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ITunes 11 and Colors

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Re: ITunes 11 and Colors

#71
post #32

What's a good music player for OS X? I just want something simple that plays mp3s etc. and helps me manage my collection. Even before this redesign, iTunes was too bossy for me to like it. Is there something like Winamp when it was good?

Check out Songbird at http://getsongbird.com/ I prefer foobar2000 on Windows for a pure, unadulterated, customizable music player, but Songbird is the best player I've found on OS X. It is fast, plays music, and has a plugin for last.fm, which is everything I require.

I've had the opposite experience; while with a fairly small library Songbird is fine, with mine (~700GB, lossless) it's incredibly slow and prone to crashing. Last time I tried it was about six months ago with no improvement.

Re: ITunes 11 and Colors

#72

Until just recently I was an iTunes power user. I have a 15 year old 80gb collection of pirated music - all full albums, all with pristine metadata and personalized genres. I do not have cover art tho, but I don't really care - until now. iTunes 11 makes a big deal about cover art - their UI is nearly exclusively dependent on it. I don't like thumbnails. When I look at my music, I want a big sortable list. I don't wa…

I am fearing a possible transition from iOS to Android because I'd be dropping SmartPlaylists... from what I gather though there are options. I just hope they're as good.

I lived by SmartPlaylists. I basically ended up just dragging and dropping them into Spotify, thus making them static DumbPlaylists.

With a Spotify-like service I doubt you'll miss them, tho.

Re: ITunes 11 and Colors

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a couple musicians, some of them earn enough to survive thanks to their art, most don't. I know that if I had talent I could create and distribute an album on my laptop and distribute it globally. We used to pay record labels for this. Now we pay them to stand in the way of artists and their fans. Regardless, musicians don't really make money from people listening to their music and never really have - unless…

"Musicians make money from playing live... This is the future of the industry." I see this sentiment repeated often. I don't buy it. It seems like a better way to put it is that if musicians are going to make money at all, then it must come from live performance. It certainly won't come from recordings, because more and more consumers don't want to pay for recordings, regardless of the practices of major labels, who…

Remember - music existed before money. Selling recorded performances is relatively new - how long have records been around? I doubt the first users of the tech in the early 1900s spent enough on records to support any type of professional musician, let alone create Lady Gaga like stars.

Yet, somehow, there have been professional musicians for likely thousands of years.

Record companies solved the distribution problem. The Internet proved them obsolete and for the next few years they'll continue their death rattle until they blossom into something that looks like Spotify (which is replacing radio as well), or someone else will fill their shoes (as Spotify is doing today).

And then no one will care about programs designed to put lipstick on my 80gb mp3 pig as iTunes does... Unless they roll out their own all you can eat service :)

Re: ITunes 11 and Colors

#74
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you don't really think that $10 is "bit high, but fair". Spotify is horrible for artists and pays them next to nothing. Assuming you fully own the rights to your music it takes 232,000 plays per month just to make minimum wage for a single artist [1]. Now consider that Spotify, and similar streaming services, are losing money hand over fist and it's obvious this model can not last [2]. Personally I put Spotify…

If I consider myself, I've never spent even half of the 120€ a year on music as I now do with Spotify. I'm fairly sure that my case isn't that uncommon with others of my generation, born in 80s or later. A big part of this generation has never gotten into buying music and it seems Spotify is a way to get at least some revenue from us. Nobody outside Spotify and the labels owning it knows the exact details of their fi…

Exactly. With music you pay for distribution. $10 to stream me a large catalog for a month is good. $10 for 14 tracks is not good.

Re: ITunes 11 and Colors

#76
post #21

Until just recently I was an iTunes power user. I have a 15 year old 80gb collection of pirated music - all full albums, all with pristine metadata and personalized genres. I do not have cover art tho, but I don't really care - until now. iTunes 11 makes a big deal about cover art - their UI is nearly exclusively dependent on it. I don't like thumbnails. When I look at my music, I want a big sortable list. I don't wa…

I love that $10 for monthly access to basically every album ever on demand is "a bit high". I remember dropping $16 a pop on CDs/Tapes at Tower Records back in the day, probably bought at least two a month... In terms of your issue with iTunes cover art, didn't they announce some thing where you pay a flat fee and is basically matches all of your illegal music with legal one when iCloud was introduced (I never tried…

Yeah, I think it's incredible that he thinks $10 is too high. Perhaps he means '$10 is too high for a limited and poorly organised music selction'.

I would have no problem paying double that each month for Spotify, and upwards of 3-5 times that if it had a music catalogue and organisation structure similar to iTunes. Granted, I value music more than many people, but $10 is what a cheap lunch costs, for unlimited music on demand.

Re: ITunes 11 and Colors

#77
Since Windows 7, hovering over an open application in the taskbar has done a similar thing. I sometimes wonder how it almost always manages to pick the dominant colour, even if it isn't necessarily the most common one.

Re: ITunes 11 and Colors

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you don't really think that $10 is "bit high, but fair". Spotify is horrible for artists and pays them next to nothing. Assuming you fully own the rights to your music it takes 232,000 plays per month just to make minimum wage for a single artist [1]. Now consider that Spotify, and similar streaming services, are losing money hand over fist and it's obvious this model can not last [2]. Personally I put Spotify…

I know a couple musicians, some of them earn enough to survive thanks to their art, most don't. I know that if I had talent I could create and distribute an album on my laptop and distribute it globally. We used to pay record labels for this. Now we pay them to stand in the way of artists and their fans. Regardless, musicians don't really make money from people listening to their music and never really have - unless…

> Musicians make money from playing live

It might be good advice economically, but IMHO it is also a tendency worth fighting, because it is so obviously unfair and limiting. What about artists (or genres!) that suck at giving live concerts? How do I vote with my wallet if I have no time for concerts - but listen to music all day?

Bizarrely, soundtracks seem to have come to my rescue (for some genres) - where artists receive a one-time payment to make solid music, but then slap it onto iTunes where I can throw in a few extra $$$.

Re: ITunes 11 and Colors

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Musicians make money from playing live... This is the future of the industry." I see this sentiment repeated often. I don't buy it. It seems like a better way to put it is that if musicians are going to make money at all, then it must come from live performance. It certainly won't come from recordings, because more and more consumers don't want to pay for recordings, regardless of the practices of major labels, who…

Remember - music existed before money. Selling recorded performances is relatively new - how long have records been around? I doubt the first users of the tech in the early 1900s spent enough on records to support any type of professional musician, let alone create Lady Gaga like stars. Yet, somehow, there have been professional musicians for likely thousands of years. Record companies solved the distribution problem…

> music existed before money

?? Before money, artists still needed food and shelter...

> Yet, somehow, there have been professional musicians for likely thousands of years.

But does anyone really want to go back to the patronage system?

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