Jukebox in the Sky

For as long as I recall, RealNetworks has called its Rhapsody service a “jukebox in the sky.” These days it’s probably trendy to say it’s your music library in the cloud. The idea is that you pay a monthly fee, and have access to any music you want, wherever you go.

Now that there’s Rhapsody for iPhone, this is finally coming true.

Since I have a Rhapsody account from work, I downloaded the app as soon as it was available, and tried using it to replace the iPod feature of my iPhone 3GS. Searching was straightforward, so I queued up a bunch of music and headed towards the bus stop. That meant I was leaving WiFi for a 3G signal and the song stopped and restarted. And stopped and didn’t restart. Then Rhapsody crashed.

But later attempts worked totally fine. There was one momentary pause, but then the music resumed. And I was able to search and queue up more music while on the bus.

There are still some issues with the software. Rhapsody gave me a “My Music” list that is not my music at all (maybe new accounts don’t get saddled with this). Queuing music is awkward (be sure to press rather than tap if want to actually queue — which I always do — rather than play instantly). And Rhapsody can’t access some hardware features (like the extremely important pause button on the remote) or play in the background.

Is the jukebox in the sky worth $13/month (plus tax), given you’re renting music and have nothing if you end the subscription? I certainly think it’s more worthwhile now that you’re not tethered to a computer, or have to pre-load a crappy player like a Sansa. A touch device with no remote is a pretty crappy player too, though it makes a big difference to be able to manage things on the fly. And it was very cool to pick a song I’d never heard and immediately get to listen to it.

So I think it’s finally worth trying — you can get a 14 day free trial, and the iPhone app is free.

Welcome to the Anti-Social

So I was on the bus today, and noticed someone was flipping through something on his iPhone. Turned out it was his playlists. And once he picked a song, I could easily see which album it was from, because of the album cover (easy to recognize because I too have some Vampire Weekend on my iPhone).

To me that’s just as valid a music sharing experience as whatever the Zune is supposed to do. And we didn’t even have to cooperate.

Pandora on iPhone

Due to an upgrade glitch, I didn’t have any music on my iPhone for the half hour bus ride home. So I decided to use Pandora Radio.

Even though I had only an EDGE connection, the experience was fine. The app did take a while to start up and play the first song, but then I just listened to music. Some of which I already own, some that I think was new to me. But all worth listening to, and all free. And I didn’t hear any “buffering” style pauses — just continuous music. (There were apparently ads, but only on screen.)

Pandora Radio is not built in like the iPod application, so you can’t do anything else while it’s running, but I didn’t need to.

It’s worth getting this, and spending a little time customizing it so it can recommend music (I had originally done this a Macintosh using their online service — your account is available from any device).

iTunes Genius

New in iTunes 8.0 is a “Genius” feature that’s supposed to show music related to a particular track.

Of course, anything called “Genius” had better be smart. And this isn’t. One search turned up songs I can’t buy. A number of cover versions don’t list the original (e.g. Gnarls Barkley’s version of “Gone Daddy Gone” doesn’t link you to the original by Violent Femmes).

However, I really like this status message that I got during the initial process.

Overall, Genius seems to do a better job than the “you may also like” feature that used to be on the iTunes store (in my case, I’m sure that’s because it knows about all the music I bought from eMusic). I might even buy some music from its recommendations!

Another dumb idea from the music business

So if the music industry makes us pay for pirated music, isn’t that telling us we should pirate? After all, if I’m being forced to pay $5/month for something I am not doing, my natural reaction is to stick it to them and stop buying music, but instead just go for free downloads.

Music Downloads

I’m sure I’ll eventually get something from Amazon MP3, but so far I’m not wildly impressed. Let’s do a comparison of a random album.

Amazon MP3 sells the Mekons album “Natural” for $8.99 as unprotected MP3s. There are 12 songs, so that’s $0.75 per song. Sold separately, they’re $0.99 per song. I haven’t played with the site much, but searching seems weak. Playing tracks is easy.

iTunes has it for $9.99 as protected AAC files, but includes two bonus tracks. That’s $0.71 per song. (The bonus tracks seem to be variants of other songs — nice to have but not essential.) Sold separately, they’re $0.99 per song. Searching is excellent — I really like the feature that must have been added recently, where band names are suggested as you type in the “Search iTunes Store” field. Playing tracks is easy.

eMusic has the same 12 songs as unprotected MP3s. Their basic subscription gives you 30 downloads a month for $9.99. That’s $0.33 per song (there’s no discount for buying an entire album). It looks like eMusic changed their plans slightly since I subscribed, but I think that by paying for a year in advance, I get 40 tracks a month for $9.99 — $0.25 per song. A much better deal, and in my opinion worth the crappier web interface (I usually sample songs on iTunes). Searching is OK, but playing tracks is a pain (I get a .m3u file I have to open separately). Oh, and eMusic has free tracks, sometimes entire albums of good stuff (e.g. “A Marmoset Menagerie”).

For what it’s worth, I got the Mekons CD as a birthday present. Amazon sells it for $13.99, or $1.17 per song. But it’s encoded at CD quality, includes liner notes, and is a backup for the version I ripped to my computer.

I’m happy with the CD, but I would have been almost as happy getting the music from eMusic.

I realize most people have different tastes, and may be more interested in the major label stuff that might not be on eMusic. But I do almost all my purchasing from eMusic — currently 1471 songs (which includes free tracks) compared to 1229 songs (including about 150 free tracks) from iTunes. Getting songs for 1/4 the price is worth the inconvenience, and some of the free stuff would have been worth buying.