Keeping in Sync

In general, the iTunes/iPod ecosystem works pretty well. By now I've had my music collection ripped and downloaded across a couple of different operating systems and computers over the last decade or so. And I'm able to keep the basics of the file formats in synch between my laptop and desktop Mac pretty well by using the rsync UNIX command.

But there are some things that make me very nervous. By now I've kept pretty good handle on my ratings and last play dates -- and I use both of those fairly actively when I set up the playlists to synchronize with an iPod, so I keep a mix of songs on my iPod based on how frequently songs are played and when they were last played.

And that's something that is a bit more of a challenge to keep synchronized across iTunes libraries used by different users across multiple machines. You'd like to be able to keep track of what the last playtime, date, and number of plays no matter what computer you've used. And if you have a library of songs, you really would like to minimize the amount of work you need to do to add songs to the various libraries.

I'm not sure I have a perfect system. rsync certainly helps things a great deal keeping the files in sync -- but it's a little less straight forward to keep the metadata synchronized across libraries.

You Can't Rent Bits

I've been thinking about how iTunes is now looking at providing movie rentals. And really, you can only "rent" a movie if you've got some sort of DRM that means you don't truly control your device -- because otherwise you can copy the bits to some other location and see it again.

Of course, that's one of the challenges of distributing data electronically. Most movies and television shows you only watch once. Others, you may watch many times. And really -- no matter how much space you have, video takes up a lot of room -- and there are many things I wouldn't worry about keeping if I knew that I could easily get them again later. It's why I like Netflix, even though I've been watching fewer DVDs from them as my life has been busier lately.

So the challenge is -- from a business standpoint, yes, I really want to "rent" video. But as someone who does not like DRM -- I'm well aware that it's really impossible to do that digitally if you want to control your device.

Getting Music Somewhere Else

I realized one thing that I'd really like to see in connection to services like the iTunes store. There is a class of artist where I don't just want the songs, but I want the physical artifact of a CD with a booklet. And in the case of Marillion's Somewhere Else CD, it's not scheduled to ship from Amazon (where I have it pre-ordered) for a few weeks, but it is already available on iTunes.

What I'd like to be able to do is get the best of both worlds -- an immediate download of the album, but then get the physical CD (with documentation) at some later point in time as both a physical artifact and collectible, as well as the backup. But I'm not really willing to buy the album twice -- but I might be willing to pay a dollar or two more for the instant gratification of getting the album on my computer.

And I could even see this work as a successful double marketing campaign -- the album could go to iTunes (or some other service) as a download, and the physical CD comes a month or so later. It could cost more than a traditional download, and for that matter more than a traditional CD -- but not twice as much.

The Costs of DRM

I'm not terribly bothered that the DRM-free tracks on iTunes will cost more than the DRM crippled versions. It shows to me that DRM-free tracks have more features -- and more value -- than something with DRM. This is somewhat confused because Apple has also paired the DRM-free versions with higher-quality samples, and that may be intentional on Apple's part. But i think it shows that much like we "pay" for free TV by getting commercials, part of what we "pay" when we get a DRM-track are the roadblocks in using it in as many ways as we'd like.

While I'm certainly going to pay that little bit more for DRM-free tracks, it's got to be an open question whether the general public will care that much.

iTuned 2

A couple of weeks ago I wrote up a few of my iTunes Smart Playlists. I created another one, just for fun. It's actually a set of lists. The idea is to have one for each letter of the alphabet, picking one song at random (not played in the last week) starting with that particular letter of the alphabet. I put all of those playlists into the same folder, and because of that I have a playlist that contains 26 songs, one song starting with each letter of the alphabet.

You could do the same thing except take a song from different artists instead of songs.

iTuned: my iTunes best practices

I followed the suggestions on Lifehacker about iTunes with great interest, and I followed it up with Andy Budd's suggestions and a whole blog about smart playlists.

I use the smart playlists in much the same fashion as described above -- as a way to create lists of songs that haven't been played recently.

I've got four core lists:

a) "Not Recently Played" -- basically, this list contains songs with the oldest last playtime.

b) "Least Played" -- this list contains songs that have been played the least

c) "Favorites Not Recently Played" -- same as (a), but only for songs that have a rating greater than four

d) "Favorites Least Played" -- same as (b), but only for songs that have been played the least

They're all limited by size, so while a song could appear on multiple lists, there isn't a whole lot of overlap. That way I get both songs that I haven't listened to recently as well as songs that I've listened to less.

I also have a couple of lists for seasonal purposes -- for example, I've got a list for "Christmas", which can then be mixed into my iPod during this time of the year.

I also recently added a "New Favorites" list for songs that I've just added to iTunes and have rated highly, as it's not at all unusual that a new favorite is going to be something you'll want to listen to very frequently.

I haven't done much for genre-specific music; but then, that's because I really like strange stylistic switches in my listening, going from a progressive rock song, to a pop song, to a country song, to harder rock song, to something from a soundtrack.