My Playlists

I discussed in my Apple Music review my playlist methodology that I originally started on Spotify back in 2012.  I really enjoy my workflow for discovering new music.  I also find being able to go back in time to see what was hot or what I was into during that period of time shows me how my music taste has evolved.  I go through major shifts of music moods and it's interesting to take a look back and see what I was enjoying during that period of time.  

A few of my upcoming posts are going to stick to a similar "My Favorites" theme.  Feel free to add my playlists to your Apple Music account.  The only thing I hate about playlist sharing is the lack of social features such as playlist collaboration and being able to see who has subscribed to your list. Hopefully Apple strengthens the social aspect of Apple Music in future updates.  

The Playlists

As previously discussed my playlists are yearly lists containing tracks that I discovered that particular year or was simply digging during that period of time.  I typically like 20-30 track "mixtape style" playlists but for these averaging 100 tracks, it allows me to shuffle and listen to over 3 hours of music at a time.  Especially good for the gym or get togethers.  Here are my playlists as shared on Apple Music with links to each one.  

• 2012 - The interesting thing about this playlist is the mixture of hipster rock and hip hop. I was really enjoying Sean Parker's "Hipster International" Spotify playlist at the time and a lot the tracks were pulled from that playlist. This was also the year I was glad to discover Phantogram. Standout tracks: Santigold - Disparate Youth, Aloe Blacc - I Need a Dollar, Danny Brown - Grown Up and A$AP Rocky - Goldie.

• 2013 - This playlist is hip hop heavy. It was the year of Kendrick Lamar, Mac Miller, Drake and Danny Brown. New discoveries: Jonwayne and Joey Bada$$. Standout tracks: U.O.E.N.O Black Hippy Remix, Danny Brown - Molly Ringwald, Robert Glasper - Dillalude #2, Action Bronson - The Rockers, Phantogram - Black Out Days.

• 2014 - This year I did a lot of discovery using a combination of Sirius/XM and Shazam. I was really addicted to the Sirius/XM Chill channel and was Shazaming tracks and adding them directly to a playlist on Spotify called Sirius/XM Chill. The choice cuts were transferred over to my 2014 playlist. Standout tracks: Purity Ring - Push Pull, Hail Mary Mallon - Jonathan, Arctic Monkeys - Arabella, Run the Jewels - Blockbuster Night Part 2.

• 2015 - The work in progress. I've discovered some amazing tracks this year. While this playlist is again hip hop heavy I've been quite addicted to a view choice cuts that have been in constant rotation. Standout tracks: David Zowie - House Every Weekend, Crooked Colours - Another Way (GRMM Remix), Thundercat - Them Changes, Beck - Dreams, ZRO FOX - Might Not (Ft Sasha Go Hard).

Here are some of the Apple curated playlists I have discovered.

• Conscious Coupling: Indie and Hip-Hop

• Daydreaming

• Downtempo Dinner Party

• Electronica for a Rainy Day

• Trip-Hop Turn Ons

I hope you enjoy the playlists.  Feel free to add them to your My Music or find me on Spotify to subscribe to them there.  If you have any good playlist recommendations feel free to leave them in the comments.

Download: Meow the Jewels - Meowrly

Anyone that has been following rap duo Run the Jewels is probably aware of the Kickstarter campaign that began after the release of Run the Jewels 2 which will bring fans a remixed copy of the album all done with cat sounds.  The duo got a group of top notch producers on board and the first few tracks are starting to trickle out.  No word on the release date for Meow the Jewels but the first freely available to download track is now online. Stream below and hit the link for a download.  

Direct Download via RunTheJewels.net

Discographer Scans Your iTunes Library for Artist's Missing Albums

From developer Sam Rayor via one of my favorite websites Lifehacker comes a handy tool to help music collectors round out their iTunes collection.  Discographer scans your library and alerts you of missing albums for artists.  From Lifehacker:

All you need to do is upload your iTunes library XML file (located at /Users/username/Music/iTunes/iTunes Library.xml) and wait a few minutes while Discographer scans the file. When it’s done, you’ll get a list of all your artists so you can see which albums you’re missing. For completionists, it’s a pretty handy way to round out your collection. Plus, your library info is never uploaded, shared, or saved.

What's interesting is this uses the Spotify API to scan and search and never uploads your library. I will certainly be using this to round out my collection.  

My Favorite Podcasts

I love podcasts.  I listen to a wide variety of podcast genres ranging from Apple related (big surprise) to TV and Sports podcasts.  I typically catch up on them during my commute to work in the morning.  Being able to stream podcasts via Bluetooth and use the steering wheel controls is such a luxury.  I've been asked before what specific podcasts I listen to so I figured I would share the podcasts, app and hardware I use to listen.

The Podcasts

I subscribe to 43 podcasts ranging from technology to sports.  My favorite podcasts are actually part of two "podcast networks".  The Relay FM network and TWIT networks host some fantastic podcasts and I encourage you to go through them and check out some that fit your style.  

Here are some of my favorite podcasts with links to each:

• Nerdist - The Nerdist Podcast is a weekly interview show "about what it really means to be a nerd" hosted by Web Soup, Talking Dead, and @midnight host Chris Hardwick.

• The Bugle - The Bugle is a monthly (formerly weekly) satirical news podcast, hosted by John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman.

• The Cipher - The Cipher is the critically acclaimed hip-hop podcast formerly known as Outside the Lines With Rap Genius.

• Connected - Connected is a weekly panel discussion on Apple and the impact of technology on our lives. With each co-host having a unique background — and accent — Connected provides a perspective that no other show can.

• Mac Power Users - Learn about getting the most from your Apple technology with focused topics and workflow guests. Creating Mac Power Users, one geek at a time since 2009.

• ESPN NBA Lockdown - ESPN's NBA Lockdown covers all of the latest news, rumors and opinion in the NBA with ESPN's team of experts.

• MacBreak Weekly - MacBreak Weekly is a weekly show hosted by Leo Laporte that premiered on August 12th, 2006 as an audio spinoff of MacBreak, a PixelCorps production that focuses on discussion of Apple news, products and rumors.

• The Talk Show - Started in 2009 and originally co-hosted with John Gruber and Dan Benjamin the podcast featured conversations and commentary on current trends (mainly in tech) between the two hosts.

• Solid Steel Podcast - The Solid Steel radio show started in 1988 on London's pirate KISS FM radio station. Matt Black and Jonathan More, having started with separate shows, joined forces to present Solid Steel a few years before the station finally went legal.

• Stones Throw Podcast - Music from Stones Throw and the Stones Throw DJs. Archive available at stonesthrow.com.

• Ninja Tune Podcast - The official Ninja Tune podcast featuring exclusive interviews and upcoming music from the artists of Ninja Tune and its sister label Big Dada, including the likes of Amon Tobin, Beat Spacek, Bonobo, The Bug, Dorian Concept, FaltyDL, Kate Tempest, Kelis, Machinedrum, Martyn, Mr Scruff, Portico, Romare, Roots Manuva, Wiley and Young Fathers.

You can download a full list of my podcasts in OPML format which will import into your podcast app of choice here.

The App

I use an iPhone 6 to listen to my podcasts.  You can use the built in podcast app that comes with iOS which works fine or you can use one of the many third party apps.  My app of choice is Pocketcasts due to it's slick UI, episode filters and the ability to download and stream episodes.  The app never crashes and as an added bonus offers push notifications for new episodes.  The notifications are interactive so you can either add the episode to your up next queue or start the download in the background.  Shifty Jelly offers a web player version of Pocketcasts that comes with a free 14 day trial and will ultimately set you back a one time payment of $9.  Headphone controls are supported for your favorite headphones or earbuds of choice that have controls attached to them.  This also works in the car with my steering wheel controls.  

You can download the app from the AppStore here for $4.99.

The Hardware

My headphones of choice are the Bose SoundTrue In-Ear Earbuds.  Good combination of clarity, bass and comfort.  When I listen around the house I use Photive's CYREN low cost bluetooth speaker from Amazon.  I like this speaker due to it's form factor (which is similar to a Jambox) and more importantly the sound quality.  It also has controls on the speaker itself to play/pause, skip tracks and engage Siri.  

If you have any questions regarding my podcast workflow please feel free to leave a comment below.

Interesting Links

I was trying to figure out what type of recurring weekly post I should provide to the blog. Considering I spend an ample amount of time collecting and reading links around the web, I figured I would share what I found interesting this week.  Basically it's a Pinboard dump.  

Here are some great reads and links from around the web...

• 9to5Mac shows us how to record live Beats 1 radio shows on your Mac for free. This reminds me when I had internet colleagues who would record Radio 1 shows for me via Digital Audio Broadcasts.

• MacRumors has images of leaked "iPhone 6s Plus" showing the rear casing and stronger body.

• iMore goes back in time covering the evolution of the iTunes Store through its ups, downs and revolutionary moves.

• Zane Lowe premiered a new Skrillex and Vic Mensa song titled "No Chill' this afternoon on Beats 1. Pitchfork has the stream.

• What should already be a weekly listen for you, Run the Jewels' Friday night Beats 1 show, #WRTJ, will be debuting some Meow the Jewels tracks tonight (July 17th).

• In what may be the most exciting news of the week for me, The Gorillaz are getting back in the studio in September to work on their next LP which in due for a 2016 release.

Thank you for stopping by my website this week.  I decided to get back into blogging because I love sharing information.  I don't expect many visitors but do appreciate those who stop by to check out what I'm doing.

Text-to-Speech Now Available in Pocket

One of my all time favorite apps and services, Pocket, received a huge update today with a feature I've been envying in the Instapaper app since it was introduced in 2014.  That's right.  Text-to-speech is finally here.  If you're a dork like me and enjoy listening to articles while commuting, this update is right up your alley. 

Grab it from the AppStore here.

Apple's New Watch Commercials

Apple released four new Apple Watch commercials today depicting everyday uses for the Cupertino wearable.  I think these videos are great.  One of the major problems I find with my watch is trying to explain to people how it fits into my everyday life.  You need to remove the expectation that you are wearing a smaller iPhone on your wrist.  It's a complimentary device that you are not supposed to think about.  Check out the video playlist below.

One of the biggest things I've noticed since using the watch is how little I care about pulling out my phone or even worrying where it is.  In the kitchen cooking and the phone is in the bedroom? No worries, call is being answered on my wrist, Dick Tracy style.  

You can check out all the Apple Watch commercials and videos on Apple's YouTube channel. 

Despot - House of Bricks

Rewind to 2010.  I first heard of Despot on Das Racist's first studio album Relax when he was a feature on the track Power with Danny Brown.  Now fast forward to 2015.  After performing the song numerous times at live shows, we finally have a CD quality release of House of Bricks.

Only artist I've been waiting longer to drop his next album is Dr. Dre.  Hopefully we get some news on Despot's first LP soon.

Beats 1 Schedule Calendar

I've been looking for something like this since Beats 1 started.  In fact I messaged Eddie Cue on Twitter asking for this to be made available.

Apple Music - Two Weeks In

Apple Music was launched on June 30th after being introduced at WWDC 2015.  The services bring a Spotify like experience while integrating with your purchased and ripped iTunes library, keeping all your music in a neat and tidy place.  I've had a chance to take a deep dive into Apple Music and here are my first impressions.  

Apple Music is a version 1 product.  In fact it actually feels like it could still be considered a beta.  I took these points into consideration while using the service knowing that most bugs and issues would be cleared up with .1 updates and ultimately with the release of iOS9 this fall.  I've been reading many reviews on Apple Music with alot of negative feedback.  We live in a society where things must be perfect from the get go and Apple has always been held to a higher standard than most.  I try to keep perspective.  Rolling out an International streaming music service must be difficult. While I expect the best out of Apple I also expect bumps along the road.  This is what we get from "Tim Cook's Apple".  

Beats1

I think the problem most people are having with the selection of music itself on Beats 1 is it's very eclectic and not one genre.  This breaks the mold of the typical radio station that focuses on one specific genre or category.  This feature alone is what I think makes Beats 1 great and allows for excellent music discovery.  I got used to the Radio 1 style of broadcasts from my college days of downloading Annie Nightingale and other Radio 1 episodes which featured a variety of music styles.

In the first few hours alone of tuning into Beats 1 I've discovered new music from different genres I've never heard before or that I would have never searched out myself.  The fact DJ's like Zane Lowe and Julie Adenuga not only introduce me to these new tunes but also give me feedback on it's origin and their personal stories regarding said tunes really keeps me interested and locked in. Most people hate the voiceovers on Beats 1.  I really enjoy them.  It gives the station a human feel and not a computer curated feel.  The tracks that I discover on Beats 1 that I like or want to triage to another playlist later get added to a "Discovered on Beats 1" playlist.

Zane and Julie have been my favorite daily DJ's so far.  They are a pleasure to listen to.  Refreshing voices.  The voiceovers are minimal and just what you would expect from a radio DJ.  People say there is a special place in hell for radio DJ's who talk over music.  Listen to a DJ Clue mixtape and get back to me.  I think most of the complaints in this regard (crap, I'm going to sound old here) are millennials just not being used to the style of terrestrial radio.  It's like handing a 15 year old a walkman and saying enjoy!

iCloud music library / itunes

I think I may be in the rare category of not experiencing any issue with my library since day one of using Apple Music.  Mind you I have always been extremely anal with the organization of my library.  I currently have over 16,000 tracks and have been using iTunes Match since it's inception. Maybe I use my library differently than others?  I don't know.  I figured I would share my iTunes/iCloud Media Library workflows and experiences.  I will also share some of the things I have run into and the workarounds I have found to help me keep my sanity until all the bugs are worked out.  

First off a little background.  I've been an exclusive Spotify premium member since 2011 and have not used any other streaming services since.  I have also been an iTunes Match subscriber since day one.  My playlists on Spotify consist of years.  Each year I create a playlist that corresponds to that year and throw all the tracks I discovered within that year into that playlist.  So I have 4 playlists (all made available offline) each consisting of approximately 100 tracks going back to 2012.  I also have one master playlist called TBL (to be listened) which I throw tracks and albums into that I want to listen to later.  After listening to those TBL's I triage those tracks into other playlists or just remove them all together if they are not to my liking.  

I decided to spend the first weekend with Apple Music recreating all these playlists.  I wanted to wait for an import tool to bring my Spotify lists over to Apple Music but figured this was a far way off.  Any third party service available to handle this I was not confident in it working 100%.  I also wanted to manually search and see just how many tracks I could find in Apple Music that were also in Spotify's catalog (this is a lot faster using iTunes for Mac).  Amazingly I was able to recreate every playlist without missing any tracks with the exception of the recently removed Prince tracks from all streaming services.  That being said...

MY ENTIRE LIBRARY WAS NOW FULL OF TRACKS THAT WERE NOT BEING ORGANIZED PROPERLY!!!  ARGH!!!  OCD OVERLOAD!!!

This was my process.  I printed out all my Spotify playlists (pro tip, open a Word or Pages document, go to your Spotify playlist, CMD-A and drag and drop the whole list into the open document and the list will be ready for printing) and then started searching the Apple Music catalog for each track on my Spotify lists and started adding them to my new Apple Music playlists.  When I was done I was extremely satisfied, until I looked at iTunes for Mac.  I now had duplicate tracks. For example, I added Kendrick Lamar - King Kunta to my 2015 playlist.  When I looked at My Music, since I already had purchased Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp a Butterfly and it was in my library and iTunes Match, it now showed the Apple Music copy which was sitting right next to the other copy. This drove me crazy.  I know you can disable iTunes to only show offline music (View>Show Offline Only) but I didn't want to disable the viewing of tracks I discovered on Apple Music/Beats 1.  I simply wanted things more organized.  My solution...

What I figured out is Apple Music tracks may not match what is in your local library due to tags or some other metadata (this also could possibly just be a bug that will be fixed in a future update). So for now on, if I know a track or album is already located within my iTunes Match library and I want it on one of my "yearly playlists" I simply add the track to the playlist from THAT library and NOT Apple Music.  This was actually an easy fix after creating my playlists since tracks that are not in your local library have an iCloud icon next to them.  This now keeps my library neat and does not create new albums for songs.  I believe this is the way Apple intended for it to work but is not obviously clear.  

I would also like to mention that each one of these yearly playlists is also downloaded for offline listening. I have not had one issue having them all download to my iDevices.  I think there may be a bug with the iPhone icon that appears next to tracks that are available offline.  If you switch your playlist view to "offline tracks only" you will clearly see they all downloaded.  You can also view this by going into Settings>Usage and check the Music app section.

conclusion

I think for most people who collect a nice library like myself, Apple Music can cause some confusion in terms of organization.  For people who just stream and have never been about owning the music or collecting it, Apple Music is a smooth transition.  I take great pride in keeping my collection organized like a champ.  I blame this on just being an old skool music lover who collected CD's, cassettes, mixtapes and Napster MP3's over the years.       

I have been using Apple Music since day one and have not opened Spotify since.  I enjoy the curation immensely and the playlists that are recommended in the For You section are superb, mixtape style playlists.  

As of today I will be a subscriber.

shows of note

Here are a list of the shows I am currently enjoying on Beats 1.

• Elton John's Rocket Hour 
• Abstract Radio with Q-Tip
• OTHERtone with Pharrell Williams
• Soulection
• St. Vincent's Mixtape Delivery Service
• WRTJ with Run the Jewels

If you'd like to check out the daily schedule Apple has setup a Tumblr here.