Searching for music.
Nov. 24th, 2009 09:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
serynAmazon has a $3 in free music downloads coupon as part of their "black friday" deals. So I looked around figuring I'd get a couple of those really popular 80s songs from back when I was a poor child who could not afford $16 for a cassette.
Sadly the Amazon categories suck. Modern pop music stuff I like is in more than 15 subgenres, but it repeats. So the same song/album will be in several subgenres, but in any of those, only a fraction of similar music (to my ear) will be present. It's impossible to find anything if you don't know what it's called. The browse is broken. If you told me I could get 3 paperback novels (and assuming I couldn't use things that are in my cart waiting until they are past the pre-order stage) it would probably take me about 30 minutes to choose between the things I want. I spent 90 minutes looking last night and got only 1 song.
[The song is by Yes, "Owner of a Lonely Heart". In theory my phone will clip ringtones from any MP3 stored on it. I strongly suspect that it would make me smile from the delicious irony if when my SO called the song was "Owner of a Lonely Heart". I'm weird like that. I'm not worried about ringtones for anyone else because no one calls me. Not even my SO, who usually just texts.]
They do not have categories like "80s music". I looked under oldies but the stuff in there is stuff dead people liked when they were kids. Seriously. Like the 30s. Yes those are "oldies" but that's not quite what most people mean....
So I complained about this to my SO this morning and he suggested I try Pandora. I hate not being able to keep skipping songs, but otherwise it's been tolerable and interesting. There's a Pandora app for my phone. The app is far superior to the flash app in my browser. No clue. The only thing I don't like about Pandora is that I don't like having music on while I'm at my computer. Some of that is because I'm using the speakers which were built into the monitor that was chosen solely based on price. Some of it is that I prefer music with lyrics and can't write anything, not even email, if there's other verbal input.
Still. It turns out that Pandora isn't charging for their basic account and it doesn't wholly suck. The suggestions for similarity are actually somewhat similar. Even to weird things like instrumental hard rock cello music. I'd like it a lot better if the flash app footprint were smaller in memory and CPU consumption especially when paused.... "There's no 'off', I guess I have to close this window."
Currently I've got no music on my phone. You can tell I'm not very serious about this. It's some sort of lark or intellectual exercise. I haven't listened to my iPod in ages. I need to offload the bogus content. My previous player had only held 1Gb so it only had good stuff. This holds 8Gb and I just picked up everything... and there never was a whole album with all good songs. Ever. I'm pretty sure it's part of the RIAA contracts.
ps. I was going to title this "Opening Pandora's Box" but with the current slang, that ended up sounding like foreplay ... or a TOS violation.
pps. If you've got suggestions, um. well, you can try, but I'm pretty fussy. I liked Evanescence until I read the lyrics. They're god-ridden. I was leery of Collective Soul because of their name, but they manage not to sound god-ridden at least on the bouncy album I have. I generally like Matchbox 20, but not Rob Thomas's solo work (and I hate Santana). I don't really like Bon Jovi's new album. I did sort of like the song by Jack's Mannequin that was on TDS. One of my favorite albums is Bryan Adams's greatest hits. I also like old school Def Leppard. I don't like David Bowie or punk/funk/junk. I don't like grunge, but I do like post-grunge retro homage pseudo grunge, except Red Hot Chili Peppers who just put me off every time.
But otherwise the best casual indicator of my preferences is that I only like music I've heard before. I have technical preferences, I like stuff that's in 3/4, major keys (upbeat sounding), with depressing lyrics sung by a younger male voice, with little guitar (no solos), preferably rhyming lyrics in trochaic tetrameter. And it has to be actual singing, I'm too old for this househop stuff where they just shout into the microphone about stuff that really sucks about life. And... if it's not a live performance being recorded, it can't be improvved---- Jazz is music for musicians because they want to show off how they can riff on what was done before. I'm such a casual listener that sounds like they've screwed up.
I have a good ear for weird things. I can universally identify the New Zealand Symphony. I generally have a sense of what's LSO. I can tell the difference between synthesized and real instruments, but only care about the percussion ones.
[ETA. it looks like Pandora is available on Roku now... just in case I want to have the TV on while I play just audio... that seems really wasteful... ]
Sadly the Amazon categories suck. Modern pop music stuff I like is in more than 15 subgenres, but it repeats. So the same song/album will be in several subgenres, but in any of those, only a fraction of similar music (to my ear) will be present. It's impossible to find anything if you don't know what it's called. The browse is broken. If you told me I could get 3 paperback novels (and assuming I couldn't use things that are in my cart waiting until they are past the pre-order stage) it would probably take me about 30 minutes to choose between the things I want. I spent 90 minutes looking last night and got only 1 song.
[The song is by Yes, "Owner of a Lonely Heart". In theory my phone will clip ringtones from any MP3 stored on it. I strongly suspect that it would make me smile from the delicious irony if when my SO called the song was "Owner of a Lonely Heart". I'm weird like that. I'm not worried about ringtones for anyone else because no one calls me. Not even my SO, who usually just texts.]
They do not have categories like "80s music". I looked under oldies but the stuff in there is stuff dead people liked when they were kids. Seriously. Like the 30s. Yes those are "oldies" but that's not quite what most people mean....
So I complained about this to my SO this morning and he suggested I try Pandora. I hate not being able to keep skipping songs, but otherwise it's been tolerable and interesting. There's a Pandora app for my phone. The app is far superior to the flash app in my browser. No clue. The only thing I don't like about Pandora is that I don't like having music on while I'm at my computer. Some of that is because I'm using the speakers which were built into the monitor that was chosen solely based on price. Some of it is that I prefer music with lyrics and can't write anything, not even email, if there's other verbal input.
Still. It turns out that Pandora isn't charging for their basic account and it doesn't wholly suck. The suggestions for similarity are actually somewhat similar. Even to weird things like instrumental hard rock cello music. I'd like it a lot better if the flash app footprint were smaller in memory and CPU consumption especially when paused.... "There's no 'off', I guess I have to close this window."
Currently I've got no music on my phone. You can tell I'm not very serious about this. It's some sort of lark or intellectual exercise. I haven't listened to my iPod in ages. I need to offload the bogus content. My previous player had only held 1Gb so it only had good stuff. This holds 8Gb and I just picked up everything... and there never was a whole album with all good songs. Ever. I'm pretty sure it's part of the RIAA contracts.
ps. I was going to title this "Opening Pandora's Box" but with the current slang, that ended up sounding like foreplay ... or a TOS violation.
pps. If you've got suggestions, um. well, you can try, but I'm pretty fussy. I liked Evanescence until I read the lyrics. They're god-ridden. I was leery of Collective Soul because of their name, but they manage not to sound god-ridden at least on the bouncy album I have. I generally like Matchbox 20, but not Rob Thomas's solo work (and I hate Santana). I don't really like Bon Jovi's new album. I did sort of like the song by Jack's Mannequin that was on TDS. One of my favorite albums is Bryan Adams's greatest hits. I also like old school Def Leppard. I don't like David Bowie or punk/funk/junk. I don't like grunge, but I do like post-grunge retro homage pseudo grunge, except Red Hot Chili Peppers who just put me off every time.
But otherwise the best casual indicator of my preferences is that I only like music I've heard before. I have technical preferences, I like stuff that's in 3/4, major keys (upbeat sounding), with depressing lyrics sung by a younger male voice, with little guitar (no solos), preferably rhyming lyrics in trochaic tetrameter. And it has to be actual singing, I'm too old for this househop stuff where they just shout into the microphone about stuff that really sucks about life. And... if it's not a live performance being recorded, it can't be improvved---- Jazz is music for musicians because they want to show off how they can riff on what was done before. I'm such a casual listener that sounds like they've screwed up.
I have a good ear for weird things. I can universally identify the New Zealand Symphony. I generally have a sense of what's LSO. I can tell the difference between synthesized and real instruments, but only care about the percussion ones.
[ETA. it looks like Pandora is available on Roku now... just in case I want to have the TV on while I play just audio... that seems really wasteful... ]
