explodedlibrary.info

an iPod playlist to imprint the present and remember the past

[28/7/05 update: I've just added some screenshots of these playlists]

Maybe it's the librarian in me, but I find something enjoyable about organizing iTunes playlists for my iPod.

I have playlists for all sorts of things: driving (some music just does not work in the car), doing the dishes on a mellow evening, cleaning, exercising, good mood music for company (pleasant, but not too demanding or intrusive) and music that usually helps me get to sleep.

But nothing is perfect and there are few things about the iPod which can create a less than perfect music experience.

Firstly, if I am always listening to music for particular moods or circumstances, when I am going to listen and new music and how is that music going to imprint on my present circumstances? By imprinting, I mean when a particular piece of music becomes associated with a particular time/place/event/person in one's life. This isn't always a pleasant thing. Björk's Medúlla makes me recall my time working at Vodafone (not exactly pleasant for me) and reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (which is just plain weird). That said, I still think the association of songs in this way provides a helpful musical map to our lives, and that using an iPod can severely dilute this efffect.

The other problem, kind of touched on in my previous iPod playlist post, that it is so easy for good music to buried and lost in an iPod.

Naturally, I have found one answer to these two problems by creating a new kind of playlist. This is a hybrid smart list, containing two other smart playlists. The best thing is that it's self-updating and requires very little maintenance.

Ingredient 1: Smart playlist of recently added tracks. This is simple, choose "Date Added" in the last 3 months - or whichever period you like, it could also be a number of days or weeks. Make sure that the Live Updating box is checked, so that new things are automatically captured and the old ones will drop off.

Ingredient 2: Smart playlist containing good songs which aren't played very often. The first step here is to specify "My rating" as greater than 2 or 3 stars (depending on how picky you want to be). Of course you need to have most of your music rated for this to work effectively. One easy way of doing this is to make an Unrated playlist, containing only the unrated songs - so that you can rate them when you're ever in the mood. The second step is that this must be a limited playlist. For me it's limited to the 25 least often played songs. You might need to tinker with this number at some point to capture the ratio between old and new music which works best for you. Make sure that this list is also live updating.

Ingredient 3: Another smart playlist which combines the contents of the first two lists. At the top of the window, if you'll need to make sure that you choose "Match any of the following conditions", which is basically a boolean OR. Then for those conditions, choose "Playlist" is - and select the other two playlists, i.e. new stuff and good but less played.

At the moment at least, this is my new favourite list. It's not going to replace the others, because there'll always be times when I'll prefer a mood/situation specific playlist. But this hybrid list is a good one to play when I'm not too sure what I want.

my IOU to Fiona Apple

[This post was followed up on 2 November 2005]

Dear Fiona,

I owe you approximately $US 10 for downloading your album “Extraordinary Machine” which has been suppressed by your record company Sony. I will pay for this as soon as Sony decides to respect your artistic ability and release this record. If you haven’t done so already, I would suggest that you speak with Aimee Mann, who also suffered at the hands of tyrannical record companies. Aimee Mann seems a lot happier since she decided to go it alone and ditch her record company which had such a fundamentally different vision of what makes good music.

On the off-chance that Extraordinary Machine has been leaked deliberately as part of an unconventional marketing campaign, I would be extremely surprised and slightly disappointed, but I would forgive you, because it is a very good album.

the iPod zombie trance

I am an iPod zombie too. This Times of London article points out some of the disadvantages of people wearing iPods – both on an individual level and on a group level.

I concede these. There are days when I’ve forgotten to bring it along or recharge the batteries, and I am amazed sometimes by how much interesting background noise there is to hear. Birds, leaves rustling, snatches of conversation on the footpath, bus or train.

On the other hand, sometimes there aren’t any interesting or appealing ambient sounds. Sometimes it’s just the white noise of traffic.

I definitely use the iPod more in Sydney than I ever did in Hobart. Why is it more of a big city thing? Is it peer pressure, being more reliant on public transport, the busier and more stressful lifestyle?

Listening to music is an escape from the drudgery of the world. After a long busy day in the office, and faced with a grueling commute – it is nice to simply tune out and almost be somewhere else.

Yes, I can see why it isn’t a good thing to have a society where everybody is enclosed in their own personal musical cocoon. On the other hand, this is also a reaction to other things going on in society. If the people who are soliciting donations for charities, selling credit cards or just begging are going to be more upfront about interrupting me – when this isn’t welcome – then I am grateful for anything which makes this more difficult. Acting as if I am in an iPod trance is one way of shielding myself from this.

It’s possible that iPods and other mp3 players are creating a world where people are unaccustomed to silence and where abundance of music is taken for granted as just a background.

It doesn’t have to be like this. It’s also possible that the option of having constant music will help us appreciate deliberate silence.

Zen and the art of creating iTunes playlists

Please excuse this frivolous post and the slightly misleading title.

I have found that it is very easy to get into a rut with what I’m listening to on iTunes. When it is so easy to play only my most favourite songs or my most played songs, that’s often what I listen to. It’s not a good idea to listen to only favourites for a lengthy period of time – it means that I get bored of these great songs and take them for granted

One solution is to sometimes play only the songs that I’ve rated 3 or 4. The problem is that I haven’t rated systematically rated my entire collection. I do this more on a ad hoc basis, otherwise it would be a huge chore. I never rate a new CD until I’ve had it for at least a month, except for those tracks which really leap out as being particularly good or bad.

Here’s one solution which cures this sort of ennui. Morgan’s eclectic sampler playlist.

I use the word sampler in its traditional sense, that this playlist will give a reminder of the breadth of your collection, remind you of the sorts of things which you have.

This playlist has two main guidelines:
1. The idea is to choose only one track from each album. Each album’s representative should ideally be your second or third favourite track from that album.
2. Never choose your favourite tracks – then this playlist would become a just another favourites variation.

Of course, rules are made to be broken. Maybe you’d like to slightly over-represent newer albums, so you can get to know them better. Sometimes you might choose not to represent one-track wonders at all, if you really regret that one track you purchased from that album and don’t view it as representative at all.

The downside is that this playlist takes a bit of work, especially for selecting the second and third-best tracks of albums you haven’t listened to in a while. But that work can itself be enjoyable and illuminating about your collection and how you yourself have changed since adding particular albums.

The other thing is that this playlist is meant to help you escape from your iTunes ruts, don’t let it become a new rut in itself. If it’s a short list, don’t listen to it for more than a few days at once. Even if it’s a really long list, it will have definitely served its purpose after a week. Then leave it for a while and move on, hopefully to some tracks which the eclectic sampler playlist inspired you to rediscover.

using the shift key to rip certain copy-protected CDs

Today I had my first experience of a seriously copy-protected CD, Radiohead's Hail to the Thief, released by EMI. I didn't have much luck ripping it onto my Mac - I ended up having to force quit out of iTunes. Apparently there are a number of different copy-protection methods. One method can be circumvented with a magic marker. I didn't think that this method would work on this particular CD, so I looked for other methods. Then I saw this reference to hold down the shift key on a Windows computer for 5 seconds after inserting the CD. This stopped the CD from automatically launching the program which would interfere with the copy protection. I then copied the CD with iTunes, and soon I'll have it in my iPod.

As I've written before, I believe that creators should be fairly compensated for their work, but that copy-protection technology goes way too far, and I have no moral qualms about circumventing it. I've never been interested in downloading music from file-sharing sites. The only thing which would tempt me would be if I wasn't able to rip a CD which I had lawfully purchased. Then I would feel entitled to download an illicit copy.

When will the record companies realize that people like to listen to music on their computers and mp3 players, and it is manifestly unfair to prevent this from happening? It is simply such a stupid thing to do - piss off your paying customers and drive them into supporting your real target, the file-traders.

I'm about to really start ranting, so instead I'll link this detailed explanation of how the shift method works.

iPod not being recognized after the iTunes 4.5 update

I am one of the many people who has experienced this problem after upgrading to iTunes 4.5. I have a 20 GB iPod which I bought at the Apple store in the Mall of America in January. There is a fix to this solution and it has worked for me. Go to Apple's web site, choose the Support tab, then choose the Discussions sub-tab, select the iPod product forum, then select the [regular] iPod, and then the Usage folder. The posting is currently second from the top and is called "iPod doesn't appear in Updater or iTunes in Mac OS X". The instructions were fairly straightforward, at least for Panther users.

technology meanderings

The good news is that I have a dsl connection at home. This is will make it a lot easier for me to work on this blog – and keep up with other blogs. Tying up the phone line has been a bit of an issue and impediment lately, and now I won’t need to worry about that. The bad news is that this is broadband connection is on an IBM (literally), not my iBook. Later on, I should be able to get the iBook on the dsl connection, but for the time being, I am content to use the web on this IBM.

This means that I’ll be taking a break from Net NewsWire as my news reader and will be giving Bloglines a shot. It was very easy to get started – just importing my OPML file (exported from Net News Wire). So far I’m impressed and I’m only just beginning to explore it. If you're curious, you can see the feeds which I'm reading.

Now I need a spam filter for my email. I had been using SpamSieve on my Mac, which had been working very nicely with Entourage. Well, I’ll worry about that another day.

I’ve been trying to break into the iTune Music Store – no, not to steal anything. I just want to be able to waste my money on them from Australia. The key is an US address and credit card. I still have an American credit card, but it’s now associated with an Australian address and so won’t work for iTunes. Amazon is more than happy to mail me an audio CD over the Pacific so that I can rip it into mp3 format, so why is it such a controversial thing for a non-American to buy DRM-protected music from the iTunes Music Store? I’ve just tried the BigPond downloading service. As much as I like to support things Australian, its interface doesn’t hold a candle to iTunes. Its collection has a few more Australian artists, which is welcome, but overall it doesn't compare with iTMS. BigPond only supports WMA. I guess I’ll be able to burn a playlist to a CD and then rip them into iTunes. I'll lose some sound quality, but I’m not an audiophile.