I Have Synced Into the Internet

It’s taken time for it to fully dawn on me, but I think I can officially say everything I do is online now. In fact, I can’t do anything on the computer anymore without requiring Internet access. (Gaming doesn’t count – I use a dedicated gaming console, the Wii, for that.) Whenever I am forced to work offline, I always use something that simulates my being online, whether it be Google Gears, or simply a local copy I can later put back online.

Last.fm: The Ultimate Hub of Music Activity

I used to use Pandora.com. I loved it. It showed me all kinds of tracks I didn’t know about. But, then it got steadily repetitive. It couldn’t think outside the specific box I’d given it.

last.fm is different, and it because it does things differently, most people instantly get aggravated and move back to Pandora. Hey, I did that a few years ago myself, but now I was back to try it again.

And now I get what last.fm is doing.

FLAC, MusicBrainz, ReplayGain, Songbird, and Last.fm

With the closing down of the MediaMaster service (due to financial issues, apparently), I’ve had to find other ways to enjoy my music on multiple platforms. In the end, I settled on rsync as being the simplest, cheapest alternative.

Syncing my libraries is extremely easy, compared to iTunes, for example. All my ratings, dates, etc., get updated on whatever computer I happen to be rsyncing. This is because my new favorite music player, Songbird, writes any changes I make back to the song file! Most music player software keep a cache of its own metadata seperated from the actual song files, which is good if you don’t want your songs modified, I guess, but I want my ratings and whatever else updated on all my libraries. Songbird allows me to do this without syncing the entire application too.

Last.fm: Not What I Expected

I’ve always considered last.fm to be more… well… social. You get together with your buddies, and talk about music, and try different tracks. Well, it turns out to be as good, if not better than Pandora. Not only can you listen to music in more locations outside your browser, but its formula seems to work better.

So, just for reference, here’s my profile link. Nothing spectacular yet, as I’ve only just begun listening today.

MediaMaster – Your Music, Anywhere: Now with Open API

I don’t think I’ve mentioned MediaMaster here yet, but it’s about time I do. I use it quite a bit, and love it! I have all my music uploaded to my free account, which, despite being free, has unlimited storage! I’ve also uploaded my own picture to give make my profile (note: all songs are limited to 30-second previews for legal reasons) be my own, and give me that warm fuzzy feeling all backgrounds should give you when you look at ’em. *wink*

The interface itself is awesome.  They have 17 different columns, and you can decide which ones you want, and where each one goes. You can view your collection through one giant list of songs, albums, or artists. You can change the artist or album view to list, thumb, or tile (hybrid of thumb and list) views. There’s also a quick search that helps you filter out songs until you find the one you want. All these features and more are a result of MediaMaster listening to their users, and writing in most of the requested features within months! This is almost unheard of in the Web 2.0 world, where small companies can’t handle (or don’t want to handle) the amounts of feedback they receive.

If you’ve been moving from one music player to the next, you know how much of a pain it is to move your ratings and playlists and whatnot from place to place. MediaMaster hopes to be an end to those troubles my providing you one location to store all your music. If you don’t want to use their Flash client, you can write your own using their Open API they just released. I’m writing up a quick console-like application to help developers (and myself) figure out how the API works faster by giving them (and myself) a tool to play around with without coding anything.

Dancing In My Cell

I’ve been playing around with Pandora. It’s actually working very very well (guide for using it effectively coming at some point). I’ve found all kinds of songs that I like. In fact, Pandora is the only service that was able to show me what genre I liked. One station literally went from rock to new age because of how I was rating!

So, as I was rating and listening, I discovered this really weird song. Some don’t like it, but I enjoy it’s music and how the lyrics provide an image of someone dancing in their cell, possibly just before they are punished for murder by hanging. (Lyrics are hard to come by, but with Google, anything’s possible.)

A definite buy for me…

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