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eMusic vs. iTunes

emusic just released an OS X download client, which is great because I just got hooked on the service. After getting all hopped up on the iTunes store last week, began to read more and more pieces making the points that A) the .99/track price at the iTunes Store isn’t so impressive when you compare it to eMusic’s all-you-can-eat chuck-wagon smorgasbord for $10 or $15 month and B) emusic’s catalog will be more up your alley if your tastes veer off the Billboard Top 100.

The emusic subscription pays for itself if you download an album per month. Many broadband users download an album per hour. But it’s not just about big value. In the past two days I’ve rediscovered The Fugs, The Cramps, The Kinks, Dub Syndicate, John Fahey and Bert Jansch, discovered Mission of Burma records I didn’t know existed, and fleshed out my Wes Montgomery and Leo Kottke collections. I’m not saying there isn’t lots of stuff I like from the Big 5 labels represented by Apple, only that it’s a lot more expensive and emusic is more in line with my tastes. Why not have both? Between the two you have access to a huge swath of both Top 100 and more obscure music. iTunes costs nothing to have access to, and emusic is way cheaper than my usual CD habit (which has abated greatly since Miles arrived).

One other important point: emusic is pure MP3, rather than DRM’d AAC. In other words, no “infected” files — no authorizing and de-authorizing computers – emusic puts the responsibility of not stealing music into the customer’s hands, rather than trying to solve it with technology. On the other hand, the iTunes interface rocks. On the other other hand, emusic can be used on most any platform.

As always, Andrew Orlowski gets surly on the point. TechTV has a good comparison of the services.

Music: The Fugs :: Dirty Old Man
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Rendezvous Sharing Puzzler

Showed my boss iTunes’ new remote music sharing (but not downloading) feature today and he immediately tagged it as webcasting. Is it webcasting? If so, then does this form of sharing require royalties to be paid? Who will determine whether I’m just listening to my home collection from work (or vice versa) or casting my collection to 100 listeners (assuming I had that much upstream bandwidth)? And so what if I am? I’m not sharing the files with them, only the performance. And if sharing the performance is a problem, does that mean I can’t have a party and play a CD for everyone who attends?

Gray areas, but you can begin to see why iTunes throws an alert “This feature is for personal use only” when sharing is activated.

Music: Bert Jansch :: Black Water Side
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Po in a Hammerlock

Miles has a Po doll. Tonight he pulled Po onto the living room floor face down and got up on its back. Dug a knee in between Po’s shoulderblades. Grabbed ahold of Po’s circular red antenna and yanked backwards, pulling Po’s head up off the floor. Half-nelson hammerlock, WWF action writ miniature, but totally innocent like.

Music: Public Image Limited :: Poptones
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Solar for the Bourgeoisie

Bummed. Had this big idea to do solar-powered, Mac-based web hosting. On first conversation with an employee at Sun Light and Power, it had sounded like I could power a G4 with a single 120W panel, a $50 RV battery, and a $60 RV inverter. I borrowed the Watts Up to measure actual consumption and went back to Solar Dude with my numbers today.

The server, with LCD monitor, DSL modem and router draws 162 watts constant (8.67 kwh in 57.5 hrs). Assuming fixed-position panels on a South-facing roof in the East Bay, figure around 4.5 hours/day of usable sunlight. So I would need six 160w panels to keep the batteries charged day and night, not one. The panels run $500-$600 each. Comparing against our electric bill, it turns out that if the system had required one panel, it would have paid for itself in four years (tax rebates don’t apply unless you do grid-tie (sell your electricity back to the utility)). I was willing to bite off four years in exchange for the customer draw of solar-powered web hosting. But unless solar panels start falling from the sky (gently), it’s not going to happen. Panels make electricity out of thin air and are therefore pure gold. That’s also why there is virtually no used market for them.

Turns out you can get up and running with wind energy for about half the price of solar, although I’m not going to try and do that in a rental. And those stories about windmills killing so many birds on the Altamont Pass? Wives’ tales, apparently. Solar Dude says there have only been two confirmed bird kills there.

Question for the electrical geniuses — Solar Dude said it seemed like my server was drawing a lot of power. For comparison, we plugged his 1.8 GHz Pentium into the Watts Up and it drew 80w. So if the PowerPC is so energy efficient, why is my single PPC 867MHz drawing nearly twice what a Pentium draws (albeit with LCD in sleep mode, modem and router)? Of course the setup cost would still be huge even if I went x86.

Anyway, fossil-fueled birdhouse hosting is now up and running with a small handful of customers. Bring it on. Not giving up on the idea… maybe I need to write a grant for free panels or something.

Music: Aimee Mann :: The Fall of the World’s Own Optimist
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Rendezvous Streaming

In November 2001 I had just migrated from BeOS to OS X and was sorely missing the ability of my MP3 player to broadcast my home collection to work (see iTunes Needs Streaming). All the hubbub surrounding the new iTunes music store has eclipsed the news that it’s finally possible to do exactly that. I’m sitting at work right now listening to my home MP3s, and haven’t dropped a frame in two hours. All 16,000 tracks are immediately available, with all the usual search functionality. All my playlists (both standard and “smart”) are available. I’m in hog heaven.

If you set sharing on in the prefs, you can also provide a direct link into any point in your collection — Cmd-Click and select Copy URL. philm points out that it’s also possible to link to specific items in the iTunes store. Check these examples.

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Gut Feeling

Day before yesterday woke up with a tearing, stabbing sensation in my lower left abdomen. Decided to ride it out and see if it went away. Very low energy yesterday and then this morning it was still there but accompanied by dry heaves (urrrggghhh) and other nasties. We read online that appendicitis usually shows the cramp first, nausea later. Even though the appendix is on the right, Amy insisted that I go to the ER this morning. Spent half the day in a hospital bed on an IV drip. No clear diagnosis. Possibly a torn muscle from an intensive sit-up workout two days ago (but why would that only be on one side?), possibly diverticulitis (distention or displacement of a hunk of intestine, possibly infection). My labs came back clean though, which pretty much rules out infection. Sent home with Vics and slept the day away. Now the nausea is mostly gone, but the pain mostly remains. Weird to have the day blow up like this, so out of the blue.

Music: Ibrahim Ferrer :: Cienfuegos tiene su guaguanca“
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iTunes Compromise

A few follow-up thoughts on the iTunes integrated store:

– Some comments on last night’s post led me to check out eMusic and yup, it’s very cool. Great service. But for me (and I suspect many others) the integration of the store into iTunes just makes sense and is going to result in me buying more music. Possibly a lot more. I don’t know how or why — it just feels much natural to use that little iTunes search window I use all the time to search on music I don’t already have than it is to go to an external web site. Also, the flat rate at eMusic means I would feel compelled to spend time surfing for music whether I need music this month or not. Don’t have much time for that these days and prefer not to feel compelled to shop.

– There are a dozen arguments we can level against the first incarnation of the service (not available internationally, only offers Big Popular music), but the fact is that the war between The Labels and The People over digital music downloads has been going on for several years now, with no signs of abating. What we need are major steps toward compromise, so the labels, the artists, and consumers all get what they want. This is what that compromise looks like. Not perfect from every angle, but also better than what we have now, ie bidirectional animosity and ongoing war. The service will improve over time. It just launched.

– Several complaints about albums costing too much to purchase digitally. Yup, that’s true, I’d agree with that but add that half the point here is that you don’t have to buy the album – you buy the tracks you like. If you want the whole album, why not just buy the CD? On the other hand, if they can offer substantive discounts on whole albums, I would be more inclined. Just saying that my approach has always been to purchase the whole album if I want the whole album and download songs if I just want songs. Nothing about this store changes that.

Anyway. Despite its imperfections, I still think this service is going to make huge inroads towards cracking the great nut of electronic music sales. Done right, everyone wins.

Music: Johnny Mercer :: Strip Polka
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iTunes 4 Headphones Station

Just spent half an hour surfing through the music store built into iTunes 4, and gotta say, it’s an intoxicating experience — like hanging out at the headphone station at the record store listening to sample tracks, except that the UI responds faster and there are way more albums. Around 200,000 tracks from the Big 5 labels to start with. Initial observations:

A) This changes everything. Someone had to “go big” and make a play for the paid music download proposition, and do it right. That someone may as well be Apple, and sure enough, they’ve done it right. The associative power between artists, genres, tracks, and databases of “what other people bought” is incredibly powerful. Throw in the ability to sample the first 30 seconds of any track and you get a very addictive, shopper-friendly experience (.99/track). In 10 minutes, I decided to purchase the music of Jack Johnson and Diana Krall — two artists I had thought of idly in the past without tasting.

B) Decided to, but couldn’t — a bug in confirmation of billing details for existing .Mac customers made damn sure of that.

C) 200,000 tracks is not really that many, and naturally, my favorite artists are not represented by the Big 5. “Beefheart” turns up nothing. Even artists as significant as Air are nowhere to be found. Similarly, only Radiohead’s lamest album (“OK Computer”) is present. Somehow, it’s more exciting to browse and be excited by the possibilities than it is to search for what you really like. But as a commenter at MacSlash put it:

Are you all retarded? The reason they used the top 5 lables is because they are THE TOP 5 LABELS. This is an opportunity to make money, not appease emo-pop indie geeks.

Exactly. And it’s probably a no-brainer that Apple will at some point offer a submission mechanism for “indie” artists. Meanwhile, it’s about time someone created a simple mechanism for people to get off on quick-n-easy music downloads without simultaneously reaming the very artists they allegedly respect and support. Turn that beat around… got to hear per-CUSSION!

I’ll test the new AAC codec support later.

Music: David Bowie :: I’m Afraid Of Americans
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The Singer, Not the Song

Rick Santorum (R-Pa) has no problem with homosexuals — it’s homosexual acts that get his knickers in a knot.

And I have no problem with someone who has other orientations. The question is, do you act upon those orientations? So it’s not the person, it’s the person’s actions. And you have to separate the person from their actions. We have laws in states, like the one at the Supreme Court right now, that has sodomy laws and they were there for a purpose.

So it’s fine to be gay, just don’t be having sex! He goes on to discuss “man on dog” acts and more with the AP reporter. Hey, you elected him (well, not YOU you, but you know, “you”).

Music: Peter Apfelbaum and The Hieroglyphics Ensemble :: Forwarding
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Watts Up?

Just plugged my server, monitor, modem and router into a Watts Up watt meter borrowed from Berkeley’s Sun Light And Power. The goal is to see how much power this machine chews in a month, then purchase solar cells, inverter, and battery backup to match or exceed. Going by initial conversations, should be able do this relatively affordably, even without feeding power back to the grid (if you want to see your electric meter turn backwards, the investment swells considerably — we’ll start small).

Music: Velvet Underground :: Some Kinda Love