The Noblesvillain

Of course, Yahoo Music Unlimited couldn't live up to its title and is coming to an end.  I've been a subscriber for three (?) years and happy with the service for the most part.  My music needs are pretty simple.  I'd like good, high-quality music from both artists that I know and new music I've never heard.  I value variety and production value over control and nouveau taste.  My music player of choice comes from Creative and plays WMA (so no iTunes for me!) as a listening study I performed 6 years ago put the WMA compression at the top of my list.

Yahoo Music Unlimited gave me many pleasant hours of listening, both to their tracks and their streaming music (the old Launchcast technology).  It was through the Yahoo recommendations that I discovered a favorite band Jamiroquai and plenty of enjoyable music.

Unfortunately, Yahoo has decided to shut the doors and turn their customer base over to Rhapsody (run by RealNetworks, an unfriendly Internet presence in my mind).  It appears that Rhapsody has more content than Yahoo did, but we'll see whether it spans my areas of interest in an improved manner.  I am able to get Yahoo's pricing ($143.88 at least for this first year) which is below Rhapsody's $14.99/month (which includes download to a Plays-for-sure music player).  As I still remember my introductory pricing with Yahoo which was $5/month including transfer to a player, I'm not leaping for joy here.

On the plus side, I was looking to bail on Yahoo myself, but failed to research the alternatives before the last time my credit card was re-upped on its own.  We'll call this 'directed research.'   I'm entering this with low expectations, so I'm bound for pleasant surprises, right?  I do hope that Yahoo keeps its streaming service going.  This is something they offered to the ATT/Yahoo DSL subscribers for free (free for all, but the highest quality streams were reserved for their music or DSL subscribers).

Listening to music at lunch today inspired me to blog about my favorite current band, Relient K. 

Relient K has a variety of sounds from a pop punk to other mainstream alternative (am I allowed to create a new genre?) and rock focused tunes.  Here's a snip from "Mood Rings" on their third album:

And I've contrived some sort of a plan
To help my fellow man...

Let's get emotional girls to all wear mood rings
So we'll be tipped off to when they're ticked off
Cause we'll know just what they're thinking,
Just what they're thinking...

Besides their professional sound and good tunes, I enjoy their fun lyrics and good advice.  As a Christian band, their themes are encouraging. You can take a listen by clicking on the album cover above (opens in a new window).  Earlier albums (the one's I've been listening to) have been less melodic than the tracks on the website.  I like their more open, fresh sound from their new album, too, but it isn't this sound that got me hooked.  

I'm tired of Christian bands that don't live up to the musical standards of their secular counterparts.  My guess is that only Christians listen to second-rate religious music.  In order to promote spiritual themes, I think the best way would be to create some incredible music so everyone who enjoys a full, professional sound can enjoy!

Ok, thanks Relient K for giving me good music to listen to!

 

Listening to a local values-friendly radio station, I mentioned that I thought that I would like the station better with better variety in the playlist.  My long-suffering wife thought that perhaps I had been spoiled by Yahoo's Christian Rock Launchcast station.  Without granting credence to this comment, imagine the level of smugness when from the back seat comes the comment, "Diffent?" which is Mark's cue to change the music.  Mark has some definite opinions about his night-time CD choices (or perhaps wishes to exert some control!) which is why we know this bit of vocabulary.

The end of the story is that Mark continued to ask for a station change even after we found some better music which cut my smug index in half.

As a software developer and supervisor, I spend a lot of time in front of a keyboard during the day.  Between programming and email, I like to have a variety of music to keep the right side of my brain occupied.  While I have a largish collection of CD's and have them ripped to my hard drive, I've also listened to them for 200 days a year for 9 years.

A year ago we signed up for SBC Yahoo! DSL and have been mostly pleased with the service.  While there have been a couple of outages, the tech support has been very polite (albeit a scripted politeness) which is as much as I can ask.  With the DSL subscription we also have access to LAUNCHcast Radio by Yahoo (formerly Launch.com).  This music service provides a customized list of music which plays songs based on artists, albums, songs, and genres that you've indicated that you enjoy.  Sometimes it will pick songs based on what other listeners like that have similar tastes and I've learned about some new artists this way that I quite enjoy. (There's a free version which didn't have the sound quality I expected, but the high-quality station was quite good.)

Unfortunately, this live music service is prohibited at work because it is constantly downloading music from the server which reduces the network availability for the other people in the building.  This has been a real bummer as I love to listen to a variety of music.  For some on-line music variety, check out the Dunce's post for music he likes and sources to find it.

As a remedy, I've subscribed to a rather new service from Yahoo called Y! Unlimited (or Yahoo Music Engine).  With this service, I have access to Yahoo's entire music library and can download the songs to my computer (or to a portable audio (MP3) player).  I download the songs at home (to conserve the corporate bandwidth) and listen to the files at work.  To make such a deal profitable, Yahoo charges me $60/year (about the cost of 4 cd's) and uses a digital trick which makes the music stop working if my subscription expires.

My subscription just began and today was my first day listening to music at work.  I listened to an aid album for Katrina victims, a new Coldplay release, Best of Earth, Wind, & Fire, and a couple of others.  The music was high-quality and the tunes all fresh (at least to me!).

Watch this space for my updated thoughts on this topic, but so far, the Yahoo Music Engine is meeting my expectations.  Add the fact that I can have the software on three different computers (a refreshingly generous approach), and I think I'll enjoy this approach to keeping music fresh at work.

With everyone commenting on the Michael Jackson trial, I cannot resist a post.  MJ's had my musical attention beginning with Thriller.  (In searching for an appropriate blog image, I ran across this image of Andrew Jackson, worth a visit)  I recall traipsing across the Wyoming wastelands listening to 'Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'' and 'Billy Jean' on cassette (my recollection of the cassette cover has a lighter background though).

Years later in Rostov Russia, my Russian roommate takes me across town (Rostov's a big city, 1.5MM people) to his parent's private home.  After watching a little Michael Jordan on VHS (I could hear English commentary under the unintelligible Russian) for a while, my roommate starts to play some Michael Jackson.  He asked me to help with the lyrics.  Dangerous was the current album.  I'm not sure whether decoding lyrics or helping make sense of English grammar rules contains the greater challenge.

Today nearly any over-produced album catches my attention.  This can lead to some embarrassing attachments.  I'll avoid mentioning any specifics here, but 'Production Quality' need not be at odds with 'Good Music.'  It may be in tension with 'sophisticated music' but there's room in my mind for all this stuff....