Digital Noise: Music and Tech

Apple outstripped Wall Street's expectations for the quarter ended September 30, and while the blowout quarter was mostly thanks to higher-than-expected Mac sales, the company also sold a record 7.4 million iPhones. But a lot of commentators think that the iPhone is finally going to meet its match with Droid.

You don't need an instruction manual to figure out how to get music onto your iPhone.

Announced this weekend by Verizon in a cheeky TV commercial, the Droid is a Motorola phone running Google's Android 2.0 operating system. The advertisement notes that the Droid will do things that the iPhone won't, like take pictures in the dark and run simultaneous apps (apparently playing music in the background, as the iPhone can do, doesn't count), and touts its open development process (a head-scratcher for non-techies, but it could mean more apps than the iPhone, someday). The first preview I've seen, from Boy Genius Report, was also positive. People are excited, and for good reason--competition drives innovation, which is good for consumers.

But here's the thing: one reason for the runaway success of the iPhone--and one of the reasons why Apple still continues to sell more than 10 million iPods per quarter--is iTunes. Not so much the store, although that's an important component, but the software. Of course there are plenty of other applications out there that help you rip CDs and organize your digital music collection. And there are plenty of other sources for online music. But the real strength of iTunes is in the sync process--you plug your iPhone in, iTunes opens up automatically and recognizes it. Hit the large "Sync" button and it automatically loads your music (and video, and apps, and anything else you choose) onto it. (With some devices, depending on your settings, you don't even need to hit "Sync.") That's the simple, consumer-friendly, end-to-end experience that Apple figured out first.

Contrast that with the multi-step process required to transfer music from a Windows PC to the first Android phone that was available in the U.S., last year's G1. Amazon provided over-the-air MP3 downloads for that phone, giving it a rough equivalent to the over-the-air version of the iTunes store, but let's face it: most digital music is not purchased, but is ripped from a CD or comes from some other source (legal or not).

Verizon, Motorola, and Google haven't said much about music for the Droid. Maybe they still have a musical trick or two up their collective sleeves. But without some sort of equivalent to the iTunes desktop application, the Droid may be a great phone, but it won't be a great music phone.

The more time I spend with my Zune HD, the more I like it. Sound quality aside--and I know opinions differ dramatically here, but I'm stuck with my ears and my preferences--there are a bunch of features that make Apple's products seem like they've fallen behind the curve. Here are five things in particular that I miss when I use my iPhone or one of my iPods:

Zune Pass Apple has long maintained that people want to own rather than rent their music. I counter that a subscription-based music service, combined with a state-of-the-art player, is one of those features that you have to try before you realize how fantastic it is. It reminds me of the first time I beta-tested the Xbox Live gaming service back in 2002--I didn't understand how addictive online console gaming could be until I spent eight hours playing Moto GP without even looking at the clock.

Here are a couple of real-world examples from yesterday. First, a friend came over for brunch and we began talking about Gram Parsons, one of those towering influences whose music is sorely lacking in my collection. In the past, we might have talked for a minute, maybe gone online to hunt down some ancient YouTube videos, and then forgotten about it. But with the Zune Pass, we were able to walk over to the Zune HD (which I have plugged into a first-generation AV dock and connected to a Bose Wave player in my living room), connect to the Marketplace through my home Wi-Fi network, and sample a bunch of Gram Parsons songs while we ate.

A Zune Pass makes the Smart DJ function into a great music-discovery tool.

Later, I ripped the nervously funky Can LP "Ege Bamyasi" to my hard drive. Curious to discover some similar music, I used the Zune software's Smart DJ function, then listened as it drew music from the Marketplace that I don't know very well, like Kraftwerk, Brian Eno, Gong, and my favorite discovery, Faust. Trying the same thing with iTunes' Genius function suggested plenty of new music from the iTunes Store but to hear it, I'd have to buy each song as a download. (Note: you can't create a Smart DJ playlist on the Zune HD device itself, although I expect that feature to be added later. Instead, you have to use the Zune software, then save it as a playlist.)

These are the kinds of music-discovery features that make the Zune Pass a great deal at $14.99 a month. And on top of that, each month you get 10 MP3 downloads to keep.

Quickplay This feature lets you "pin" favorite songs, albums, playlists, or other types of content to the front menu of the Zune HD. It also has a "New" section that automatically displays the six items you've most recently added to your collection, a "History" section that displays the last six things you've played, and a spot to access any currently playing song that you've paused. I miss this instant gratification, particularly quick access to recently added music, on the iPod.

Background art Remember how cool it seemed when you could first look at album covers as you played songs on your MP3 player? The Zune HD makes this seem hopelessly obsolete--instead, it scrolls through album art and pictures of the artist as each song plays. No purchase is required--it works even with the LPs I ripped. It's similar to how the Zune software (and iTunes) can populate your music collection with album art from a database in the cloud, only more sophisticated. (You can see this feature in action starting around 2:00 into this video demo.)

Wireless sync This feature has been part of the Zune experience since 2007, and once you get used to it, you'll hate dragging your iPod to your computer every time you want to load new music. Microsoft seems to have improved the sync experience in the Zune HD and Zune 4.0 software--all you have to do is leave the Zune HD's wireless connection on, and it will periodically sync automatically with your PC, even if you don't have the Zune app open.

See what my friends are playing Zune's social-networking functions haven't been very useful because of the relatively small number of people who own a Zune. I'm hoping this changes with the Zune HD. Already, the Gram Parsons fan says he's going to buy one. Once we connect to one another, I'll be able to see his playlists as he runs through Gram Parsons, the Flying Burrito Brothers, and all their musical neighbors. With a Zune Pass, I'll even be able to play any song that he's played, immediately, on my device, as long as it's available in the Marketplace. Again, this is an absolutely amazing tool for music discovery.

Apple's still riding high with the iPod, particularly the Touch, but the Zune HD is clearly moving ahead in terms of innovation. Now if Microsoft can open the Marketplace to third-party apps and fix the browser, Apple might have reason to worry.

Microsoft is making a selling point of the fact that the new Zune HD and associated software update are optimized for Windows 7, which is due out on October 22. I've got a copy of the final release code of Windows 7 on my work PC, and there is some useful synchronization between the two. For instance, the Quickplay menu in the Zune software--which lets you get immediately to music you've recently added, your Smart DJ stations, and any other favorites you want to "pin" to the list--is propagated into the Windows 7 Start menu. So even if you don't have the Zune software open, you can simply navigate to the Zune icon in the Start menu and all your Quickplay selections will show up.

The Zune software adds Quickplay selections to the Windows 7 Start menu.

Of course, Microsoft's had access to final Windows 7 code for a long time. But what about Apple? The company kindly sent me a new-model iPod Touch and Nano to test out, and I noticed that the boxes say they're compatible with Windows XP and Vista (and Mac OS X 10.4.11). Windows 7 isn't mentioned. I downloaded and installed iTunes 9 on my Windows 7 PC anyway, and I'm now happily syncing my music library. I haven't noticed any bugs or errors. (Your mileage may vary--this isn't a review, just my personal experience.) But this underscores my general impression of Windows 7 as a solid upgrade to Vista--not a fundamentally new OS, like Vista was to XP. As Microsoft has said, if your apps work with Vista, they'll almost surely work with 7.

Reverse-sync, one of my favorite features of the Zune software.

The more interesting question is how did I get my music library onto my work computer in the first place? Simple--the Zune software has, from the very beginning, had a reverse-sync feature. You simply drag all the songs from the Zune icon to the PC icon, and they go happily traversing your USB cable down into your PC. iTunes has no such reverse-sync, and in fact is pretty strict about only allowing you to sync with one library at a time, although there are plenty of third-party apps that can do it for you.

If you were hoping for Apple to announce a subscription-based music service for the iPhone and the iPod Touch on Wednesday like I was, suppress your disappointment: early this morning, Apple approved Rhapsody for iPhone, and it's available in the iTunes Store.

It's the second such service Apple has approved, but the first, Spotify, is not available in the United States. (The Rhapsody application is not showing up in search results quite yet, but it is showing up within iTunes.)

(Credit: Rhapsody)

Rhapsody was a pioneer in subscription-based music, and I'm a big fan of the service; in 2005, it was the first one to turn me on to the thrill of chasing your whims and surfing randomly among genres, which you can't do with per-download services like iTunes.

In my most recent trial late last year (in conjunction with the Sonos multiroom audio system), I wasn't able to find any significant gaps--if anything, there was too much music, including more versions of the novelty song "Kung Fu Fighting" than I ever imagined--and there is some excellent curation and editorial work, particularly for indie rock artists.

The iPhone app is pretty straightforward: you can search for songs, surf genres and chart-toppers, and create queues and playlists. If you're a fan of Pandora, you'll also appreciate the Rhapsody Radio feature, which creates tailor-made stations built around particular artists or genres. As long as you have an active Wi-Fi or 3G connection, the music should keep playing without interruption.

It's a free download, but to use it, you'll need a Rhapsody to Go subscription, which costs $14.99 a month. That's not quite as good a deal as Microsoft's Zune Pass, which costs the same and gives you 10 permanent MP3 downloads a month, but of course that service requires a Zune, which means that it applies only to about 1.1 percent of the MP3 player market (according to a statistic that Apple snarkily included in its presentation Wednesday) and exactly zero mobile phones.

Apple appears to have seen the light, as it is now allowing subscription-based music to come to the iPhone. It makes my phone's 8GB storage size seem a lot less limiting.

Follow Matt on Twitter.

This post has been updated. See details below.

I was excited to try out the new Home Sharing feature in iTunes 9. The feature isn't as new as some reports suggest--it's been possible to share iTunes libraries among computers in a home network for years now, but the experience was pretty limited.

You couldn't play DRM-protected songs in a shared library, couldn't create playlists from a shared library, and most importantly, couldn't physically transfer songs from a library on one computer to a library on another. Home Sharing promises to change all this, so I gleefully updated iTunes on my Windows XP PC and my MacBook (which my wife has adopted), and enabled Home Sharing on both.

For a brief shining moment, my Mac (which is almost music-free) was able to see the 3,500 songs stored in iTunes on my PC. The transfer button was just sitting there, waiting for me to start moving as much of my music as I wanted over to my Mac.

Now you see it...

But instead of moving ahead, I had to mess around. Long story short, my wife and I have separate user accounts on the PC. There are some songs by some artists (like Journey) that are in my wife's iTunes library on the PC but which I've made sure never show up in mine (I can't stand Journey). So I decided to try to share her library with the Mac.

I closed iTunes on the PC, logged off, logged onto my wife's user account, opened iTunes, and tried to set up Home Sharing. It let me authorize with iTunes--which is necessary for turning Home Sharing on--but as soon as I authorized, the Home Sharing icon in the left-hand column disappeared.

OK. So I logged off my wife's account, logged back on to the PC as myself, and went back to my iTunes library. Now I couldn't see Home Sharing at all. I used the Advanced menu item to turn Home Sharing off and back on--no luck. I went to the Mac and turned it off and back on--no luck, and that made Home Sharing disappear on that copy of iTunes as well! I rebooted both machines multiple times--no luck.

Now every single time I want to turn Home Sharing on, it lets me authorize, then as soon as I hit the "Done" button, the Home Sharing icon disappears. My guess is that it has something to do with trying to authorize two libraries on the same PC with the same iTunes account, but there's no online support for iTunes 9 yet, so I can't tell. (And before you ask, yes, I have both the "Share my local library on the network" and "Look for shared libraries" boxes checked on iTunes on both computers.)

Now you don't.

Lesson: if it's working, don't touch it! Transfer that library, and get the heck out. And if anybody else has had this bug and knows how to fix it, please let me know in comments below.

Update, September 11: I turned on my Mac and PC this morning, started up iTunes, and the Sharing folder and Matt Rosoff's Library icon appeared on both. I haven't changed any settings in iTunes or in my firewall software. I'm not sure what happened, but my advice to those of you who are seeing this apparent bug--and judging from the comment stream, it's not uncommon--is to shut everything down, start up again, and make sure that iTunes is open on both computers.

Follow Matt on Twitter.

Promotional page for iTunes LP, which appeared in the iTunes Music Store on Wednesday.

(Credit: Screenshot by Matt Rosoff/CNET)

I'm following Apple's "It's Only Rock and Roll" event along with the CNET staff, but even before the event started, I saw that Apple has revealed its new LP format for iTunes.

It's called iTunes LP, and you can access it by clicking the top item on the "More to Explore" box in the left side of the iTunes Store front page. The new format includes more album art, lyrics, writing about the record, video (such as interviews with band members), and perhaps additional songs.

There are only a handful of albums available in the format right now (see screenshot for the six that are advertised on the iTunes LP page), but I'm sure that more are coming.

So far, I haven't been able to download the iTunes 9 software, but it's available in earlier versions as well.

Follow Matt on Twitter.

The record industry better hope that Wednesday's Apple announcement is big news--pre-cut ringtones, a new digital album format, perhaps the addition of recordings from some obscure 1960s rock band who were apparently pretty good. According to an analysis in today's Billboard Online, the usual summer slump in digital download sales is more pronounced this year, and ringtone sales continue their steep decline. For an industry that's counting on digital to make up for declines in CD sales, that's very unwelcome news.

What if Apple brings Genius to the cloud? It might prove that subscription services have a chance after all.

The author, Glenn Peoples, suggests that ringtones and a new album format on iTunes could help, but there's another possibility that I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere: what if Apple takes the plunge into subscription-based music? So far, subscriptions haven't been a successful business model, but I'm not convinced it's because the idea is flawed. The problem is that no subscription service has been available for the iPod or iPhone. (Spotify for iTunes is too new, and not available in the U.S., so I don't count it yet.) Look at Pandora for iPhone: it doesn't even let you choose individual songs, but once users realize that they have on-demand access to an infinite library of music, they can't seem to stop raving about it.

Imagine if Apple combined a new subscription service with the iTunes Genius function, which is conceptually similar to Pandora but currently limited to your existing music collection. (It also recommends songs in the iTunes store, but you have to buy them individually, which kind of ruins the delightful-surprise factor.) How much would you pay for that? Now multiply that by some percentage--20 percent might be reasonable--of present and future iPhone and iPod Touch users, and suddenly you're talking about meaningful annual revenue. I know that Steve Jobs has insisted that customers want to own rather than rent music, but remember that he once scorned the idea of a video iPod as well.

Follow Matt on Twitter.

It may be operating in a legal grey area, but Grooveshark is still my favorite on-demand music app--type in any song, artist, or album, and there's a pretty good chance that it's in Grooveshark's database, allowing you to begin playing it immediately. It's great not only for impulse listens, but also for creating playlists of songs you don't own and would never buy, like my favorite heavy metal hits from junior high school. So far, the lawsuit filed by EMI in May hasn't shut the site down or significantly decreased the number of songs available, so I'm holding out hope that they can reach a licensing deal.

These are not the dogs you're looking for.

This week, Grooveshark announced plans to submit an iPhone app to Apple's App Store. They sent me a version to test, and I'm pleased to report that it offers the same on-demand functionality--play any song you want, right now--as well as the ability for registered users to create and save playlists. But it's far from perfect, especially compared with the Web site.

Most notably: both over my home Wi-Fi connection and AT&T's 3G network, new songs or playlists sometimes stuttered a few times as they started playing. Search results are harder to filter on the iPhone, since you can't divide results into albums, songs, and artists, and the results aren't organized as intelligently. For instance, a search for "Pink Floyd Dogs" turned up many instances of the atrocious "Dogs of War" from the band's 1980s incarnation, but not the song "Dogs" from their classic 1977 "Animals" album. I had no such problem on the Web site. And some songs appear in search results and can be added to your playlist, but when you actually try to play them, you're presented with a "not available" error (probably a legacy of the company's legal tussles).

I also uncovered a couple of bugs or feature gaps with the playlist function. For instance, sometimes from the playlist menu, the buttons at the bottom of the app disappear, and you can't get back to the search screen (for example, to add a new song to your playlist) without exiting the app entirely. No fun.

All this is academic unless Apple decides to accept the app. Here, Grooveshark is in the same boat as Spotify, whose plans to build an iPhone app I covered last week. Like Spotify, Grooveshark will charge a monthly fee for using the mobile version of the service, but hasn't decided on pricing yet. So now Apple has to decide: is it better to please iPhone users by giving them low-cost access to any song on demand, or is it better to preserve iTunes for music downloads? I have a feeling that iTunes is not going to be sacrificed. In fact, if Apple wanted to offer subscription-based on-demand streaming music for iPhone, it would probably deliver it through iTunes and collect the subscription fees itself.

That's OK with Grooveshark: the company says it's planning to release apps for other mobile platforms as well.

Follow Matt on Twitter.

When I tried Spotify, the free on-demand music-streaming service currently available only in Europe, I was impressed by its iTunes-like user interface and how fast the songs loaded. So when I saw Monday's news that Spotify has submitted an iPhone app to Apple for consideration, I got excited.

(Credit: Spotify)

Then I read more closely: to use the mobile version of Spotify, you'll need a premium subscription. The service isn't available in the United States yet, but a premium subscription in the United Kingdom costs 10 pounds a month, which translates to about $16.50 at today's exchange rate.

That's in line with prices for other portable subscription music services, such as the Zune Pass or Rhapsody to Go. Those services aren't available for the iPod or iPhone, but Spotify's not doing anything groundbreaking here; it appears to be trying to fill a gap that Apple has left open by refusing to introduce its own subscription service.

The video demonstration also makes it look like users have to side-load playlists from their computer before accessing them on the device. I want what you get with the Zune Pass--the ability to stream songs on demand from any location with a Wi-Fi connection.

Corrected at 3:45 p.m.: This story mischaracterized a demonstration video for the application. It does show the ability to search Spotify for any song wirelessly. I got confused because it started with the caveat "playlists you've already created." It wasn't clear whether the search results were coming from those playlists, but they're not. My bad.