I listen to music almost constantly, at work, at the gym, at home,...while I write this very blog... therefore I must say music is a huge part of my life. I find this odd as I can’t even tune a guitar. Still, I spend the majority of my waking moments listening to music.
Normally it starts on my trusty iPod Touch. I like to jump to my complete list of songs and shuffle them. Eventually something comes up that fits my current mood, or I haven’t heard for a long time, which leads me to that song’s album which I then listen to. It’s a fun system, I like it,...just one problem...my account has been mysteriously been banned by Apple.
I’m not sure what I did to warrant such actions but the black turtle neck wearing hipster fascists felt I deserved it. I’m guessing it had something to do with me having the audacity to move the music I paid for from one computer to another (I know, I’m an outlaw...an animal,....out of control.....). So my iPod Touch is stuck at (and will always be stuck at) 2533 songs.
The alternative rests on my Amazon cloud account, a mishmash of songs which didn’t all upload from my computer. Several songs from each album made it but not all of them. It seems as though the upload software timed out during the main upload. I suppose such things can happen when you attempt to upload 2500 songs. The trouble is that the account thinks all the songs HAVE been uploaded so a re-upload doesn’t find the missing songs. The only work around for this is that each album has to be re-uploaded individually. A long process I began a long time ago, but am not even close to being finished. To top it all off the songs just won’t upload. Conveniently for the fruit people most of those songs I purchased through my Apple device.....fuckers.....won’t upload to Amazon (which takes about anything) because the songs are in some sort of weird format/encryption/whatever. So I either have to re-buy all the songs that I bought from Apple or acquire them in some other manner,....and the music industry wonders why so many people pirate music....idiots.
I find myself straddling a deep ravine, music on two different sides. Both unsatisfactory for one reason or another. Ideally I’d like all my music on Amazon as their cloud format would enable me to get to my music from any machine and thus prevent my canyon predicament from ever happening again but the process is long and daunting. Songs that are on both my apple and my phone (Amazon Cloud), songs that are on one but not the other, songs that are on the apple but not movable to the cloud for one stupid fruit related reason or another, songs that have been moved, songs that haven’t, songs that can be moved but haven’t yet. Multiply all of that by 2500 and you get where I’m coming from.
The tin foil hat wearing conspiracy loving version of me thinks that since the days of hard media changing (records, eight tracks, cassettes, cds...) are over the industry is scrambling to figure out a way to make you buy the same music over and over and over again like they used to be able to until music became available solely through digital means. Perhaps “Conspiracy Theory Smitty (tm)” is right, perhaps he’s not. Whatever the case I find the whole ordeal disparaging. I can’t begin listening to music without the black cloud of the daunting task of music indexing/sorting/downloading/transferring/decrypting/unfucking staring back at me. Sort of like I can’t go into the garage without thinking of all the home related projects I’m neglecting. All of this is compounded by my recent financial troubles which have forced me to turn off my Internet.
It’s into this troubled civil war like hellscape that is my music collection a dark, ominous song found it’s way recently. The growing unlikelyhood (is a word? fuck it, it is now) that I would find new music I would like makes finding this song all the more special. But that’s a topic for my next blog. Actually that was the topic for THIS blog but I got too wrapped up in the whole canyon/ravine/civil war music collection thing. Something I obviously needed to work through......
For now I’m back to listening to my iPod Touch and dreaming of the day when my music, ALL of my music will be back together again. Like long lost twins who discover they hold a coffee cup the same quirky way (isn’t that neat? *YAWN*).
I know there are people out there who will say “why don’t you do such and such?” or didn’t you hear about Apple’s new “cloud” setup? For some reason I’m skeptical about Apples “Cloud” I’m guessing constant syncing is still required and if you bat an eyelash the wrong way all your music will be synced out of existence (not that I’m bitter or anything).
To address the “Such and such” I’d respond by saying,...”Okay, STOP before explaining the long Rube Goldberglike process I must partake in and just do it FOR me if it is so truly easy....be my guest, I’m gonna back up everything I have first, and if you need me I’ll be eating nachos and watching football, let me know how it goes....
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