When Tweetbot introduced the new Topics feature a few weeks back I didn’t see a use case for myself. Last week, that changed. I once wrote I’d be recommending music here and then went on to write a couple of reviews only to find that it takes a better understanding of music theory to properly convey what’s good about an album. I spent a lot of time waffling over getting the descriptions of the albums I was recommending just right. I wanted the words to convey the physical and emotional feel I would get from an album but I couldn’t articulate it to the degree I wanted in longer form.
When Apple Music launched nearly three months ago there was only one option to move libraries and playlists from Spotify or rdio and it was cumbersome and time constrained at best. Now that we’re nearing the end of the three month trial I’ve needed to embark on migrating my wife’s music from Spotify over to Apple Music so we can cancel Spotify. Her Spotify music library is pretty small at about 1,000 songs spread across 5 playlists but manually migrating them was not what I was looking to spend my weekend doing. Last night I checked to see if there were any new solutions to automate this and was pleasantly surprised to find an app simply called Move to Apple Music.
7-24-15 Update: Jim has mostly gotten the issue of the missing music sorted out. Unfortunately it required Apple intervening and explaining the process and even then it’s a mess to understand. There’s still a lot ahead to make Apple Music the mainstream product it should be.
Kirk McElhearn, writing about the lack of syncing of the Recently Played playlist between the Mac and iOS on Apple Music:
This is a huge mistake. If I’ve listened to some music through a playlist on Apple Music, I may want to go back and check what I heard, to listen to certain songs again, add them to my music library, or check out more music by some of the artists I heard. Especially if I’m listening on a mobile device and didn’t have time to note what I heard.
I can distinctly remember the summer of 2003. I was only a year into working in IT and realizing that I could seriously pursue this as a career. I was working two jobs, imaging Macs and performing various summer related tasks for my school district’s IT department during the day and serving up corn dogs, pizza and fried cheese on a stick (yes, really) at local fairs in the evenings and on weekends. I had just purchased my first iPod, the iTunes Music Store had recently launched and I was pouring a steady stream of my earnings into it. I spent over $500 that summer building the foundation of my music library and discovering new artists. It was exhilarating to have the vast landscape of music available to download on my iBook G4 using my Treo 650’s Edge connection[1] with the tethering that I wasn’t supposed to be able to access. That summer opened me up to a world that my protected upbringing had previously been able to easily divert by driving past the record store and turning K-Love up on the radio. Over the next eight years I’d spend hundreds of hours building my iTunes library to the nearly/merely 13,000 songs that have made the trek with me through a slew of computers and migrations. Then it all changed.
If you’ve ever followed a link to YouTube and found yourself looking back on an hour that you wish you could get back then I hope to be of some assistance with the occasional YouTube escape. These will be spontaneous trips to YouTube for things that are worth your time.
At the beginning of December Spotify released its Year in Music 2014 feature which sums up the top music and trends on Spotify for 2014. The feature also allows users to view this information based on their own Spotify usage. This is the second year I’ve used this feature and while others find it provides a surprising retrospective of their taste in music, it’s something I find compelling about using Spotify. Personally this kind of data is why I love Spotify and have adopted it as my primary music application/service. My 2014 Year in Music doesn’t conform to all aspects of what I would’ve expected for myself but it is an accurate representation of how I’ve used the service this year. The weeks and months following Riley’s birth were full of late night sessions of Rockabye Baby’s many lullaby covers of popular artists that was a much needed break from traditional lullaby songs which is why the winter months were dominated by the group. The spring brought about a renaissance of my interest in The City Harmonic when my grandmother surprised us in coming to town to meet Riley. Summer months allow me to open the windows in my car which requires the bass and lyrical thrust of Lecrae’s fantastic new album [Anomaly](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomaly_(Lecrae_album). Over the last few months of the year with the Fall came a lot of changes for my family and a newfound inspiration to participate and enjoy life and not live to work but rather to take a step back and realize that I want to work to live. I couldn’t think of another artist that sums this up for me other than the polarizing Owl City. I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve debated sharing my Year in Music for fear of what it opinions may be formed about my own taste in music but over the last few weeks I’ve come to find that I’m confident in my taste in music and find it to be one of my favorite things to discover and write about.
Casey Liss posted a few of his favorite Christmas albums last week. Two of them have been getting plenty of play this year on the Sonos at Carole’s1 house the last few weeks and all three are in my Christmas playlist on Spotify. You won’t find many of the typical artists in this playlist as I find that they get a ton of radio, film and public play when you’re out and about for the holidays. If you’re looking for a couple hundred new Christmas songs to enjoy this holiday season you should give my playlist a listen.
I first found Bear’s Den through their Agape EP last year which was followed up by this year’s Without/Within EP. I was smitten from the first track of Agape which is the title track of the EP and the first song of their debut album Islands. Every year there are a handful of artists that hit the scene with a truly solid debut album. This year, I would wager that Bear’s Den falls into this elite group. While “Agape”, “Isaac” and “When You Break” were present on Agape, they’ve been re-recorded on Islands with a larger soundstage that incorporates the full band in a wider capacity and broadens the tone and pacing from what was present on the EP. Typically I like to see songs go the other way when it comes to stripping the production down to the metal and wood of an acoustic set but Islands isn’t over produced. It carries the authenticity of the London based trio’s talents into the mix of some amazing new songs to flush out what may be my favorite album of 2014.
It’s 75 degrees outside and pain runs through my body. This is emotional pain like I’ve never felt in my life. I’m driving up I-10 in Florida from what was my grandparent’s house. I’ve been with my uncle for the last week on an unexpected trip to help my grandmother brace for the impact of divorce.