Spotify, Google Music Beta, and Amazon Cloud Player? My choice is probably Google Music Beta

Between Spotify, Google Music Beta, and Amazon Cloud Drive/Player, I have had the most fun with Google Music Beta.

So Spotify is weird and uncomfortable. It’s cool that I can get easy access to lots of music that I don’t actually own, and it’s easy to make playlists. However, it is ugly to be able to both shuffle your whole library and put songs in multiple playlists without risking over-representing them in your shuffle. Over-representation is generally a major problem if you create artist playlists because one artist might have a whole bunch more songs in the Spotify database than others. It would be nice to “shuffle artists” where you’re guaranteed a balanced selection of artists (e.g., in every set of 30 songs)… What’s worse on Spotify is that playlists are static. You might be able to create an artist playlist, but you have to watch out for new songs to add to that playlist. Be careful though – songs get duplicated in a playlist if you drag them over. Having said all of that, I certainly have had fun discovering new music with Spotify. The interface is ugly though, and it sucks to have to pay $10/month just to have Linux access (yes, I know I can use Spotify through wine for free now (and $5/month later when the free accounts become limited), but I hate dealing with the headache of local MP3’s and the wine codec). Moreover, if I want Android access, I’m stuck with $10/month too. Boo.

Google Music Beta had an easy upload process. It took a while, but not that long. It was strange that it bogged down my entire Internet connection (while Amazon’s uploader didn’t affect my downstream at all), which makes me wonder what else Google is doing. However, I could select all of my songs on my Linux machine (no fancy Windows uploader needed) and they all got uploaded. Unfortunately, I cannot download them (unless I make them available offline on my phone and then figure out where and how Google stores them, which may not be tractable). Also, I cannot figure out how to buy new music (certainly a feature for the future, right?). However, Google randomly adds free music to my library, and that’s cool. What’s coolest is the Instant Playlist feature (which is similar to features in iTunes and other players/services) that builds a good-sized playlist from a single song. I’ve enjoyed its picks – even when the song I seeded lists with came from a local artist that it couldn’t have known much of anything about. Best of all, Google Music Beta gives me all of this for free (up to 20,000 songs) on all of my systems (including Android). I never need to worry about keeping a Windows machine.

Amazon’s Cloud Drive/Player is cool that it gives you 5GB for free and then $1/year/GB up to 1TB after that (starting at $20/year for 20GB). For the moment, if you pay for any storage, you get music storage for free. Any Amazon MP3 purchases can be placed directly in your library. Any song in your library can be downloaded. So Amazon’s Cloud Drive is a nice archival and music management solution. Almost all of the cool features of the player work on all systems. The only downside is that the MP3 Uploader (which re-organizes your music into Artist/Album/Song and will allow you to select a batch of thousands of songs to upload at once) is only available in Windows (and Mac?). On a Linux machine, you can use the web uploader from Amazon’s Cloud Drive, but you can only upload contents of one folder at a time (with no subfolders) and you have to organize everything manually. No one has figured out how to automate this through a script as far as I can tell. The Windows uploader does a pretty good job sitting in the background, and it’s safe to interrupt it in the middle of an upload (however, it may take a while building your upload list when you re-start it). The Amazon Cloud Player is fine. You can build playlists of your music, which is fine. You can shuffle. You can’t discover new music, but you can easily grow your library at 50 to 99 cents a song.

[ Oh, and all three will scrobble to Last.FM. It’s supported natively in Spotify (with no support for “Love”), and it’s supported with 3rd-party Greasemonkey scripts (for Firefox and Chrome (and Safari?)) for Google Music and Amazon MP3 Player. ]

Spec# is a terrible name. C-clef would have been better.

Microsoft Research's RiSE has another pre-print out on Spec#. The Spec# specification language is old news by now, and so it's unfortunate that the name "Spec#" has not been changed because it means it probably is going to stick. Unlike the name "C#", "Spec#" is terribly unimaginative. It's like naming your first child "Hermione" and then naming your second child "Two".

Wouldn't it have made more sense to continue the musical analogy? For example, a C-clef is a conventional symbol from music theory that is used to specify the desired meaning of the lines that follow. Thus, it makes a lot of sense to use it as a name for specification language for C#, right?

Instead, we get Spec# (i.e., "specsharp"), which actually seems quite dull...

Literal Total Eclipse of the Heart

RT: @notspam1: Give it time, but literal version of Total Eclipse of the Heart is great: http://tinyurl.com/nacjd8

UPDATE: A good follow-up is the literal version of "Anything for Love"...

Copying lyrics from Pandora to your clipboard

You may have noticed that Pandora gives you (everyone? just subscribers?) the ability to view the lyrics of songs. For example, when I view "Not Going Anywhere" by Keren Ann, it gives me the full lyrics for the song (note: not every song has its lyrics in the Pandora database).

Pandora has been clever about how they display the lyrics. They actually don't come down with the page. The page uses AJAX to download the lyrics after you download the page. It then populates the correct place on the page with the lyrics. It also changes the mouseover properties so that you cannot use your browser to highlight those lyrics. Because the lyrics are populated dynamically, saving the page doesn't work either.

Well, I thought that was lousy. If the lyrics are displayed in plaintext on my browser, I should be able to at least highlight them. If they really wanted to prevent me from doing that, they'd build a GIF/JPG/PNG on their end and send me the lyrics in that, right?

So I figured out that I could use Firebug, the Firefox add-on, to do what Pandora didn't want me to do.

1. Start Firebug.
2. Start the "Console."
3. Use the pull-down menu on the "Console" tab to "enable" the Console.
4. Issue the JavaScript command

   alert(fullLyrics.innerHTML)

   on the console.
5. A dialog box should pop up with the lyrics. Use your mouse to copy them to your clipboard.
6. You can then disable the Firebug console using that same pull-down menu.

That worked for me. It should work until they change the names within the JavaScript.

Ben Folds and Regina Spektor together

Today's NPR Song of the Day: Ben Folds: Cynicism Meets Sweetness

• Song: "You Don't Know Me"
• Artist: Ben Folds (featuring Regina Spektor)
• CD: Way to Normal
• Genre: Pop-Rock

It's a good track. It's funny. It's witty. It's catchy. Oh, and its got some bitter realism mixed in there. Speaking of mixing, it's interesting combining Spektor and Folds. You can stream the track at the NPR page. The music video is embedded below...

The explicit lyrics go something like... (where Spektor's lyrics are in parentheses)

I wanna ask you —
Do you ever sit and wonder,
It's so strange
That we could be together for
So long, and never know, never care
What goes on in the other one's head?

Things I've felt but I've never said
You said things that I never said
So I'll say something that I should have said long ago:

(You don't know me)
You don't know me at all
(You don't know me)
You don't know me at all (at all)

You could have just propped me up on the table like a mannequin
Or a cardboard stand-up and paint me (paint me)
Any face that you wanted me
To be seen.
We're
Damned by the existential moment where
We saw the couple in the coma and
It was we were the cliché,
But we carried on anyway.

So, sure, I could just close my eyes.
Yeah, sure, trace and memorize,
But can you go back once you know

(You don't know me)
You don't know me at all
(You don't know me)
You don't know me at all (at all)

(You don't know me)
You don't know me at all
(You don't know me)
You don't know me

If I'm the person that you think I am (Ah ah ahh)
Clueless chump you seem to think I am (Ah ah ahhh)
So easily led astray,
An errant dog who occasionally escapes and needs a shorter leash, then
Why the fuck would you want me back?!

Maybe it's because

(You don't know me at all)

Ahhh ah
Ahhh ah

(You don't know me,
you don't know me.)

Ahhh ah
Ahhh ah

So, what I'm trying to say is
What (What?)
I'm trying to tell you
It's not gonna come out like I wanna say it cause I know you'll only change it.
(Say it.)

(You don't know me)
You don't know me at all
(You don't know me)
You don't know me at all (at all)

(You don't know me)
You don't know me at all
(You don't know me)
You don't know me at all (at all)

What?

(Mmmm, ohh oh
Ah ah ah ah ah
Aha ah ah ah
Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah
Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
Aha ah
Ah ah
Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah
Oh-oh-oh-oh oh ohh)

What?

"Hands in Pockets" with Cellos

Great version of an already pretty song: NPR Song of the Day: "Hands in Pockets" by Portland Cello Project with Laura Gibson (streamable via RealPlayer)

"Don't Be Upset" by Jeffrey and Jack Lewis

Great lyrics and a fun little song...

i took my darling out to the aquarium
sea creatures stared at us and we stared back at them
my baby freaked when she peeked at that 8-legged blob with a beak
she was too scared to speak
i said don't be upset it's only an octopus
don't bother it and i'm sure it won't bother us
please don't be upset my darling, please don't get upset
my baby came riding to meet me one time
on the crowed last car of the downtown-bound 9
she was brave but she caved
when the train was delayed
it was just the last straw in her hard busy day
i said don't get upset 'cuz it's not a catastrophe
nothing will happen and soon you'll be back with me
please don't be upset my darling , please don't be upset
my gal's got a headhache, her ankle is hurting too
boots she bought gave her a rash & her winsdom tooth
is coming in and it's damp out and she's having cramps and she's so mad at me cuz i didn't shave
i said don't be upset i know you're feeling sensitive
i'll try to be kinder and be more attentive
please don't be upset my darling please don't get upset
darling i said, i'm gonna be 27 soon
i've only got rejection letters and a sense of impending doom
i think it's too late for me
all the comic companies hate me
and i try but it's always the same
i guess my art is just lame and it's strange but still somehow i'm
always not suiting their needs at this time
and she said ........don't be upset,
you know that you're wonderful
just keep on trying ...(actually what she really said was)
all you ever wanna talk about is your self and your comic books and your album and your tour
and everytime i see your friends they just ask me where you are again and it hurts
it makes me feel like dirt
i'm just gonna write where you are on my shirt
and i said don't be upset, don't be in a bad mood
let's just go to a show and hang out and feel good
come on please don't be upset my darling, please don't be upset, i'll do anything baby, just don't be upset

Wryness in song: The Girls Don't Care

"Eef Barzelay: A Blueprint for Finding Love" by Stephen Thompson

• Song: "The Girls Don't Care"
• Artist: Eef Barzelay
• CD: Lose Big
• Genre: Pop-Rock

As leader of the now-defunct Clem Snide, Eef Barzelay took flak from critics for weaving smart-alecky wordplay and pop-culture references into his keenly observational songs. But then, with the release of 2003's Soft Spot — a concept album about the unconditional love and sacrifice inherent in marriage and parenthood — he took yet more flak for singing straightforwardly sincere love songs.

Truth be told, Barzelay's work has always mixed wryness with unmistakable warmth, and he's never gotten enough credit for both the subtlety of the former and the sincerity of the latter. Ever since Soft Spot, and starting with the title track to 2005's End of Love, he's taken to occasionally needling those for whom expressions of love run counter to a painstakingly maintained ironic distance. "You're so sophisticated / Your mind's been liberated / You're the first to notice when a movement's come and gone," he sang in "End of Love," concluding, "No one will survive the end of love."

Since then, Barzelay has released a solo acoustic record (2006's Bitter Honey), recorded Clem Snide's swan song (the still-unreleased Hungry Bird), and made Lose Big, a smart and compact collection of rock 'n' roll conversation-starters. "The Girls Don't Care" in particular functions as an ideal sequel to "End of Love," as Barzelay gently advises against hipper-than-thou posturing: "The girls don't care that you ache to be free," he sings. "The girls just want a sweet melody."

Barzelay has never been afraid to turn a pop song into a mission statement: For proof, check out Clem Snide's masterful "I Love the Unknown," which Barzelay helpfully tacks on as a bonus track to Lose Big. In "The Girls Don't Care," he lays out a bona fide blueprint for how to find love: "Don't listen to Frank Zappa / play Coltrane, Faust, or Can / Just take that twisted heart of yours and lay it in her hand."

It's a pretty song too. Have a listen at the SotD link. Song lyrics are easy to find too.

(Am I Just) Fooling Myself

NPR Song of the Day (April 11, 2008): "Eli 'Paperboy' Reed Channels Soul's Giants" by Marc Silver

Just who does Eli "Paperboy" Reed think he is? The reincarnation of the wicked Wilson Pickett? A skillful James Brown imitator? Winner of the Austin Chronicle's award for "best Otis Redding impersonation by a 23-year-old Jewish boy from Massachusetts"?

• Song: "(Am I Just) Fooling Myself"
• Artist: Eli "Paperboy" Reed
• CD: Roll with You
• Genre: Soul

Hear the track at the story page.

Get Your Head Around my Blue Morning

Recent NPR Song of the Day tracks for you:

• "Get Your Head Around It" by Headlights
• "Blue Morning" by Kate Maki

You can stream them from NPR's site (which is linked from each song). I've sent Pandora an e-mail suggesting that they add the songs to their database. On that note, I always get a personal response from one of the people at Pandora whenever I send them a song suggestion. I think that's pretty cool.

What's wrong with engineers?

"Love Affair" (Regina Spektor) lyrics

There was a love affair in this building
The kind of love affair
Which every respectable building must keep as a legend
Slowly festering through an innocent "by the way"
Or "have you heard"
He was perfect except for the fact that he was an engineer
And mothers prefer doctors
And lawyers

Yet despite this imperfection
He was clean-looking and respectable-looking
And you'll never find a mother
Who doesn't appreciate a natural man
So he grew healthy aloe vera plants by the window
Healthy teeth in his mouth
Healthy hair on his head
He grew healthy wavy brown hair on his head
The kind, the kind that babies always go for
With sticky little fingers

I have healthy hair and teeth and wavy brown hair. I don't know about the baby thing...

I'm pretty sure my aloe vera plant is dying too...

I suppose it is true that mothers rarely like me...

Scrobbling Pandora Songs to Last.fm!

UPDATE: I just found OpenPandora, which is like a PandoraJam for Windows (i.e., it is a desktop Pandora application that scrobbles to Last.fm). So, our list of cool Pandora+Last.fm apps and mashups is now...

• PandoraJam - OS X Desktop application that plays Pandora and scrobbles to Last.fm. It also includes lots of other cool features, like recording Pandora streams to a format that can be used by iTunes and the iPod.


• OpenPandora - Windows Desktop application that plays Pandora and scrobbles to Last.fm. It also includes other cool features, like integration with the Wiimote and some software applications.


• PandoraFM - Web mashup that combines Pandora and Last.fm. This mashup does more than just scrobble to Last.fm; it really combines nearly everything of Pandora with nearly everything of Last.fm. For example, you can access tags and music information from Last.fm.

I'm not sure which is my "favorite." I'm just happy that these are available. I have a feeling there are more too.

I love Pandora. I also love Last.fm. I feel bad when I listen to Pandora because my songs don't get scrobbled to Last.fm. It's like all of that good listening time is just being wasted. However, I feel like I get exposed to more NEW music through Pandora because I primarily use Last.fm to listen to my own station.

Today, I accidentally found PandoraJam, which solves this problem! It is a desktop application (like PandoraBoy) that streams from Pandora and, at the end of each Pandora song, scrobbles to Last.fm! This gives me the best of both worlds! It has other features too. For example, you can record Pandora audio so you can take it with you later on your iPod. However, the scrobbling feature (which is the only entirely free feature) is the one that really impresses me.

However, this isn't a perfect solution. For one, it doesn't help me when I'm on a Windows machine. Second, it doesn't let me do cool Last.fm things like "Love" tracks. So, I went searching, and I found PandoraFM. This is a WEB mashup that combines Last.fm and Pandora. In fact, it even scrobbles at half the length of the song after a configurable number of seconds (default is 90), which is more like what you'd expect. So it's great! Solves all my problems.

So, if you use both Last.fm and Pandora, you need to check out PandoraFM.

Seeqpod: Playable Search

Also try SkreemR (http://skreemr.com/), another playable music search (with some other cool features). The Tech-Reicipes Blog has a good description of the coolest features.

Try out SeeqPod (http://www.seeqpod.com).

It's a new search engine that searches the web for playable MP3 songs and then lets you play them right on the web page.

It's a great way to find free MP3 music, and it's arguably legal! :)

Response to "NPR Wedding Music"

A response to NPR Wedding Music, sent to me via e-mail, reposted anonymously here:

I was in town yesterday shipping a package and saw that my mom and my sister were at the UPS store at the same time. I walk up to my mom's car only to find her crying. Turns out she has been reading the "Martha Stewart Book of Weddings." She said she was fine reading the chapter on wedding cakes (she likes cake), but once she got to the one about wedding songs, she lost it (in a good way)....

NPR Wedding Music

Stephen Thompson is one of the music experts on NPR. I like him a lot. One day I sent NPR a note saying that I liked him a lot, and he sent me his "Best of" CD's for 2003, 2004, and 2005. Evidently he was having a rough move to DC away from his own midwestern family, and it was nice to hear the good words.

Anyway, today's piece:

Wedding Day Blues: In Search of the Perfect Mix CD by Stephen Thompson

He was asked to put together a mix CD for his niece's wedding. After a lot of deliberation and realization that there are really few happy songs about marriage, he came up with:

1. Clem Snide, "Forever, Now and Then"
2. Old 97's, "Question"
3. Josh Rouse, "Nothing Gives Me Pleasure"
4. Death Cab for Cutie, "Passenger Seat"
5. Jimmy Scott, "When Did You Leave Heaven?"
6. The Lemonheads, "Into Your Arms"
7. Ron Sexsmith, "Moonlight Becomes You"
8. Nick Drake, "From the Morning"
9. Norah Jones, "Come Away with Me"
10. Sade, "By Your Side"
11. Matthew Sweet, "I've Been Waiting"
12. Radney Foster & Abra Moore, "I'm In"
13. Neil Young, "Harvest Moon"
14. Chet Baker, "Embraceable You"
15. Iron & Wine, "Ab's Song"
16. Low, "The Plan"
17. Johnny Cash & June Carter Cash, "As Long As the Grass Shall Grow"
18. Clem Snide, "Find Love"

I recommend actually reading the article. The text sounds like something straight out of the mouth of a grown-up version of one of the characters in High Fidelity (book, movie, soundtrack). Additionally, you can listen to at least six of the songs from the mix directly from the story.

For more NPR music stuff, see:

NPR : Music

"Song of the Day" is a particularly good segment to catch each day (contributed to by a number of NPR music fans):

NPR : Song of the Day

Of course, there are NPR RSS Feeds for all of these and more.

• RSS: NPR : Music
• RSS: NPR : Song of the Day
• RSS: NPR : Stephen Thompson

So c'mon c'mon c'mon c'mon c'mon c'mon / Check it out!

NPR SOTD: The Ideal Soundtrack to an Early Spring by Stephen Thompson

Fortunately, though it runs only two and a half minutes, "Sun Is Out" functions as a charming, modestly shambling mini-epic, complete with discrete movements that culminate in a full-on power-pop blowout. It's not exactly intellectually taxing — "The sun is out / The sun is out / So c'mon c'mon c'mon c'mon c'mon c'mon / Check it out!" — and it never entirely coheres: It's basically three likable interludes strung together. Nevertheless, the effect remains infectious and beguiling throughout. After all, "Sun Is Out" functions as the ideal soundtrack to an early spring, so what's not to love?

How iMet my Neighbor on iTunes

The audio for this story is hilarious. Discovering "Anna's music" pop up in iTunes leads to strange stalker-like behavior (that probably isn't proper for a married man) that eventually leads to an awkward meeting that goes as poorly as you might imagine. Hilarious.

"How iMet my Neighbor on iTunes" by David Kestenbaum

The on-line version includes a web extra introducing Last.fm and Pandora, two services about which everyone should know (and love).

People Ain't No Good

This song was in Shrek 2?!

People Ain't No Good by Nick Cave

People just ain't no good
I think that's welll understood
You can see it everywhere you look
People just ain't no good

We were married under cherry trees
Under blossom we made pour vows
All the blossoms come sailing down
Through the streets and through the playgrounds

The sun would stream on the sheets
Awoken by the morning bird
We'd buy the Sunday newspapers
And never read a single word

People they ain't no good
People they ain't no good
People they ain't no good

Seasons came, Seasons went
The winter stripped the blossoms bare
A different tree now lines the streets
Shaking its fists in the air
The winter slammed us like a fist
The windows rattling in the gales
To which she drew the curtains
Made out of her wedding veils

People they ain't no good
People they ain't no good
People they ain't no good at all

To our love send a dozen white lilies
To our love send a coffin of wood
To our love let aal the pink-eyed pigeons coo
That people they just ain't no good
To our love send back all the letters
To our love a valentine of blood
To our love let all the jilted lovers cry
That people they just ain't no good

It ain't that in their hearts they're bad
They can comfort you, some even try
They nurse you when you're ill of health
They bury you when you go and die
It ain't that in their hearts they're bad
They'd stick by you if they could
But that's just bullshit
People just ain't no good

People they ain't no good
People they ain't no good
People they ain't no good
People they ain't no good at all

The actual lyric in the song is "But that's just bullshit baby". They left out the important "baby" in the lyrics here.