{"id":3941,"date":"2013-05-17T12:40:15","date_gmt":"2013-05-17T16:40:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adam-jackson.net\/blog\/?p=3941"},"modified":"2013-05-17T12:40:15","modified_gmt":"2013-05-17T16:40:15","slug":"technology-it-was-easier-when-we-just-bought-cds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2013\/05\/17\/technology-it-was-easier-when-we-just-bought-cds\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2605 Technology: It was easier when we just bought CDs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Back in my day\u2026.yeah, that&#8217;s how this one starts but I&#8217;m really curious. Am I just getting old or is the music situation still a mess?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Two years ago, I wrote about the <a href=\"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2011\/03\/15\/how-boxee-and-their-box-have-let-me-down\/\">Boxee Box and how it was overall a disappointment<\/a> creating problems for me but not necessarily blaming Boxee. The IPTV market is still crap. You pay for the pipe and then pay for content, you could steal content but then you&#8217;re..well stealing and then you have to encode and title all of the content. Cable TV is cumbersome and expensive and I personally have 5 boxes at my entrainment center in order to watch all of the content I want to watch but, due to a slow Internet connection where I am, I still am stuck paying for cable.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s talk about music.<\/p>\n<p>First, let&#8217;s review our options:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>iTunes (Purchase songs, import stolen music, iTunes Match allows you to stream music to other devices)<\/li>\n<li>Spotify \/ Rdio \/ tons of copy cats ($10 a month to listen to any track you want at any time and store 2,000 &#8211; 3,200 devices offline)<\/li>\n<li>Pandora (Create stations based on songs and artists you like. Pay $25 a year to get ad free, you can&#8217;t choose what song plays)<\/li>\n<li>Amazon \/ Google Music (copycats of iTunes)<\/li>\n<li>Steal music (free, sometimes low-quality, sometimes you have to manually add album artwork and tags..it&#8217;s stealing)<\/li>\n<li>Buy CDs (None of my computers have CD drives, CDs for some freaking reason still cost $20 in music stores or $12-$15 online + shipping)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The fundamental problem I have is two-fold and this is a personal problem that technology can&#8217;t really rectify:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>I live in a part of the country where the Internet sped is very poor. I can&#8217;t stream music on Spotify at my house and almost 75% of the places I drive don&#8217;t have cell-service<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;m getting older so I want a mix of &#8220;music I love and grew up with&#8221; and &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/24.media.tumblr.com\/tumblr_lvo1baZqAj1r3l0gmo1_500.gif\">new stuff that doesn&#8217;t sound like crap<\/a>&#8220;<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>My iTunes library is 22,000 songs but for some reason, &#8216;hits of the 90s&#8217; isn&#8217;t a Genius playlist that&#8217;s available to me despite a lot of gems in there. So while there&#8217;s a lot of music in there, I don&#8217;t have enough time to curate it into a playlist that fits my mood without staring into my phone or Mac for hours a week putting together playlists.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>So I decided to get Spotify\u2026With Spotify, most of the songs I listen to, I own but I&#8217;m relying off playlists like &#8220;Top 90s Grunge&#8221; that someone else curated or subscribing to a playlist my friend created. Music discovery is at an all time high and I can play new-release albums for free (I&#8217;m paying $10 a month for the subscription) without committing to a new album purchase. I liked Rob Thomas growing up, let&#8217;s play his new album to see if I&#8217;m interested in buying it. I can stream new music but I still buy the CDs from artists I like because I like supporting the artists more directly. I&#8217;ll buy every album from BT or Armin just because.<\/p>\n<p>Spotify has a problem.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/support.spotify.com\/us\/learn-more\/faq\/#!\/article\/How-many-tracks-can-I-sync-to-offline-playlists\">via<\/a>:\u00a0<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><em>You can have up to 3,333 tracks from the Spotify streaming catalogue synced for offline use, on each of up to 3 computers\/devices at any time.There is no limit to the number of your own imported local files that you can sync to offline playlists on any device<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>3,333 is not many songs. I LOVE iTunes Match when I do have cell-service because I can stream a song that I am thinking about that I haven&#8217;t heard in a long time since it rests in iCloud at all times for me to listen to. Because I am without good cell connection, Spotify doesn&#8217;t work for me when traveling..the only way it&#8217;ll work is by syncing a playlist for offline access and that many tracks seems like a lot but it&#8217;s not really. Honestly, my Internet is so slow, I end up spending all night syncing my Spotify over Wifi and then deciding I want to listen to something different the next day and just using iTunes Match instead.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>So Spotify really only works when I&#8217;m at work or with the playlists I specifically have decided to sync offline.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/adam-jackson.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/IMG_467611.png?resize=338%2C600\" alt=\"IMG 4676\" width=\"338\" height=\"600\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>So Spotify helps me discover new music and iTunes is really where it gets played. However, most of the time I&#8217;m traveling through Vermont, I use SiriusXM on my stereo because it&#8217;s reliable.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I think things would be easier if I just started buying CDs again. I&#8217;d keep a book of albums in my car and grab a specific CD I want. Digital music is too much work. Discovery is nice but streaming is not. Also, the quality of iTunes and Spotify cloud music just doesn&#8217;t compare to the physical media.<\/p>\n<p>Any suggestions?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back in my day\u2026.yeah, that&#8217;s how this one starts but I&#8217;m really curious. Am I just getting old&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_custom_appearance":"","csco_disable_excerpt_posts_layout":false,"csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_location_hash":"","csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-technology","cs-entry","cs-video-wrap"],"apple_news_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pb3IC4-11z","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2312,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2011\/04\/28\/hulu-plus-is-my-savior-from-cable-tv\/","url_meta":{"origin":3941,"position":0},"title":"\u2605 Hulu Plus is my Savior from Cable TV","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"April 28, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"...or so I'm hoping. Hulu comes to Xbox: Hulu Plus on Xbox LIVE Key Features: \u00b7 More TV from Hulu Plus, Together with Xbox LIVE. With the Hulu Plus subscription service on Xbox LIVE, instantly watch your favorite TV shows from ABC, Comedy Central, FOX, NBC, MTV, and more on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Technology&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Technology","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1834,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2011\/03\/15\/how-boxee-and-their-box-have-let-me-down\/","url_meta":{"origin":3941,"position":1},"title":"\u2605 How Boxee and their &#8216;Box&#8217; have let me down","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"March 15, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Boxee's home page touts their device as, \"The one box your TV needs\" but, so far I haven't seen that. In fact, I just added a 6 port HDMI hub to my television because I ran out of HDMI ports. 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