Archive for the ‘ Music ’ Category

Google Music Magnifier

Four months ago Google entered the music game, sort of, and now they are launching a music discovery site, sort of.

Google Music

It’s no secret at this point that Google has been letting people into Google Music Beta to store music online. You can then listen to the music you have stored online by either web browser, or mobile device (if there is an app for your device). This is not what the world was expecting when Google said it was entering the music business, but we all have to start somewhere, and why not start with an almost non-existent product?

The only benefit with Google Music outside of storing your collection of MP3s on Google’s dime, is they toss you a few free tracks at signup. Nothing new or amazing, but a bunch of good songs based on your very minimal preferences (What genres do you like?).

Enter Magnifier

Last night I got an email from Google Music announcing Magnifier “our new music discovery site”.  Here’s more on it from the email:

Each and every day, our team of music experts will highlight new, free music on Magnifier. Sometimes it will be songs you haven’t heard of by artists you have. Sometimes it will be new artists we think deserve more attention. And sometimes there will be video interviews and live performances.

They go on to say

  • You can add music from Magnifier to Google Music instantly
  • You can do it for free
  • “The artist is being featured because someone on our team thinks they’re pretty great”
That last point makes me think I will be forced to enjoy Googlers choices in music for the foreseeable future, which is kind of a turn off.
Not lending to the technical merits of Googlers, the new Magnifier “service” is actually hosted on Blogspot/Blogger. Which bascially means it is nothing special. Just a site with some links for adding music via Google Music. So couldn’t we all link to free music in Google Music.
More to the problem with Magnifier is that the current selections of “Free Tracks” are the same tracks that were already available for free at time of sign up. So there is currently nothing new, unless you told Google you had no preferences in Music and didn’t get music at sign up.
This is probably a wait and see time as the blog (yeah I said blog and not service) is free and just starting. Maybe they will build some steam and get some music that matches more of my taste in music, and maybe they won’t and it will be yet another music industry voice I can ignore in the pursuit of gritty metal happiness.
Let’s see where this goes.
2011
09/09
CATEGORY
Music
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Spotify on Linux

Now that I have a Spotify account I wanted to run the Spotify software on my machine. Although technically they don’t support Linux yet they have a repo for Fedora available. However I found a small problem when trying to install it on FC15, it isn’t supported, sorta.

Here is the repo file provided by Spotify:


[spotify]
name=Repository for the Spotify client
baseurl=http://repository.spotify.com/fedora/releases/$releasever/$basearch
enabled=1
metadata_expire=7d
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-spotify

When you install that repo file and try to update it automatically resolves to the baseurl


http://repository.spotify.com/fedora/releases/15/x86_64

which if you try and go to in a browser returns a 404, it doesn’t exist. This is the problem.

If you go to http://repository.spotify.com/fedora/releases/ you will see there are only options for 13 and 14, no 15 (or anything before 13).

The simple fix is this:


[spotify]
name=Repository for the Spotify client
baseurl=http://repository.spotify.com/fedora/releases/14/x86_64
enabled=1
metadata_expire=7d
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-spotify

Technically it is NOT the right version, but it does run well enough under FC15 that I am not worried, and easy enough to fix when they have a valid client.

UPDATE: Spotify for Linux will only work on paid accounts, no free trial run here, and I don’t want to worry about WINE, so I guess Spotify use will still have to wait.

2011
07/15
CATEGORY
Music
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JoCo When I’m 25 or 64

I love mashups, and I love listening to Jonathan Coulton (JoCo) — So without further ado…

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2011
03/25
CATEGORY
Music
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Baby Got Back

Alright, so I have had this song for a while, and frankly I can’t get enough of it! So without further adieu here is Jonathan Coulton’s “Baby Got Back”:

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I love covers, and I love it when a cover is so far out of the park from the original, and I don’t think this could get any further from the original. To go the other direction I also present Throwdown performing the same song. This is a metal version, so if you don’t like metal don’t listen; at least don’t blame me.

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2010
04/22
CATEGORY
Music
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