Tag Archives: iTunes

What streaming service to listen too

If you were a regular coffee buddy of mine you’d already know that my life runs on music. You’d also know that I am in the first year of a PhD program that follows on from completing Honours last year. My study has been fueled on coffee and a lot of music. I estimated that I listened to more than 20,000 songs during my Honours!

So as we catch up on coffee I’d ask you what are you listening to and how are you listening to it? I’d get into the specifics and quickly I’d get to my current dilemma – Apple Music or Spotify supported by a Pandora. You of course were expecting the topic of conversation over coffee to be on the US elections and its impact on us in Australia!

Before you had a chance to change the topic I’d continue with my topic telling you pandora-thumbprint-862x647that I like all three. I’d quickly explain that I see Pandora as a great companion to my mainstays of Spotify and Apple Music. Pandora is easy as the music is selected for me and with the best part of a thousand Thumbprints Pandora makes listening easy.

However if I want to listen to something specific Pandora’s greatest asset, that it does it all for you becomes a problem, so its off to either Spotify or Apple Music.

I’d explain to you the history of how a couple of years ago I moved from iTunes to Spotify. As I transitioned away from CDs I’d found iTunes an easy way to carry all my own music with me.  This was because I had downloaded my hundreds of CDs to my iTunes Library via iTunes Match. That way my CDs were available everywhere on my iPod, particularly with the work travel timetable I was on at the time. About the same time as my iPod froze for the last time I also  decided that buying CDs from the almost nonexistent CD Stores in Adelaide was no longer satisfying as they didn’t have the range and with that I moved to Spotify.spotify

It was initially a bit  of a hassle finding what I liked but I got used to it and at the same  time Spotify got better. As a Premium user, that is I pay for it, I was able to download music so I could listen offline solving a dilemma of listening while traveling which I was still doing. Continue reading

Thank you Spotify, Pandora and iTunes

My thesis is now submitted. Yippee!

My computer has seized up. It’s last action being to successfully convert my thesis from Word to PDF. After that it simply gave up and so has my brain. 

The submission process was like nothing I’d ever experienced. I delivered it (3 bound copies) to my university’s research office not into a chute but into the hands of one the staff, who with big smile said “Congratulations”. From there it was a casual conversation with one of the professors, who also gave me a hearty congratulations and onto the library where I could access my Dropbox account to download my thesis for submission electronically. I then received an acknowledgement form the research office that I had met the requirements for submission and with that my Honours program was complete!

My thesis contained a series of thank yous to key people who had inspired me, mentored me and supported me throughout the last two years, but there is another set of thank yous that are also appropriate. Thanks Spotify, Pandora and iTunes whose collective music libraries have sustained me across approximately 40,000 words.

Intially it was Springsteen whose tour downloads provided me with at least two months of listening. Then it was my music staples Tori Amos, Rick Wakeman, The Beatles, Bob Dylan.

In the days leading up to my exam as my anxiety levels reached levels I hadn’t seen since my Professional Year to qualify as a Chartered Accountant, it was a diet of classical music and it was here that Spoify was true gold. Playlists that others in a position similar position to me had carefully crafted.

I also found country, a new genre for me. I’ve loved listening to The Dixie Chicks, Carrie Underwood, Miranda Lambert, Kacey Musgraves and The Band Perry. 

So often though, it was the music that had sustained me through High School and Teriary study in the  70s that I listened too. I don’t know how many times I’ve listened to Rick Wakeman’s Six Wives of Henry VIII, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, and Myths and Legends in the last two years. I’ve reacquainted myself with Wings. I’ve gone album by album through The Beatles and Joni Mitchell. There’s been Carole King and Pandoras Soft Rock stations made up almost exclusively of 70s sounds – James Taylor, Jim Croce, Seals and Crofts etc.

I’ve also listened to New Zealand radio station, The Sound. Their approach to playing  album tracks and sides made them a good option on occasions when I didn’t want to think about what to listen too. 

 I don’t know how many songs I’ve listened too but it is thousands. I have too say that right now I don’t think I could listen to another song. I’m sure in a week or two it will be different but just not today!

So now it’s up to the examiners. I hope they are kind. 

Well that’s done but it couldn’t have been done without the music or The future is Streaming!

20,000 words, an exam and oral presentation and this academic year is done! Maybe just as significant is the amount of music listened too.

Day after day, Spotify has continued to provide a seemingly endless stream of music, supported by Pandora and my substantial iTunes library.

Through this year many of my posts have highlighted a new love of country, a revisiting of Dylan, and how music has been an integral part of my day.

I have since my late primary school days had an insatiable desire to buy Singles, LPs, and CDs. That is until now.

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My purchasing habit led to a brief foray into importing records. For a couple of years a close friend of mine and I started to import records for our friends, less for profit and more to bring down the price of our own purchases. It lasted until the local post office told us that we would be considered a business if we continued,

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Study and what to listen too?

I have always studied and worked listening to music. It provides a background to block out other distractions and it’s a technique I have used since my school days.

My year 12 was completely dominated by Born to Run!

Through Uni, the first time, it was Dylan, Springsteen, Melanie, Supertramp, 10CC and so on.

When I completed my Graduate Diploma in Applied Finance in the early 2000s, it was a combination of old favourites Dylan, Springsteen, Rick Wakeman and newer music REM, White Stripes, Silverchair, and Muse. My children made sure I was listening to what was current as I would usually say I like that and then buy the complete collection – it was a good plan on their behalf! I also filled in a lot of gaps in my music collection across those 3 years.

I am back to study again and after a few weeks of late nights and full weekends with my head in a text book and searching the University library databases it’s all been with the headphones on. I started with the downloads of Springsteen’s Australia and new Zealand concerts, at about $10 per concert they are great value. But even as a Springsteen obsessive that isn’t going to be enough to sustain me. My iTunes library has also had a fair working over as has the recently released iTunes Radio, Spotify and to a lesser extent Pandora.

Whilst I like the concept of the Radio Buttons on iTunes, Spotify and Pandora they tend to see the same songs come up on the play list a little to regularly for me and they can be a little distracting. I prefer to listen to the whole album, the complete collection or whole concert rather than jump around. So apart from Springsteen and the Radio Buttons there has been a little Tori Amos, James Taylor, Carole King and this weekend Joni Mitchell.

As I was taking a break I started to think about what new music there might be to listen too. Surely I can’t sustain the next 2 years and beyond with music from my own youth!

Suggestions will be welcome!

Les Miserables – Highlights from the Motion Picture

 

So it’s been a few weeks since I first saw the movie and I am in withdrawal!

For all who are suffering from similar symptoms and don’t feel they can go and see the movie again – even if it is awesome and worth seeing again anyway – the CD/itunes playlist is a quick fix.

A listen to the highlights quickly makes you realise that the cast can sing – yes even Russell Crowe. Anne Hathaway version of is truly amazing – I so hope she wins the Oscar. Continue reading