This actually started a couple years ago. In 2015 I wrote about me dipping my toes into the streaming music system. A quick summary of that post is that I had heard a podcast with some techy guys talking about streaming music services... specifically spotify. I mused a bit about some of the services I knew and even mentioned the new elephant in the room; Apple Music.
My conclusion was that I couldn't justify the cost. Most of those services go for $10 a month and I don't spend $10 a month on new music. Fast forward to about a year go (late 2016) and I bought my Google Pixel XL. Google in it's infinite AI wisdom included a 3 month subscription to Google Music. I am quite the sucker for free trials and I signed up for it. It only took me a few days to realize I don't like it. For one, on the computer Google Music only plays through a web browser. I actually like things being more portable like that, but not my music. I'm so accustomed to having iTunes be my music world that the replacement would have to at least START with a stand alone desktop app. Plus iTunes integrates well within windows. I had it set so that whenever I minimized it, it wouldn't go down to the task bar like any other program. Instead, it would minimize as a toolbar with the play/fast-forward/rewind/ect buttons.
Over the years I used that toolbar effect less and less as my keyboards have had actually useful media controls for years now. But I fear change and wanted any new music service, including Google's, to feel like iTunes. The streaming of new music was a big wet bag of 'meh' and it just wasn't convenient to stop itunes, go to the google play music website in chrome, and start up a stream, only to reverse those steps when I yearned for my own collection again. Paying for Google Music did have one nice feature that kept me paying even after the free trial was up... it included a subscription to YouTube Red. No ads in youtube! That actually made watching YouTube videos on my television more appealing. So even though the receipt always says I'm paying for Google Play Music, I just consider it a subscription to YouTube Red and continued to use iTunes for my music.
But then Apple fucked up.
I think it was the version 11 upgrade that did it. It dropped the support for the toolbar option. When I 'upgraded' and went to minimize my only options were to have it go back down to the task bar like any other minimized program or minimize all the way down to the hidden taskbar area near the clock. Neither made me happy. It's not that I was using the toolbar... but it was a change in a manner that I didn't want nor need. And the way my mind works is this; if I'm going to change anyway, why not look at all the options and see if a bigger change is better.
Now understand, moving away from iTunes is no easy feat. The two biggest hurdles is the iPod that I use in my car, and all that old purchased DRM protected music that I have.
The iPod in the car is a convenience I've enjoyed ever since I got my first iPod back in 2003. Back then I used a tape cassette converter, but that got upgrade to a direct iPod controller a few years later, and for the past 4 years has included direct control from my car's build in audio system (Fiona, Ginger, and Isaballa). The iPod itself didn't last all that long as it was a 3rd Generation iPod classic, but that got upgrade to a 4th Generation iPod nano that's working just fine right now. Well... not fine per say. I'm not sure if this is an issue with the iPod, with iTunes, or with how it integrates with the car. The problem is that it's mixing up playlists. For example, I ask my car to play "Playlist Christmas Best" and instead of hearing Burl Ives belt out some Holly Jolly Christmas I get the Michigan Fight song.
I love my Wolverines, but this is not the correct playlist.
But other than that, the iPod is working fine and is how I get my music into my car. I tried an iPod touch a year or so ago figuring it could sync via wifi instead of pulling the iPod out of the car and dragging it to the computer directly but that didn't work out. My computer goes to sleep after like 10 minutes and the Wifi connectivity works like crap. The iPod Touch ended up getting stolen and I went back to my ole reliable iPod Nano.
If I step away from iTunes I'll have to figure out another way to get said music into the car. I could grab a USB stick or some other USB storage device that can do the same thing but I'll have to manually control the playlists instead of having iTunes manage it.
The bigger problem may well be the DRM protected music. When I started using iTunes all of the music was protected by Digital Rights Management. It meant that it would play just fine on my computer in iTunes and it would play just fine on my iPod and any other apple device... but not on Windows Media Player or any Android device. A few years later Apple went to a different system and dropped the protection... but I had purchased over 400 songs by that time at the cost of $400. That's not an investment I want to just throw away, let alone re-purchase.
So to move away from iTunes I would have to solve both of those problems AND decide on which service to use. I briefly looked into Apple music, but that would mean paying those bastards $10 a month and I'm not really up on giving them any cash. Spotify is about the same price, but honestly it doesn't offer much beyond streaming from what I found. The same goes for Pandora, Tidal, Deezer, Groove, and Amazon. They each have their own 'thing', but none of them really work for me. And as I was looking at Amazon (I already have a prime account so it would have only cost $8 a month), I realized I already have the answer.
YouTube Red... er... Google Play Music!
I'm already paying for it and would continue to do so even if I don't use it... so in that way it's free. It not only streams, it lets you upload your music and stream it everywhere. Including your playlists! And even better yet for me... it lets me continue to buy my own songs one by one! So I do this as an honest to go trial and still buy individual songs in case it doesn't work out and I want to return to iTunes.
I had talked a bit about Google Play Music with my cousin over the Thanksgiving weekend and he told me that there was even a dedicated desktop app. Sure, it's not made by Google (bastards), but it does work very well and is even available from the Windows Store for free. So I downloaded that and tried uploading several of my 'protected' songs. It did actually take one and convert it to a playable format... but it just sat back and laughed at the other ones I tried. So I bit the bullet and looked at what options I had to take out the DRM protection from my several hundreds of dollars in music.
The obvious way that's been available since iTunes was released is burning them to a CD. I don't mean just putting the files onto a CD... no, I mean burning them to a CD formatted disc that can play in any audio CD device. Well that's just great. You get between 10 and 15 songs on each CD so it would only take me at least 32 burns and 32 rips. Did I mention that I don't have a CD burner or drive at all? I haven't needed to use a CD or DVD or BluRay outside of my television in years. So on top of the $20 for a spindle of CDs, I'd need to cough up another $30 on an external CD drive.
I'll be honest, I expected the drive to go for like $200, so $50 out the door is really quite cheap. BUT that's $50 I don't want to spend AND hours upon hours of work. I mean I'd have to not only rip the music back into the computer but also put all of it's ID3 tag information back in. It would likely take me weeks.
So next up is the less than honest way. I can buy a program that will either rip the DRM off of the music or re-record it from the playback in iTunes and end up with a clean MP3. The software costs $40, but that's less than the CD system and would take WAY less time. I couldn't think of any reason to get the CD system so I went ahead and purchased NoteBurner iTunes DRM Audio Converter. It took me most of the morning to do it, but it only failed on 4 songs and those were done a second time without a problem.
I am now sitting here listening to my music via the Google Play Music Desktop Player (great name eh?). I can listen to the same music on any of my android phones and technically any computer I can log into.
That just leaves the car. The iPod will NOT work with Google Play Music for syncing. I can continue to run iTunes strictly for my iPod but any playlists I make with Google Play Music will have to be re-created. Not fun. The ideal solution would be to have an android music player. Even better, an android music player that could use a cellular signal to sync and download the music directly anywhere I want it.....
That's when the wheels started to turn.
You see at that point on my thought process the FedEx guy delivered my new phone. If I haven't shared it yet, I finally purchased my Black and White (pronounced 'Panda') Google Pixel 2 XL. That starts the dominoes. I should back up a step first. I use my old Nexus 6 for an alarm clock. The battery was shot in it, but it had wireless charging so I could just lay it on my charging stand and it would get plenty of battery juice all night long without plugging any wires in. I use an app called Night Clock that displays the time but turns the screen brightness down to almost nothing. I then use Rocket Player to play a set of music (I call the playlist 'Sing Me To Sleep'), turn on the built in 1 hour sleep timer and nod off to snooze land. It's easy to set up and maintain the alarms, especially since I can just pick up the phone and tap away at it before setting it back down in it's cradle. The alarm wakes me up and it just works brilliantly. That is, until the wireless charging broke. For the past couple weeks I've had to plug the damned thing in every night.
Now that has nothing directly to do with my new Panda Phone, but part of the reason I was justifying the purchase of a new phone for the second year in a row was that my Mother would get my old phone. I could then sign her up to Project Fi as a group plan and save a few dozen bucks each month. That leaves her old Samsung Galaxy Note 5. It's roughly the same size of my Nexus 6 and has wireless charging that actually works. So my plan was to format my phone and set Mom's account up on it, then format her phone and set up my account on it and use it as my new Alarm Clock. That leaves my Nexus 6 out in the cold.
Out in the cold, in my car, serving as my replacement iPod. I had got a data sim for it last year on my Project Fi account, so it can even sync itself over a cellular signal and stream music over the open road! And did the wheels stop turning there? Nope. Not only can I use it as my music player, I can actually hook it up to Isabella as an Android Auto device. There were a couple good reasons I wasn't running my current Pixel as an Android Auto device. First and foremost was the music. I can't run the iPod as music inside of Android Auto. It wants to pull the music right from the Android device. The other reason was plugging the phone in. I didn't want to take the phone out of its slip case and plug it into the car each and every time I got in and out of the damned car. Sure, I wanted to use Google Maps instead of my navigation, and sure I wanted to use the Google Auto apps like Weather, and Waze, and NPR One, and so on, and so forth. It just wasn't worth the effort of plugging in the phone each time.
But my Nexus 6 is the perfect answer. I can plug it in and just freaking leave it there! The battery isn't good for running a full day, but it can certainly stand by for several days in a row. Plus it gets power each and every time I drive. And so far as I know, I can still hook my phone up via bluetooth to get calls and messages while using Android Auto. At least i think I can... this will take an actual trial.
But the music solution will be freaking sweet!
While having dinner with my brother, I admitted that this might be one of those transitions for me. Music started out as the radio and a few random records (yes... I'm old enough to have owned big discs of vinyl!). My real music awakening was with cassets. Both owning them and making mix tapes for the car. Then came CDs and that sweet sweet 6 disc changer in the trunk. The iPod happened in late 2003 and for the most part I've been static ever since. Well... late 2017 or early 2018 might be the next big thing. Screw owning music, just pay the $10 for unlimited streaming and playlist making capabilities!
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