The world as frankps sees it!
Music
I have set up my old Cube as a Jukebox streaming music through my Airport accesspoint to my homecinema system. I am not a fan of downloading/buying mp3 files, I guess I am getting old fashioned, mostly buying them on CD …
Spotify with inbuilt apps
2 months ago
Spotify recently published a public beta of an upcoming version of their app. This major update will introduce a redesigned user interface. The new main page gives you a better social overview, as for example what your friends are listening to, both of songs and playlists. Search has been reimplemented with predictive search results. Just start start typing in the search bar and Spotify will suggest possible tracks, artists, albums and playlists. The Buddy List now shows what your friends are listening to right now and you can also see and hear your friends’ starred tracks, as well as the music they’re adding to their playlists. OS X Lion users can enjoy the new Spotify as a full-screen app.
Another major new thing in Spotify is their app store, called App Finder. The new Spotify comes with an improved Last.fm support. It is now not only limited to scrobbling, it now also give you recommendations. There are also apps for newspapers that review music, and funnily enough the first Norwegian newspaper is already present:
The Dagbladet app is beautiful and I have both read reviews and at the same time listened to the albums being reviewed. Hats off for Dagbladet, as they have made one of the best apps available in App Finder and I hope that they will have great success with it. Another Norwegian app is Soundrop, but I’m still trying to figure out how it works 
The songs on the album is descretly put on the left side of the review under the album cover, and you can easily add songs to your favourite list of music and to other playlists as you are used to.
Other applications to look out for are the one from Guardian and Rolling Stones magazine. They are both not in the same league as the one from Dagbladet, but both provide great music suggestions and that is what it’s all about in the end.
Last.fm tells me things I already know
2
Yepp, Last.fm is right. I have not listened to Kylie this year. Do I need to know, or do you think I know that I haven’t listened to her? And do you think that I am gonna listen to her right now?
Well, Last.fm has started presenting the 40 most scrobbled artists this year. She is #40. I’m officially out of sync with what is hot and what is not.
How to dig your own grave
0Techcrunch has a very interesting read today: Deny This, Last.fm. Not that I would have anything to hide, and I have already stopped using the Last.fm service. And that for a very good reason: Last.fm chose to split their userbase in two: 1st class users and 2nd class users. The 1st class users are free riders, while the 2nd class users have to play for the fun. As one that had been defined as a 2nd class user, I simply decided to stop using Last.fm.
Update: There are always two sides of a story, also to this one. Guardian last night posted a link to Last.fm’answer, that was posted in their forum.
Is there any music service that can import my listening habits (data), so that I can finally delete my Last.fm account? And my other big question is, how many users have Last.fm lost on these two decissions? It must be many, and perhaps this is the end of Last.fm?
Thank you for all the fish, and …
0I am for now a happy Spotify user. Thuesday 24 March Last.fm announced that listening to Last.fm Radio will require a subscription of €3.00 per month. My first thought was fair enough, they have to earn money to pay the license fee. But then hang on a minute, what else did they write in this blog entry? In the United States, United Kingdom and Germany, nothing will change. Yes, that means that the service stays for free for users from these three countries. That is not something I can or will tolerate. They have defined their users in to two groups: First class users and second class users. First class users get a free ride, that the second class users have to pay. As I live in Norway, I’m defined as a second class user. I guess that the leaders of Last.fm must have been smoking their socks, if they think that they will get away with this. Let darwinsm deal with them (read: finance crise), they have already sent of several of their employees. Now they can close their company.
Besides this, a post in one of the Last.fm forums adds a couple of things:
- The old API to stream music will disappear in a few weeks. Unless I’m missing something, that implies that all clients (official and third party) will stop working, and upgrading them is required to continue using the service.
- Streaming music to mobile phones will not be permitted (a comment in the same thread explains that this restriction applies only to phones, so Nokia tablets are not affected).
I am saving my account for now, but I am inches away from deleting all my data on Last.fm and close my account. I guess there are many users that will do that. I have never seen more comments being made on Last.fm’s blog.
Also a friend of me blogged about this in Italian and another in Hungarian.
Lips for XBOX 360
33 years ago
I am not much a gamer, and not a singer either. But having said that, I must add that I simply love the karaoke game Lips for XBOX 360. I saw a commercial of the game, where they played Young Folks (by Peter, Bjorn & John) and I was sold. I just had to buy the game and it was released just in time for the holiday season.
My sister and her boyfriend are SingStar champions, but now I can finally be at least an outsider. I can’t wait to compete against them. It’s a social game, fun singing alone, but so, so much better singing with others.
I guess Lips isn’t the greatest karaoke-focused game ever released, but it has enough good features and options to make it a decent Xbox 360-only answer to Sony’s massive SingStar series. As I am not the best singer, I fast noticed that the game has problems with rating your vocals. The game gave me full credit, even though I was pretty far off the mark. Ok, it’s Christmas time and hope that I will get time for practise, cause I am surely not ready to challenge other players online.
The game comes with 40 tracks that cover a good-sized range of times and genres, so there should be something for everyone! I at least found 5-6 really great songs. But I hope that Microsoft with the next version of Lips, adds 3-4 Norwegian songs too. Swedish songs are not the same!It varies a little bit what songs Lips comes with, on Wikipedia you can see the differences between countries. Another option is the option to buy extra songs online. Songs are available for either 160 or 180 MSP (Microsoft’s own currency). You can see the list of songs available on Microsoft Live Marketplace. I hope to some time be able to compare the Microsoft Live Marketplace with Sony’s SingStore, but get me right, I am not planning to buy a Playstation 3.
Lips also lets you import music via the same options you have to play your own music in most other games. You can pull songs from portable devices, play them from your 360′s hard drive, or even stream them over your local network (Windows Media Center or Connect 360). Just that it isn’t the same as playing the songs built for the game, since you won’t get on-screen lyrics or music videos. The game will only attempt to judge your performance.
It gets better, just hold on! When you first import a song from a portable device, Lips asks you the following question:
“You’re about to use a song from your own music library. Do you want to send data about this song along with an ID associated with your Gamertag to Microsoft? By doing so you’ll cast a vote for the creation of additional content such as videos and lyrics for your favourite songs. Providing this information will also let us notify you when new content for songs in your collection is available.”
Brilliant way to combine the Xbox and Zune, and get their sales numbers going also for the Zune. Microsoft currently has a position open for “Zune Xbox“.
Just as I was about to finish this blog entry, a SingStar Vol. 3 commercial was running on TV, more or less telling me what that game has that Lips doesn’t. Not that it matters for me, but SingStar has the ability to save small videos, captured with the PlayStation Eye, and upload them for the community and your friends to see. The recording of your singing also lets you listen to your performance. Lips doesn’t have anything like this, but I guess Microsoft will catch up on Sony. I am pretty sure!