Is iTunes the future?

The most recent update of iTunes killed my library. I ended up with the grey song titles of death, and while this prompted me to start moving everything to a bigger external hard drive connected to the laptop that travels with me, it has made me wonder about the future of committing to the platform.

When even my iPhone obsessed daughter has shifted to Android because of the problems she has had with her iPhone 6S and the price of an upgrade it makes you think. While this article in The Guardian from June 2019 says that I am fine for now, who knows how long this will last. If they are moving away from iTunes on Mac then the development costs of keeping it up to date for Windows will become for than they care to pay in the end, think 30 pin connector and the fate of the iPod Classic.

Then there's the hardware. My last of the line 160gb 6th generation iPod is now 6 years old. Hard drives don't last forever, and having had my fingers burnt with an SSD upgrade to 256gb which ate the battery in a matter of a few months I'm not inclined to go down that route again.  If you were here in 2018 you may remember the first stirrings of discontent in a post called Why Pod? Many of the arguments in favour of Apple have gone away since then. Personally I still want a dedicated music player because I'm not a young folk and can put my phone down to allow me to switch off from business and social media. So when CEX in Weston Super Mare had a bargain I took the plunge.

So say hello to my Sony Walkman NW-A45. With 16gb of internal storage and the potential for an agrophobia sized micro SD card it seems like the answer. With my usual Sennheiser earphones the sound is a noticeable improvement over Apple and despite a lot of the reviews saying that the User Interface is clunky, I'm not finding it that way. Bluetooth and NFC get over any problems with it talking to the car. It works with Audible so another tick. Podcasts I haven't tried on it yet and I'm still working on finding the best software, currently I'm using Music Center for PC, but may look elsewhere as well.

While this is also an older model, it is not subject to the whims of Sony's software developers to keep it running. That was a let down on my eariler Sony NW-A3000 which was a great piece of kit at least partially tied to the CONNECT player and ATRAC file format. Mine still works, except for a dodgy headphone socket but has sat in drawer for the last few years because of the complexities of working with it.

So, good news I can move backwards into the future seated comfortably on a bit of old tech that shouldn't become too obsolete to use. I haven't abandoned the iPod, and won't until it finally gives up the ghost. My old 120gb version lasted 10 years so you are stuck with me at least that long, and then all we will need is a change of logo and name, 272gigblog perhaps? No, 528gigblog sounds better.

 

Musical Lucky Dips

Remember at school fetes they had a bran tub, a lucky dip, see what present comes out, well Missing Records in Glasgow was having a clearout last week. Bags of 10 unboxed CDs (or DVDs) for £1. A quick rummage and £4 later I have 50 cds (bonus bag for spending so much) to try.

When I opened the bags (about 3 seconds after I got home) they divided in to 4 categories. "Great that'll do", "not really for me", "need to listen to this" and "never heard of it". Only one disc was something I already had, Miles Davis 'On the Corner', but you can't complain about a duplication like that.

Great That'll Do...
I'm surprised at the quality of music, but I suppose if there's no sleeve it's unsaleable whatever it is.
I got, Neil Young 'Decade' (both discs). I don't know why I didn't have this already but I don't. Ditto, Queen's 'Day At The Races'  or Lou Reed's 'Transformer'. Other straight on the iPod discs are 2 Otis Redding compilations, Coleman Hawkins and Astrud Gilberto albums. The Doobie Brothers 'One Step Closer' was the follow up to Minute by Minute and had Michael McDonald steering them into the gap between Steely Dan and Supertramp, but it's really quite good and joined Fairport Convention 'Live' and Neil Young's 'Americana' on the pod pile.

Not Really For Me...
Into this pile went Iron Maiden, The Proclaimers, a disc with a picture of bagpipers and Bruce Springsteen's 'Nebraska'. All worthy I'm sure just not likely to get a play, so not worth the megabytes they would occupy on the pod. Sadly Chas & Dave also ended up here but may sneak out for one play of their hits.

Need To Listen To This...
The Doors 'Soft Parade', Frank Sinatra, I still suffer from a prejudice against him handed down from mum who wasn't keen on him. So certainly getting a play as she has proved wrong on other counts. Bad Company and Flaming Lips also went into this pot and as I have never listened to the latter but always suspected I might like them worth a go.

Never Heard Of It...
This is why you have to love a lucky dip. The chance of finding something new and great you ahve never come across before.
Fyfe Dangerfield - 'Fly Yellow Moon'. If he could make up his mind if he wanted to be Passenger or Coldplay Fyfe might turn out ok. As it's a 2010 album his moment may have passed. Best song "She Needs Me" which is ELO over the backbeat of ZZ top's Sharp Dressed Man. Worst one a karaoke cover of Always a Woman that was in a John Lewis ad apparently. Also he sounds like a character in spy film.
Fang Island - 'Major'. Very odd, sounds like Green Day playing the theme from Friends
Mike Heron - Where The Mystics Swim - yes the Incredible String Band man, and there is bits of ISB about this, but also hints of Americana, Tom Petty and Van Morrison. Mexican Girl and A Song For Robert Johnson are favourites after a couple of listens. Great album and I'm looking forwrd to getting to know it better.
Other star albums from this pile. The Horsies 'Trouble Down South' Country with chiming African guitars and Fred James '100 years of the Blues'. It will take a while to work though the pile, but following my last post about wanting to hear new rather than the same tired old stuff, this was a great way of proving my point.

Postcript:
Just played The Doors, what a load of old tosh.

Why Pod?

I don't like Apple, I can't understand why the iPhone is so popular when to my mind there are so many better phones available, and as for the computers with their silly mouse and finder screen... So why do I write about the iPod, and what alternatives are there if you want a dedicated music player?

To quote Philip K Dick, I think, "nothing Ubiqs like Ubiquity", and on marketing power alone Apple has blasted most of it's rivals out of the water. Let me be clear the iPod I love is the classic 160gb one that was discontinued a few years ago. I have two, one bought when they were discontinued, and one with a 256gb ssd in it. I'm hoping that will see me OK for a good few years, but the healthy second hand market suggests they will be available, at a price, for some time.

The Pros
I listen to a lot of Podcasts and Audio books, and iTunes, whatever you think of it supports these very well. There are apps, Audible, Stitcher and so on but iTunes does it all. I have a cable that allows the iPod to talk to my car radio, ubiquity again, and cables, docks, and holders are all easily available, even for discontinued product.

The Cons
It's made by Apple and the sound isn't as good as some of the HiFi players, although to be fair decent headphones (I use Sennhesier buds) makes it more than acceptable.

I started my proper MP3 player journey with an old Sony 20gb purple egg which sounded great, but the Connect music manager was hopeless. From there I went to a 120gb iPod which lasted years. When that started to fail I looked at some of the HiFi MP3 players and that is where it all went pear shaped. Having been used to the convenience of iTunes dragging and dropping and having artwork files in place was a nuisance. I tried a couple of different players. The Colorfly C3 sounded great but the stupid little screen and impossible user interface made it unusable. Much the same applied to the Fiio X3 except that it just didn't work properly, freezing constantly, and with minimal interest in problems from the "expert" supplier, who thought that great sound excused everything

The problem with these players seems to be that while it is easy enough to make something sound good, play lossless files and so on, the resources to create well designed easy to use players and a user interface with supporting software are beyond the mostly Chinese companies making these things.

So back to Apple. Yes they are a triumph of design over sound, but in a world of compromises being able to listen to my music or other stuff without constant frustration and glitches is worth it. Anyway my ears are over 50 years old so how much am I losing? File format makes a lot of difference of course and wherever possible I use ALAC, and buy downloads in 320kbps MP3 or better. In the end it comes down to convenience. Apple has taken over the world because they provide a mix of convenience and quality that works for most people. So perhaps I am wrong about their other products, a couple of clients use iMacs and my daughter won't hear of a phone that isn't Apple. The accessibility and interconnectivity is also persuasive.

Apple are slowly killing off the remaining iPods in their range and look to be phasing out mp3 downloads (as are Amazon) in favour of streaming so we can assume that dedicated music players will start to fade away over the next few years. This will of course drive us all to music, podcasts and the rest on our phones. Where does that leave me? My music life committed to iTunes and my phone world with Android...

Why 160gig blog?

In my view Apple's contribution to human happiness peaked with iPod Classic and it's been on the slide ever since. I had a 120gb version for ages, and when Apple discontinued the Classic I saw a 160gb version in Asda Motherwell and grabbed it. A good move as I never saw another new in a shop. I have gradually added most of the music I have and on 6th November 2016 the total is 11291 tracks in 763 albums which would take me 37.3 days to play. The total rises by a song or two most days. As I'm one of the dying breed who actually listens rather than using music as wallpaper I tend to think about what I am listening to and it seemed like time to let some of those thoughts out for some fresh air. So this is a blog about my iPod and it's contents. Who is it for? Me mostly, I write a fair bit in the course of business but haven't ever written just for the sake of it.

I know it's not a new idea. Dylan Jones did a great job of sharing the whole curating aspect of music collecting in his book iPod Therefore I Am which I recommend, both for the tales and for the music choices, most of them at least.

Introductory post over. I will probably fiddle about with the design of the blog a bit and start posting as regularly as life allows. I'm aiming for every couple of weeks at worst. Will anyone care? Will anyone read it?  Will I last more than the four posts I have ideas for..?