On Monday, October 27, 2003, at 06:48 pm, Kevin Tarr wrote:
At 07:54 PM 10/26/2003 -0800, you wrote:Ok, let it not be said that I never admit I'm wrong. I read another review of the new music services (iTunes, MusicMatch and Napster) in the Washington Post, and the reviewer praised iTunes and panned the others.
So I downloaded it, thinking if it's that much better, I'll go through all trouble of re-recording my music.
I doon't have to re-record anything, when I installed the software, low and behold, it asked me if I wanted to copy my mp3s to my iTunes library.
In a few minutes, I was up and running.
So far the software looks like it's easier to use and more reliable, but doesn't have quite as many bells and whistles as MusicMatch - no great loss really.
I have one gripe - playing albums. In MM you can drag an album name to the playlist and it plays all the songs on the album, albeit you have to take the additional step of reordering them in the original sequence else it plays them in alphabetical order (??). In iTunes you have to go to Edit/Browser and double click the album in the browser, which is no huge deal except that the music is played in some random, unchangeable order and the songs overlap (???).
You can drag the album name from the Browser (upper right) to the Source list (left) to create an Album playlist that plays the tracks on that album. Tracks play in the sort order selected by clicking the headers in the middle pane. Track order/reverse track order, alphabetical/reverse alphabetical, ascending/descending length, rating, play count etc. In Preferences.>Effects there is an option to control 'crossfade playback' which if you turn it off should stop songs overlapping.
Speaking of albums. I know many people don't like buying whole albums because they don't want to pay for a lot of filler they'll never listen to. By the same token, I like to listen to whole albums in allot of cases - there are just some albums that play well.
A lot of care is taken to make an album 'flow' nicely - track selection ands track order and all that. Despite which I still usually end up listening to only my favourite tracks. 'Concept' albums are different I suppose, but I never actually listened to many of those. Never got into that prog-rock stuff much.
So I wonder in this new age of downloading music a song at a time and consolidating it all on one piece of media if the album format will begin to disappear. In many cases this wouldn't be a bad thing, but in others it would be a real shame. IMO, of course...
Doug
Bands can refuse to sell individual tracks, but just sell whole albums. Then the buyer can chop them up how they like anyway :)
(Me) Does that mean you like filler where others don't? Or (assuming malice where I shouldn't, and trying to say this tongue in cheek) are you saying others hear filler, where you have some better listening that makes it not filler?
Just because it isn't a great stand-alone track doesn't mean it's just filler.
-- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/
"Aerospace is plumbing with the volume turned up." - John Carmack
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