i am beginning to prefer amazon's mp3 store to itunes

Granted, before my Android phone's data plan and the unlimited storage of the cloudplayer, my resolution to stop using iTunes with its distressing habit of deleting my libraries at random wasn't really working. Most of this was to the fact that I loathed surfing amazon's site to get music when iTunes delivered it directly to my player and didn't require extra software downloads and having to hit back twice when buying two songs from the same album. Because honestly, convenience wins.

This has been a thing.

However, my phone has more than sufficient memory to get my entire library if I want to put it on there (though from my rate of spending, not for long), and by dint of not even opening iTunes (helps that it crashed at least once and required me to get my library backup) until the habit was set enough with amazon. I've been using it to sample songs at the 1:30 when I want to buy and to get what I can't get at amazon (or is cheaper at iTunes, which is rare but happens) and apparently either something's changed radically or my memory is that bad, but when I went there to listen to a longer sample of a song on Amazon that cut off in the weirdest place ever, it took me a second to recognize the song and even longer poking my headphones between amazon and iTunes before I had to admit that the 1:30 sample length is nice, but the quality is hideous.

Is this just me? When they went to the 1:30, I don't remember it being this bad. I checked my settings, but the contrast to my library's music is almost painful. Did they strip the quality down? I mean, I get wanting to assure people don't uh, steal 1:30 of a full song as that is--seriously, no, I don't, who would bother, that's like stealing the middle third of a book you've never read--but it's not just as close to monotone you can get while being recognizably music, it feels stripped of actual chords.

So that was--I don't know, anyone?

Anyway, most recent musical additions:

Fuel - Shimmer from Sunburn and Bad Day from Something Like Human - both older and both a surprise; the only Fuel song I thought I liked was Hemorrhage and then looked at the cloudplayer and no, there were actually three, who knew. Bad Day especially surprised me because I really didn't care for it from amazon's sample at first and then right before it cut off, it clicked (which led to the iTunes thing above).

Midnight to Twelve - Moments, Good Morning Again, Remembering, and Slam from Midnight to Twelve - I liked them for the potential for pleasant background reading or writing music, but the more I listen, the more I kind of want to stop whatever else I'm doing. I'm not entirely sure why; these aren't flashy or normally what I would have considered memorable if I'd heard a snatch of them on the radio.

Imagine Dragons - Demons, It's Time, Bleeding Out, and Radioactive from Night Visions - the latter two were from my January purchase, the former two yesterday. I really just should have bought the album and been done with it. I already know that I'm probably going to eventually click with two other songs there any day now. For the record, the is possibly my favorite band name ever. I really just should have bought it just on that. Radioactive is my favorite, but Demons is bizarrely catchy--not earwormy, per se, but more really hard not to stop and listen to.

Story of the Year - The Ghost of You and I from The Constant - this is my second song purchase from this band, and I honestly can't even tell you what I like about it. Except okay, there's this kind of semi-The Lumineers catchy beat that kind of bops me, IDK.

Katy Perry - Wide Awake from Teenage Dream: The Complete Confection - I blame the media or something. Pandora. The RIAA. Universal Consciousness. I mean, I don't hate her music, but it's like, candy for me; it's too jarring to write to but doesn't catch me enough to want to listen to it alone. She's dance or driving music, is what I'm saying. And yet.

Lifehouse - Between the Raindrops from Almeria - everything Lifehouse, 3 Doors Down, and Our Lady Peace can be blamed on the Smallville fandom, where they seemed to make everyone's writing playlists and vid lists and possibly even on the show. They're kind of the equivalent of comfort food, and while the song has no surprises, neither does fried chicken, and yet I love them both when I'm in a bad mood.

Pink - Try from The Truth About Love - she's one of my top three female artists ever, and this is because of Battlestar Galactica vids at Vividcon. This may seem possibly the least sense-making approach to music, but here's the thing. I've heard that your musical tastes are pretty much set at x date and everything is variations after that, which may or may not be true. I can tell you I didn't like any of her music--again, taste, not quality--until this Starbuck vid and now she can kind of do no wrong. I don't even know what to call that; all it took was one vidded song and boom, all of her music suddenly came into perspective.

The Lumineers - Ho Hey from the single - this is the single representative song of a subgenre of Alt that I don't even know what is called, but I know I hate it--again, not quality, taste, I get I'm missing something here--but this? Drums. You can stomp to this, which suddenly totally worked for me, and if any of you ever happened to be in Austin and around my building during my break, if you ever saw someone back behind the cars stomping every first beat in a measure with added enthusiastic nodding (saying headbanging is wrong), well, God don't tell anyone, but also, that was me for a few days.

Rihanna - Diamonds from the single - Rihanna is one of my top five and rotates to the top two every once in a while because while all her music doesn't work for me, I love her voice and will listen to songs I don't even like on Pandora if she's singing them.

Muse - Madness from The 2nd Law - it's Muse. I mean, magic. It may or not be semi-hypnotic as well.

Hinder - Get Me Away From You, Talk To Me, Anyone But You, Should Have Known Better, I Don't Wanna Believe, and Save Me from Welcome to the Freakshow - Since 2009 when I first stumbled across them while writing War Games, they've moved from top ten to top three and with The Fray's last album not working for me, they're probably my favorite band. At least, I am really willing to

Luke Bryan - Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye from Tailgates and Tanlines - this both earwormy, breakup sex, and maybe this is only funny to me, but the entire thing inverses the sad breakup thing--they're kind of sad because the sex was amazing and okay, quickie before you go? But meaningful. It took me a while to actually walk through the lyrics and get the underlying hilarity.

All links go to youtube. I think I checked all these, but it's possible I linked to a bad one.

Currently, for teh curious, according to Amazon cloudplayer, the following is true:

Songs: 3244
Albums: 1806 (this does not mean full albums; one song from an album counts)
Artists: 1200
Genres: 102

...okay, call me crazy, but 102 genres of music? I can't even name twenty genres off the top of my head. Among them, according to cloudplayer:

Things That Are Alternative

Alternative, Alternative and Punk (really?), Alternative Pop, Alternative/College (no really), and Alternative/Indie which officially makes the word 'Alternative' meaningless to me yet it seems something like 1/6 of my entire collection is somewhere in here.

I Don't Actually Like Indie When It's Not Live?

Indie, Indie-Pop, and Indie-Rock - I see a pattern, except why did Alt get top billing in Alt/Indie instead of it being Indie/Alt and what the hell is the difference between a '/' and a '-' in the names?

All the Pops

Pop, Pop Latino, Pop Funk, Pop/R&B, Pop/Rock, Rock & Pop, Rock/Pop, Rap/Pop and from above Alternative-Pop - this is random, isn't it? Whose on top is a flip of the coin?

Really, Folk?
Folk, Folk-Pop, Folk-Rock, Anti-folk, Post-folk - there's anti-folk?? It's sole occupant is one song by Regina Spektar (Eleven Eleven if you are curious and I have no memory of ever hearing this song before in my life. What the hell?). For that matter, I must be sleepbuying or something--I recognize five songs in these lists.

I don't even know what Post-folk means.

Uh huh
Bootlegs - ...that's a genre?

This is weirdly fascinating.

Comments

[amireal]

I've been doing a compare/contrast between the two paid services that itunes and amazon offer.

So far amazon's matching algorithm seems a bit smarter and has less limitations about what can be uploaded. (i.e. it doesn't choke on podfic the same way itunes match did). Also in a bunch of cases, buying the physic CD (especially if you have amazon prime shipping) is actually CHEAPER if you want to keep original copies as well. Which appeals to me on a certain level.

On the downside, so far, you can't edit/create playlists larger than 500 tracks on an iOS device. It's a minor inconvenience to be stuck to the web interface for the main playlist editing (which really is where most of it would probably happen anyway) but it's enough of a stopper that I'm sticking with amazon purely for podfic and backup at the moment.

I've yet to test the quality of the downloaded songs (in theory BOTH services normalize the quality once uploaded) mostly b/c I've been lucky to manage walking in a straight line recently. But it's on the testing list.

[seperis]

I think my longest playlist is about--seventy songs? I haven't run into that.

[amireal]

Actually. I'd bet the difference is that I'm a regular driver as well as one that doesn't mind long drives and you really, really aren't. I have those long playlists for driving, when looking down is dangerous or ijust don't want to deal with it and have no particular preference in mind. I'm much more likely to want specific things or to make up a list on the spot in all other situations.

But I also like to play with iTunes smart playlists and have a whole series if them, some feeding into others.

[amireal]

also with genres: I've been working on lowering that insane number. B/c honestly if I'm searching by genre its for specialties like podfic or for something really generic where I want a couple hundred in returns.

[seperis]

I think all my podfic is under Audiobook. I think that's the genre I entered for all of those in iTunes and it imported.

[amireal]

I listen to audiobooks too and I wanted a way to easily distinguish them quickly so I could narrow the searches quickly.

[azurelunatic]

Upon hearing "It's Time" on the radio, I mis-heard the lyrics thus: "It's time to begin, is it in; I get a little bit bigger than this" -- which rendered the song entirely filthy.

[seperis]

*falls over* Okay, now I'm going to hear that too!

[azurelunatic]

It was the best mis-hearing in almost ever.

[starfish]

I have three of Pink's albums and they give me ALL the Tony Stark Feels with a side of "Starbuck = Tony Stark how has no one made this vid yet" thrown in.

Amazon recently gave me mp3 copies of a bunch of CDs I had purchased, which I thought was kind of cool. I mean, I automatically rip the CDs to the laptop, but I guess now I can grab them off the cloud from my phone? Or something?

If only I could get Kindle copies of books I own the same way ...

[amireal]

TBH I wouldn't be surprised if that was on a list of things they'd be willing to offer if the publishers would agree to it. Considering their current deals with whispernet/audible books and kindle books I think that amazon itself is all for multiformat selling. I think they at least understand that people feel they shouldn't have to buy the same product 12 times.

[seperis]

Dude, Pink is so Tony Stark! I didn't even think of that.

Amazon recently gave me mp3 copies of a bunch of CDs I had purchased, which I thought was kind of cool. I mean, I automatically rip the CDs to the laptop, but I guess now I can grab them off the cloud from my phone? Or something?

Yes! Seven of mine that Amazon had licenses for went up! I'm hoping they get Carissa's Wierd (actual spelling). I lost the CD years ago and only had one song ripped from it, though granted it was my favorite, and at the time? I did not rip well.

And yes you can! Or download them to your computer.

[marycontrary]

Smartass answer: the difference between a hyphen and a slash is the rating, like the Japanese convention that Kirk+Spock is PG-13 or friendship, and Kirk x Spock means sex.

I've been letting Pandora lead me to new music for years now, so I am _terrible_ at picking genres I like. I tried Songza, where they try to match you up with playlists you'd like, and I kept ending up with things that tried to maul my brain through my ears.

[seperis]

Pandora isn't bad, or iTunes recommendations, or Amazon's for me; it's very much that while some songs I would love at anytime, a lot of them require--I guess context? Like someone vidded the song in a way that really worked for me, and it makes the entire band more accessible suddenly. And often, it also depends on what I've been listening to recently and my mood even more than genre. I mean, I'm pretty firmly Alt-anything, but I didn't realize until I was looking at Cloudplayer that I have a ton of R&B, far more than I realized because I'd heard a particular band/artist in some context, loved it, and bought things similar to it because it suddenly worked for me after that.