (it used to do so). Okayyyy…so maybe I’ll go with just existing devices, some MP3 players, I’ll manually load them. Except that doesn’t help Andrea at all since her phone is already maxed out on her storage and iPhones don’t take external SD cards. For the love of…

Okay, that’s out. What’s next?

Plan B. Focusing on streaming

So back in March of last year, I narrowly averted disaster using iTunes (Averting disaster with my music files). Which means it wouldn’t normally be at the top of my list. Except I need a solution that works well for Andrea and Jacob (both of whom are iFans) and nothing integrates better with iPhones than iTunes. Nothing.

Now, I know it will create a lot of extra work for me if I go that route, and not only because I’ll need to create a super secure backup of all my existing music that iTunes WILL NEVER BE ALLOWED TO MANAGE, and then a second copy that iTunes can do what it wants with. Yep, I’ll have two complete sets of my music. Good thing storage is relatively cheap in the abstract. I haven’t worked out yet how much space there is in the iCloud setup, but it will let you upload your music, more or less. I suspect it copies over the version from the iTunes library still, but that’s good enough for now.

Apple Music is known for having a fairly large library with some brand name gaps who hate Apple, limited discoverability for algorithm suggestions, decent curated playlists to try, and Apple Music Canada has a Canadian artists section. It has a radio section, but I haven’t tried it yet. The only real CON is that it is Apple and therefore like Ford making an Edsel…you can have it in any colour you want, as long as it’s black. You don’t get to tweak the setup for Apple or storage or app interfaces. You get what you get and you don’t get upset. Or you find another system. And while LOTS of devices out there work with Apple, not all of them do. Apparently it is hard to integrate Apple Music with certain streaming devices like XBox or Google Home. However, it apparently has released a new version of the Android App that makes it viable to use now. Pricing seems the same for most of the major offerings, $10 for an individual account per month, $15 for a family account.

As I mentioned above, Amazon was out because of their limited options, and that is a big surprise to me since I’m already an Amazon Prime member, which would suggest AM would be a no brainer to try. Particularly if I could get it all to work seamlessly with an Amazon device like Alexa or the Echo.

Instead, my likely preferred second choice is Google Play Music. It’s the same price as Apple Music, so no issue there, and it allows me to upload 50K songs to the cloud for free. The library isn’t as extensive as Apple Music though and the app is almost too simplistic. Nevertheless, I want to give it a try, and the first month is free for the family plan, so I’ll give it a go.

Those are the major two contenders partly as they are so popular with device manufacturers. Either one will have at least one viable streaming device that I can use it with, no problem. It may narrow the choices, but that’s okay. Both are also default options for future car systems too (with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto).

Beyond those, I start to get less comfortable with some of the other choices. I wasn’t a big fan of Spotify, wasn’t really using it enough, but Andrea liked it apparently. The discoverability algorithms are apparently first rate, but I’m a creature of habit, so not really an issue for me. It does have a free tier though, so I should make sure I reinstall the desktop version at least.

The other one I want to try is Tidal. It is hugely popular online, but it doesn’t appear to have options to upload your own songs. On the other hand, if you create a playlist of your own songs anyway, does it really matter? Tidal’s big claim to fame is that they have lossless audio quality, but that is just going to suck bandwidth for the month. Deezer is another one in the same realm, and it has a free option to try. And the iHeartRadio app has a free option to see if it adds anything re: radio stations to try. Oh, and Slacker Radio looks interesting. Maybe I’ll try a bunch again. Just for fun. I need a rabbit hole to distract me from some other stuff going on. 🙂

Regardless, I’ll be copying music over to my MP3 manually, so I’ll be keeping my Media Monkey app too. And with that, I can do whatever the apps don’t let me do directly.

I’ve signed up for a month of Google Play Music, let’s see how it goes. But I confess. I’m not totally convinced I shouldn’t just run a home server app (like Subsonic, Plex), and avoid any subscription fees.