Why We're Not Worried About Apple Music

It’s a week or so since Apple announced their new streaming music service called, err, Music. As expected it’s an all-you-can-eat music service priced at $9.99 per user in the USA. No UK price has yet been announced but if previous history is any guide Apple will just to pounds for dollars, £9.99 over here.

As a CD ripping service we’ll be blown out of the water, right? Have we been Uber-ed by Apple?

I don’t think so, and here’s why.

First, history is on our side. Over the last twelve years all sorts of technology has assailed us, each one (I have been told) is defined to consign CD ripping to the dustbin of history. Remember Limewire, the MP3 sharing system? Pirate Bay? AllofMP3? Each service supposedly offered ways of accessing your music in digital format.

Then in Europe we were treated to Spotify. Today that’s the music streaming service most people think of, and many people use it. Even among my clients less than 50% actually pay for it, so are interrupted by adverts, which puts them off. Rumours persist that Spotify will pull its free layer - it still pays royalties even if the listener isn’t a paying subscriber, and if you’ve been a user for 12, 24 or 36 months and haven’t opted to pay up, you’re not likely to - ever.

Apple may have learnt from all those who went before, their offer will be better, but not “killer”.

Second, it’s a cloud based streaming service. Is that a problem I hear you ask. Well not for Dropbox, Evernote, Microsoft, Amazon or other players but be honest - when it comes to the cloud Apple is dreadful. I’ve been an Apple user for over 25 years. I signed up for their internet service (after months of technical failures they “sold” it to AOL). I’ve been with .mac, with iCloud and iDrive. All have significant issues both at the “top” level and at the device level. iPhone to iPad to Mac synch services across Apple’s platform is horrible compared to Dropbox for example.

Suddenly, Apple is actually going to deliver a high capacity, high data content music streamer when it can’t synch my contacts?

A second feature under second, I don’t think users will love music streaming. Your music will comprise some pretty big files, sent from Cupertino across to your ISP then down a physical line (or your mobile phone line) to your PC or your phone handset. Yes, you get to pay for that with your data allowance. Prepare for eye watering bills. Wait for the complaints about breaks in service, streaming that cuts in and out, and ISPs bleating that they never signed up to be radio stations.

Third, artists and labels hate it. Already the music moguls and the small labels are laying into Apple. The payment to them is minuscule, Apple are offering a three month free trial during which no payment will be made for streamed music. Independent music industry figures are lining up to tell artists not to sign up for reasons that cover commercial and contract issues.

This leads to one of the biggest reasons why streaming falls down. The minute someone says “Have you heard that album?” and you find that artist / label isn’t on Apple Music so relevance of the system fails. Believe me, there’s a lot of music, both old and new, that won’t be on the Apple platform. If you need to sign up with Spotify and Apple and A N Other then the cost rockets and the bother of finding a track you want increases exponentially. Nobody wants that.

Fourth, as I’m very fond of saying, metadata matters. That’s essentially the key to cataloguing music and doing so in a way that enables users to find what they’re looking for. Let me assure you CDDB (the database service that Apple use for iTunes) is riddled with inconsistencies. This is much more of an issue on the classical side but it leads into the issue that people lose faith in a music service if they can’t find what they want to listen to. With CDDB as untidy as it is that is a problem.
Still with me? Good, here’s number five - social. Apple’s launch presentation majored on the social element of their system, a feature which will allow performers to be in touch with their fans. My little heart sinks. How many issues will this create. I’ll toss in some of my favourites - Karajan, DuPre, not to mention Beethoven and Mozart. All passed away.

Does Apple really think top name artists, even those still with a pulse, are going to take time out from their hedonistic lifestyles to post genuine content to their fans via Music? Do you even think their record making machines will let them? No, they will be “helped” by the social media gurus hired by the labels, treating fans to the typical synthetic slush they churn out now for Facebook and Twitter.

Remember that nice gesture by U2 a few months ago? They made their new album freely available via iTunes, and created a tsunami of complaints as everyone found the new tracks forced into their iPods, iPhones and computers. Stand by for more of the same.

Given my tirade of negativity is it all bad news for Apple Music? No, of course not. The strongest feature of any streaming service is the opportunity it gives you to discover, enjoy (and then probably forget) new music and new artists. Speaking as someone who predates The Beatles and The Stones, history shows there are few gems amid the dross. Commercial experience shows that forcing fans (and I speak from bitter experience) to buy a whole album when it contains only one or two decent tracks is counter productive. Artists who produce great albums are outnumbered by those who are either one hit wonders or whose albums hold one or two specks of gold. A streaming service can highlight the newcomers, let you enjoy their best music, then move on when you’re bored.

Over the world millions of people will use and enjoy Apple Music. But rest assured we’ll continue to be ripping CDs for a good few years to come.

Is This The Most Dangerous Box in iTunes?

"Can you fix my iTunes library for me?"

We're asked this a lot, usually it's pretty easy, just sort out album art, composer names, tidy some genres, an hour or two. But experience shows you need to ask why, these things can come back and bite you. The answer was a bit odd - "I've run out of space on my hard drive". That was puzzling as the client has a computer with an inbuilt 1Tb drive, and his journey started when he added a considerable photo library. Although the system was creaking it wasn't completely full so offloading his music to an external drive should have made matters better.

And there's no way a music library that runs inside a 1Tb drive can fill up a 2Tb external USB drive.

When we got the drive back the structure of the drive was OK (no physical hardware issues) and logically it was showing as a 2 Tb unit. Looking inside the drive the file structure seemed unusual. I could see many folders with artist names, then another folder which is the main music library folder iTunes creates as a default place for digital music. Looking inside that folder there was a sense of deja vu, the same names as I'd just seen. Looking inside each of these folders there were, as expected, sensible album names, but inside those folders the issue became clear.

For some reason each track seemed to be duplicated six times, and taking into account the duplication of those folders on the drive, he had two copies of the whole library. Indeed when I rang the client he said he'd given up when he got the "disc full" message. How did this happen? Let me show you a picture.

If the box you see on this screen capture is ticked - copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library (you'll find this under Advanced in iTunes Preferences) - then each time you try to add anything, then iTunes will faithfully make a copy. Even when the "source", the files you're adding, are in the same folder as the "destination". Each time you do that you'll double the size of your library.

My client has a music system that monitors the iTunes library from its own controller software, in the same way that Sonos is structured. My guess is that this is what happened.

Client plugs in the hard drive. Sets up his controller software and in essence points it at the USB drive, but the wrong folder. His music doesn't show up. So he goes into iTunes to use that to move his music to where he thinks it should be. Misunderstanding the function of the box above he ticks it and then Finds his music on the local hard drive and lets the process run. Even when complete the music doesn't appear in the other app so understandably he thinks the process has failed, so he does it again. He probably tries to copy the music to another location on the drive, thinking that's the issue, tries that a time or two. Each cycle iTunes is doing what it's been told, merrily copying files to the drive.

Finally, drive full, no music in other controller app he gave up. Actually the library should be .4Tb and our de-duplicating program took a whole day to find and clear our the surplus music files. Then we could get onto the substance of improving the metadata, adding album art and so on.

If you're looking at your own library should you tick this box? In my opinion NO. It can create more problems than it solves. Instead, adopt a two step process when adding tracks.

First, use Add Folder to import the new tracks into your iTunes database. Take a look at what you've done and make sure you're happy with what's happened. When you are, step two, go to File / Library / Organise library and tick the box for Consolidate. That will then copy the file(s) you've added from their source location and put them in your music library.

If you have a system such as Sonos the automatic update cycle will then find the new music when it runs next, or you can usually force an unscheduled update if you need.

And you won't need to call on us to rescue your music.

New iPod on the Horizon

Every so often I've predicted the demise of the larger hard drive based iPods and their replacement with flash memory based units. Well, I was half right - Apple did kill the Classic last year, leaving it without any high capacity portable music device. I was wrong in thinking that at the same time they'd release a new iPod with, say, 128 Kb of flash memory.

Good news, I think it's time to revive the forecast. I'd like to say I'm doing that on the basis of my perceptive analysis of Apple's digital music strategy but actually it's on the basis of a little personal observation and a comment from one of the Apple watching newsletters.

They're suggesting that Apple will shortly announce a new iPod - a super iPod Touch. It would have more storage capacity, and the range needs that. In the absence of the Classic users need a portable device with a respectable capacity, not everyone is able or inclined to be connected to the internet 24/7. Interestingly the new device would be either showerproof or waterproof. I don't think either is a "must have" but given the lives we lead a portable unit that scared of a little damp is rather 20th century. Also rumours suggest a very powerful processor. Playing music isn't greatly CPU intensive but one of the drawbacks of the rest of the iPod range (compared to the Classic) is the decidedly inferior Digital Signal Processor. Let's hope the new unit has enough horsepower not just to play music but also to make it sound great too.

The other pointer? We went to Lakeside last week and of course I went in to the Apple Store where I noticed a shiny new display of iPods. It has seemed to me that Apple were neglecting the iPod range in favour of the iPhone product line. Perhaps having achieved world domination in that area Cupertino are confident enough to dust off the music player line. Anyway, it shouldn't be too long before we find out.

How to Videos

When we designed and launched the new version of the site we found we had a little problem. The tiny bit of code that, we thought, enabled us to display our How To videos worked on our Macs here but sadly that didn't translate to the online version. Result, something of a blank page. Sorry.

Good news!

We've fixed it so you can now see our "How To" videos.

The New Site

This is a great time to look back and reflect on the last twelve months. Before I turn my thoughts to the coming year a couple of things stand out about 2014.

The first is the decline in highly compressed music. We spent much of 2013 persuading clients that Apple Lossless was the way to go, but last year little persuading was needed. Lossless is now the standard people are asking for and I can't remember the last time I had to even debate the issue, Apple Lossless it is and that brings me to the first "farewell" from 2014 - the USB memory stick.

Ok it's over ten years since we started ripping CDs for people but the first batch of music went back on some CDs. Then we took the step up to DVDs, wow, seven times the capacity of the humble CD. For some years DVDs did us proud but as collection sizes grew and small disc drives became affordable that's been the standard way to get music back to our clients. Yes, there have been one or two people with collections small enough to fit onto a USB thumb drive but we've never really found a need for the 8Gb and 16Gb units although we've used a couple of 32Gbs.

So, at the end of 2014, it's hard to think we'll be using any memory sticks for CD ripping in 2015.

The second observation concerns the type of units our clients are buying. At the start of podSERVE all our clients wanted their music on Apple iPods. Although that remains a strong thread so many of our clients now focus on Sonos systems. And that's what I've been thinking of when returning music to clients. The units they're buying now are predominantly wireless. Even the once ubiquitous Bose Soundock has gone Bluetooth. Who needs a mess of cables when it can be avoided?

In 2015 I'm expecting to see fewer hardwired systems in clients houses. I'd also like to see the back of all those wires we have festooned about our houses to charge and sync our portable devices.