Recently in Music Category

Playing around with Muxtape, because I think it's cool... you create a personal mixtape by uploading mp3s.  Not sure about the legality of this really, but it's still cool.

I clicked on their terms (which are surprisingly simple considering the nature of this site), and it turns out I don't really understand them anyway.  Maybe somebody can enlighten me:

Muxtape is a service for creating mixtapes. Users may not upload multiple songs from the same album or artist, or songs they do not have permission to let Muxtape use. Individual users may not create multiple muxtapes. Accounts not meeting these restrictions are subject to termination without notice. Muxtape will never reveal your email address to a third party. Muxtape is alive.

Right, so here's the line I don't understand:  "Users may not upload multiple songs from the same album or artist, or songs they do not have permission to let Muxtape use."

Uh, isn't that pretty much any song I would want to put on my muxtape?  Oh well, it's all fuzzy anyway...

This blog has been quiet for a little bit, it's probably because I spent all last week participating in a production of Music Man in Ohio.  I don't do musicals much since I moved from Ohio, but I think they're still my favorite to perform, which is why I agreed, even though I really don't have the time.  I especially enjoy the high school productions.  This is the fourth show I've played with this group, it's always fun and they're always excellent, and I would do it again if they asked me too.

And aren't these the cutest kids you've ever seen?  The trumpet player on the left stole the show as Winthrop.

This thrills me to no end, it is a way to scrobble my Rhapsody music to Last.fm. Finally! It's called Rhobbler, or the few words on the website that describe it, "the dead simple tool to submit your Rhapsody listening information to Last.FM."

All you need is your Last.fm info and your Rhapsody tracks feed. It will send your listening history to Last.fm every hour based on your feed. Of course your Rhapsody listening history needs to be public for this to work.

It's not completely real time since it is sending updates every hour. I also don't think Rhapsody is too quick about updating my feed, I listened to a few tracks before the hourly update and the feed hasn't updated with those tracks yet, but they will probably be there before the end of the day.

Previously I was using Yottamusic, which had a few drawbacks from pulling straight from Rhapsody. One drawback was that current releases weren't always available in the catalog; the other was that I could never get my library and listening history to synchronize so tracks I listened to on my mp3 player were never sent to Last.fm. But now since Rhapsody is no longer supporting the non-public API, and Yottamusic decided to close down their service, I lost my only method of even getting those tracks to Last.fm.

That is, until now. Although delayed, the real benefit to using Rhobbler is that I can actually send a more complete picture of my listening history to Last.fm. I do listen to things through my computer, but I probably listen to more of my Rhapsody music on my mp3 player. The tracks are synched when I plug the player into my computer and my listening history is actually updated to reflect what I listened to on my player. A feature I do like about Rhapsody. I don't spend a lot of time creating playlists either, but I love 'Rhapsody Channels'. I only listen to one channel regularly but when I plug in my mp3 player that channel reloads automatically with new music, usually about 4.5 hours worth. I listen to audiobooks most regularly with my mp3 player, but having at least one constantly updated channel on there is a great way to ensure that I always have music when I want it.

I am pretty excited about this so I hope it continues to work!

Technorati Tags:rhapsody, music, rhobbler, yottamusic, last.fm
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I'm so behind on my feeds, but this one through TechCrunch really bummed me out just now:

Rhapsody Pulls Plug On Non-Public APIs, Effectively Shuts YottaMusic Down

I used YottaMusic because it was the only thing that I could find that would let me use my Rhapsody account and still scrobble those songs to Last.fm. So now I'm back to square one when it comes to Rhapsody and Last.fm integration. There is a Rhapsody scrobbler out there, just one, and I have never been able to get it to work.

So now I have to resort to begging. Rhapsody, please make give me Last.fm integration on my account! I'm begging you!

I'm starting to have a real love-hate relationship with Rhapsody. I love the service and the access I have to any music I want any time I want it. I love that I can listen to new music the day it comes out, and I love that I can put it on my mp3 player all for one price every month and not worry about downloads or anything like that. I hate how closed off Rhapsody is. I want my Rhapsody service to work with all of these other things I want to use it with. If there is ever a comparable service that lets me have all of those things I would likely drop Rhapsody and go with that. In the meantime I'm still sticking with it. I'll just have to keep digging for some way to continue to use it with Last.fm.

Technorati Tags:rhapsody, lastfm, yottamusic, music
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Between Rhapsody and Last.fm, I've pretty much became a music lover again. Well, I've always loved music, but there was a long period of time when I wasn't buying a lot of new music, and I certainly wasn't trying to find anything new to listen to.

I've pretty much spent the last hour on Last.fm finding new things to listen to through Rhapsody. I've also been simultaneously reading feeds and I discovered a post on Lifehacker about Fifteen Last.fm Power Tweaks. That's where I discovered this fun little Last.fm Mainstream-O-Meter. This simple little app looks at your Last.fm tracks and calculates how mainstream you are. Apparently with my total tracks I'm 41.27% mainstream. With my weekly tracks I'm 36.15% mainstream. I actually expected it to be higher, but I'm pretty happy with that! I don't mind clicking around other people's profiles, or checking out my recommendation channel and looking at new stuff, but I do also have to thank Andy for his music recommendations, it makes it easier when the great music shows up in your inbox.

I'm happy that I can finally start using Last.fm again. If you've been following my music journeys here you probably know that I haven't been able to use Last.fm due to its incompatibility with Rhapsody. There is a scrobbler for Rhapsody out there but it never worked for me. Finally I discovered Yottamusic. At first I didn't get Yottamusic, it's really just another website that allows me to listen to music through Rhapsody, if you have a Rhapsody account then you can access the music catalog like you would Rhapsody. Rhapsody already has their own online player so technically Yottamusic is a bit redundant. The websites are supposed to sync, so if I listen to something in Yottamusic then it will show up in my Rhapsody listening history. Of course I was pleasantly surprised to discover that things I listen to through Yottamusic can be scrobbled to my Last.fm account. Actually the whole thing is kinda messed up because if Yottamusic can be a bridge to Last.fm, why can't Rhapsody just incorporate Last.fm support into its player already? Of course I seemed to have found a workaround to my whole Last.fm problem so I guess I shouldn't complain.

Technorati Tags:music, rhapsody, last.fm, yottamusic
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I went looking for something in my CD collection last night and I realized that I have lots of CDs that I never even listen to anymore. Then I got pretty nostalgic, because I do have some CDs that I really love. That's when I decided to make an effort to listen to at least one every day. Today I'll probably listen to several since I don't have to go to work. I might not listen to the actual CD, I'm thinking of saving them in a playlist on Rhapsody so I know what I have (at least the ones that are in the catalog).

I've been thinking about taking our CDs and putting them into sleeves to cut down the amount of space they take anyway. I like the idea of keeping them but they take up two media shelves in our apartment (of course about 50% of our music is Classical too). I'm going to try to figure out a way to blog what I'm listening to each day, but it probably won't be here. I might either use my Vox account or find an application on Facebook to keep track.

I'm also just pulling them off the shelf in random order. We never did reorganize them when we moved so they're just kinda thrown up there. First up though is Sarah McLaclan, Surfacing.

Technorati Tags:music, cds, music collection
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Just embedding my Rhapsody feed in this post so I can see what it looks like. I don't really have the energy to put it up on my blog somewhere right now.

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I've wrote in the past how much I love Rhapsody. I got a Sansa Rhapsody Player for Christmas and decided to go with the Rhapsody service; I've been impressed with how seamless the player and the music service work with one another. I like the price of the Rhapsody service and I like the fact that I can get virtually any music I want whenever I want. One of my favorite Rhapsody features is their channels, I normally subscribe to the Alternative Channel, whenever I plug in my player in to my computer, and Rhapsody automatically loads my player with about 4 hours of different songs based on whatever channels you have loaded.

Lately I've been getting a bit frustrated with how little Rhapsody plays nicely with other services I would like to use. First I've been trying to find a way to integrate Rhapsody with Last.fm for months now. Every solution I've tried that is supposed to work fails. I love Last.fm, I also love MusicStrands, but I haven't been able to use these since I stopped using iTunes to manage my music.

Rhapsody has made a few strides in opening up; this has become apparent by the changes they've made to their website. I now have a profile with RSS (unfortunately the RSS feeds don't always work), I can access the playlists that I create on the standalone client via the website (which I really like), and I can listen to music through the website if I'm logged in, even when I'm not on my computer. I don't mind using the website at all to listen to music, so when I saw that FoxyTunes should work with Rhapsody Online I downloaded it.

Trying out FoxyTunes right now, however, proved to be another failure. The player is configured to recognize Rhapsody Online as my player, but when I click on anything it just opens Rhapsody Online. When I start playing a song with Rhapsody Online, the player doesn't recognize that one is playing. I was really excited about the fact that FoxyTunes now has some Twitter integration...I guess this is not in the cards for me right now.

I won't be dropping Rhapsody, the price and the ease of use with my player are more than enough to keep me using it, but I hope that they open up soon. There are some great music services out there that I would love to be using right now, but I feel locked out of them.

Technorati Tags:music, rhapsody, rhapsody_online, itunes, last.fm, musicstrands, foxytunes, twitter
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This is just too amusing not to share, from Copyfight Blog:

Just commenting a little on this blog post on TechCrunch:

Steve Jobs:  "People want to own their music"

I haven't read the accompanying URLs in the post yet, but this is certainly an interesting topic and I'll probably click through to them when I'm not at work.

Some personal thoughts...sorry Steve, I'm quite happy not owning my music (at least digitally).  Actually the thought of buying a bunch of proprietary music files and loading down my computer with these files does not appeal to me.  Nor does the thought of something happening to my computer where I would lose all of that music that I just invested in with no way to be refunded or to get them back.  Or worse yet, the formats or players change to where I can no longer access that music the way I want.

I actually am a bit torn by Steve Jobs right now.  On one hand I commend him taking a stand against DRM a few months ago.  On the other hand I'm not sure charging more for non-DRM protected files is the way to go either.  Maybe it's because I believe that the 99-cent track is a little too much to begin with.  Then again, maybe that's because I'm cheap :)  Some tracks are probably worth the 99-cents, I don't believe all of them are, especially when we're talking about the Long Tail tracks.

Although, what Apple is doing is an interesting experiment in just how much consumers will pay to download music, both protected with DRM and not protected.  I'm not sure I believe the bit about subscription music being unpopular, I just think that Apple is hugely popular.  My prediction may be wrong, but I don't see Apple holding on to the digital music market forever, although they are a hugely innovative company, maybe they can. 

Buying tracks has not appealed to me, I don't buy much CDs anymore and if it weren't for the subscription music model I probably would continue to get my music from the library (which really isn't all that bad either.)

There is always good debate with this topic though...probably because it is so unpredictable.

Technorati Tags: steve jobs, apple, itunes, ipod, subscription music, drm