Man, I’ve had so many awesome ideas for Sci-Fi stories recently. I plan them out in my head and think about how great they would be to blog about. Then I don’t do it. Crap. So busy. New kid. Long hours. Developing a mobile app course at IUPUI. Lots of work on my dev blog. Just no time for personal stories and short fiction or art I guess. Oh well.

Anyways, all I wanted to say was, if I ever recommended t61 to you, and you listened, I am no un-recommending it. It’s like the cautionary tale of what NOT to do to your users or website. I don’t have time to tell the tale, but basically, those guys heads are big enough that goodyear is making them offers. Oh, and everyone is leaving the site, so pretty soon it will just be a wasteland of music scraped off of blogs and casual occasional listeners who have no real connection to the site because there is no social networking aspect. It’ll be like… idk, just another radio station that plays whatever the DJ (the site owners in this case) can come up with. No real motivation for artists to go there and post their own stuff.

So, looking for good music? Check out aurgasm.us, or even go where everyone who left the sixty one went, uvumi.com. Why is it that both of those names should belong to porn sites, and yet are home to cool music???

So I bought this on iTunes for $4.00 before it was available for free on Hulu. You’d think I’d be mad at them for giving it away one week after I bought it. I’m not. It was worth it. Check it out:

I present to you, Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog:

The first six minutes are a little slow, but it picks up after that.

So I bought some music from iTunes on Saturday. I wanted some Mannheim Steamroller CDs and Target didn’t have them. I didn’t want to wait because I wanted to hear them right then when I was working on my book.

I purchased the songs and downloaded them and happily listened away.

When I got to work on Monday I fired iTunes up and went to download them to my work computer. No can do. Wha??? Nope, can’t re-download anything you purchase on iTunes. If you lose it, it’s GONE (well, apparently they will allow you to re-download your entire library ONCE in your life if you ask them).

This is stupid. The reason I bought it online is convenience. How is it more convenient if I can’t access it from wherever I want (provided I have an account/computer/connection)?

Wondering if Rhapsody (from Real Networks) functioned this way, I downloaded and installed it and popped it open. I have purchased a total of about 30 songs on Rhapsody over the years, and I used to have an account that allowed me to listen to unlimited music all day long for like $15 a month. There were all my purchased songs sitting right there waiting to be re-downloaded to my heart’s content. I could download and delete them 500x in a row if I wanted just for fun.

I will never use iTunes again for purchasing music. I’m sorry I ever tried it in the first place (I was hesitant to do so when I did, and now I wish I hadn’t). Then again, I should have known because I always thought that iTunes sucked. Even now thinking about it I’m realizing I think I purchased something from iTunes a long time ago, and I’d be willing to bet that I’ve now deleted it thinking I could safely re-download it at any time… Oh well, I won’t make this mistake again.

I’d also like to note the insanity of not being able to sync your iPhone to more than one computer. I should be able to load it up with songs at home, take it to work, and dump all the songs onto my work computer. Stupid Apple.

Oh and if you are saying that the “bandwidth” would cost too much, I say hornswaggle and hogwarsh (yes, with an unnecessary “r” in there!)!!! Google allows you to store 5GB of e-mails, and transfer files up and down all day long. mp3Tunes.com gives me unlimited storage/transfers that I just used to suck 10GB down to my computer (and shove 10GB up from my other computer this morning) and both of those are FREE.

So, after going to their concert last night, I decided it was high time to head on over to HPB and buy their cd.

Of course, they only sold 500k copies, so it was highly unlikely that I would find one there. Sure enough, no cd.

So I headed over to Best Buy to shell out the bucks. Not there either.

So I headed over to the mall to see if there was a music store there. Yep. “F.Y.E” it was called.

I headed back to the pop/rock section and found “Third Eye Blind”. They had all four cds (That’s the first, second, third and compilation). The only copy they had of the third one was a used one (awesome!) for $9. That’s perfect because my music budget each month is only $10 (which means I spend blow money on cds when I want to buy new).

I picked it up and headed for the register.

Upon arrival, I was not greeted very pleasantly. Apparently my appearance was an inconvenience. I would greet my customers that way too if I had to badger them with a gauntlet of questions…

As he rang up my cd he exclaimed, “You know, this is a used cd, so if you guy two, you get one half off!”

Ode to joy. “That’s ok” I responded unenthusiastically.

“Wow, are you sure you don’t want to go look around a little more?” He asked confusedly trying to hand me back the cd so I could scamper off to make my other selections.

“Yep, pretty”

“ok…” He looked a little hurt. He scanned the cd and, “Well, this cd is actually only $7.99 instead of $8.99!”

“cool”

“Yeah! And right now we have these special cloths” he said waiving a little package in my face, “that will wipe scratches and stuff off of cds that maybe aren’t playing too well anymore, they’re only $.99!”

“I’ll pass”

“Even though you already saved a dollar on the cd? That’s like breaking even…” He said with a furrowed brow, wiggling the cloths between his hands at me.

“Even though!” (Breaking even? wtf? Why not come out a dollar ahead?)

“ok… Are you a rewards discount member?” He intoned as he shoved a rewards card towards me.

“no thanks”

“Oh, ok, well it’s only $24.95″ He picked it up and began to make motions like he was going to scan it.

Didn’t I just reject the offer? “No, that’s ok.”

“All right… Please choose which free magazine you want to receive!” He put down the rewards card and slapped down a flier with pictures of magazines on it.

“I think I’ll pass”

“Well ok then, your total is $8.47″ He looked very disappointed. I almost told him that I’d changed my mind about the magazine as I handed over my card to be swiped. I held my tongue though, and he crammed my cd, mile long receipt, and advertisements into a tiny bag as I signed his copy.

“Thanks” he said, and I responded in kind. Whatever happened to “Have a nice day!” I wondered, and almost said it to him, but didn’t want to seem patronizing as I was already walking away.

So in closing, F.Y.E. is a great place to get used or new music, but you have to either be assaulted with sales pitches at the register, or just make a run for it with your cd and hope the guards don’t nab you before you get away. It’s kind of a toss-up… Maybe next time I’ll just chuck the exact change at him and run.

1:44 PM me: Man, “Wake for Young Souls” by Third Eye Blind on their “out of the vein” album is pretty awesome…

“I wonder what they’re up to these days?” I thought as I relished in the music.

A wave of panic struck over me as I irrationally thought “crap… I never bought their third cd. I’ve never even listened to their third cd besides a few songs on Finetune… What if they broke up?!?”.

I frantically popped open a new tab in Firefox and typed in “www.thirdeyeblind.com”. It came up with a generic filler domain page. Oh no. They let their domain expire! What happened?

I sadly browsed to their wikipedia page to find out what their sad fate was. After reading a little bit I found they were still alive and kicking. Their real address was 3eb.com. Sweet. Oh, and they are even coming out with a fourth cd! Cool! Except… I’ve actually never bought a 3eb cd. Well, that is to say I’ve never been extorted by the music pirates for my 3eb music. I purchased the first two cds at Half Price Books for $2 and $7. I didn’t even have their third cd…

I idly clicked on the link to their web page and did a double take when I saw the announcement:

Third Eye Blind in Indianapolis, Indiana

Thursday, August 2 @ 8pm
Egyptian Room
502 North New Jersey Street
Indianapolis, IN

WHAT??? Are they… is it… could it be?

me: Probably

Now, I have never been to a concert before (besides Amy Grant/M.W.Smith). If I were to pick one band to lose my adult concert virginity to it would have been either Third Eye Blind, Dashboard Confessional, or Brittany Spears(just kidding).

But… but… could I actually go? It was just six hours away…

There were just too many reasons not to go. I had too much work to do. I was going to stay late at work and still not get enough done. We don’t really have a whole lot of money to blow. Julie’s ear had been ringing for like two weeks from some kind of ear infection or something and I didn’t know what a concert would do to it. Plus, it looked like it was sold out because there was no $ link to click on to buy tickets (like there was on their other upcoming shows). I gave up and went back to work.

We deliberated for the next two hours (according to the chat log, which I won’t bore you with). Julie got off work early and stopped at Marsh to buy tickets. Marsh had just stopped selling tickets the day before (that’s right, Marsh no longer sells tickets to anything). Great. I bought them online and printed them out. We were going. We were actually going.

I will admit here that I was nervous. I mean, it’s Third Eye Blind. They got me through two bad relationships with gems like “Motorcycle Drive-by” and others. I used to just listen to their cds over and over and over. There is no possible way they could ever live up to my expectations. Would going to their concert ruin them for me? They were so high up on a pedestal that I knew that going would knock them down, just hopefully not too far…

We got there right at 7pm when the doors opened. Joy of joys 5 drunk frat boys got in line behind us and their lewd shouting conversation consisted of dissertations on how much they loved 3eb, what their favorite song was, and how small their (the frat boy’s) penises where (small? Why would you drunkenly declare that???).

Finally we got to the door, and after being frisked and patted down we entered and had our tickets scanned.

We moved up the stairs and found a table half way back. There was a crowd gathering around the stage and 90s music was blaring from speakers at a comfortable volume. I looked around and saw a lot of… highschoolers? and old people? What was going on? Where are all the other looser geeky 20 somethings like myself who were fans when 3eb came out? How did these kids even know about them? I felt old…

Julie and I played war on the table until the opening band started. They sucked. Well, they didn’t suck so much as they were horrible. One of their songs was about how this girl wasn’t “pretty” enough for the ugly band leader. ok…

After a bunch of songs that we could only barely make the words out for because of how loud and distorted the music was they quit, and we cheered inwardly for it. I don’t think we even clapped politely though.

I had a couple of beers and Julie had a Diet Coke, and we sat there. The tables were filling up around us. A fat 4o something gay couple sat next to Julie. A drunk 40 something woman sat behind me with her obnoxious friends. A screaming ear splitting reunion happened right behind us as two girls who probably barely knew each-other jumped up and down hugging and talking at 50k mph.

Finally FINALLY 3eb came out to the pounding thundering screaming crowd strumming out the heavily distorted tones of the first song from their first cd “Losing a Whole Year”.

We couldn’t see, so we stood up and went and stood directly next to the music box (where they adjust the sound levels).

For the next 90 minutes we sang along to all of the songs. They played like every “single” from their first and second cd, as well as a few songs from their third. As an added bonus they played two songs from their upcoming album, but neither were that great (although I have noticed that usually the first time you hear a non-”single” 3eb song it’s not that great. They tend to really grow on you the more you listen).

The crowd screamed for them to sing “Motorcycle Drive-by” and they happily obliged. It’s my favorite song, so I screamed it out along with everyone else, probably really off key from how loud I was singing. I completely forgot to watch and listen to the bass player (it’s one of three songs I know on the bass so I wanted to see him play it).

So, did they get knocked off their pedestal? Sort of…

At one point Julie turns to me and says “Is… is the lead singer gay?”

“Shut your mouth! I don’t ever want to hear you say that again!” I yelled back at her in mock anger.

What the heck was she talking about? How could she say that about him?

Then I started watching him, and to my horror she actually had a point. Then he started talking to the crowd, and oh crap, this dude was… was… he was… maybe that’s just how all artists are. Slightly effeminate, sappy, whatever. He was flipping his wrists funny, and at one point I thought he might have actually be skipping…

I left the concert unsure about him, but on the drive home we determined that the dude was just a huge dork. That’s fine, not everyone can be the “cool kid” in school. But I really didn’t picture him as a dork. I pictured him as a more rugged… more “manly” guy. Of course from how I had him built up in my mind anything short of a love child between dirty harry and the terminator who was combined Frankenstein style with Han Solo and Indiana Jones and then given a guitar made out of bent metal with a sawed off shotgun for a neck would have been disappointing…

He came across as cheesy and fake though. At one point he was talking about the point of the tour being to “come and get energy from you to capture and put into our fourth cd. I can feel it tonight, from you and you and you and you (pointing at people in the screaming crowd). It’s here, and it’s awesome” and you are a cheesy LIAR.

At the end I decided to buy a t-shirt to commemorate the occasion with, but they took cash only and there was no atm around. There was one right across the street, but the security guards wouldn’t let me go out and get money and come back in. Great. Julie said I could just order one online. Yeah…

So we left and went home with our ears ringing and the whole world feeling like it was suddenly devoid of sound. We had fun though (my ears have still not stopped ringing btw). I’d do it again, but next time I’d bring ear-plugs and get the tickets cheaper (order in advance or something).

All in all, a good time.

Ok, since this is my third post within 24 hours, I’ll make it really short.

Winamp is the bomb.

Yeah… I just said “the bomb” because it hearkens back to the original days of winamp when it’s sole purpose was to play those newfangled “mp3″ things that you bought a cd of 500 of em from your friend, back when Napster was first coming out and you were waiting an hour per song for a download.

Back then winamp was literally a dinosaur. It hogged your ram and loaded you up with spyware. A real godzilla for sure.

Now? Well… now it’s a musical paradise.

I have GDTunes for my google desktop so that in an instant I can skip or even RATE songs. I have my playlist docked and auto-hiding to the left side of my screen, so that at the flick of a mouse I can view the next 60 songs that are going to play, and re-arange and delete with ease. I have the player docked and auto-hiding to the top of my screen so that in a split second I can access the main program.

How does this compare to windows media player (WMP)? I’d rate WMP 2.5 stars out of 5. I would rate winamp 4 out of 5.

Windows media player had the ability to run from your status bar, which was cool, except that it didn’t let you rate music from there. So you couldn’t just listen and rate so that at a later date you could just play all of your 4 and 5 starred music. Well, with the winamp/google desktop combination, I get all of the functionality of a status bar docked WMP and the ability to rate the songs as I listen without opening some big window to stop what I’m doing. PLUS I can edit/rearange/choose my playlist (WMP playlist system is a NIGHTMARE) with ease, again without opening some big window.

This will definitely increase my productivity…

Ok, so today I am developing a site with paypal, which means every time I make a change and am ready to test it, I have to go through the process of “redeploying” the site. This means sitting and staring blankly at the screen for right around 5 minutes (I wrote some scripts to do all the work for me, which means now instead of typing and clicking and dragging and mindless drone work, I just sit there bored while the computer does it all).

Well, I got tired of spider solitaire and free-cell, and since there are two unanswered B4s I didn’t want to make another, and no one is blogging today… sooo…it’s time to watch 80s music videos.

We start off with “You can call me Al”. Boring. Not even really funny at all. In fact, just skip it (I’ll still put it so you don’t have to go see for yourself if you are really curious). It looks like they snagged Chevy Chase for 5 minutes, and shot the whole thing one time, and that was it. Just him and Paul Simon in some chairs. Moving on…

One of my all time favorite songs, Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart”, and all I can say is… huh?(in the Tim Allen home improvement sort of way) Take a look for yourself, one of the weirdest things I have ever seen:

Another one of my all time favorites, again from Bonnie Tyler “Holding out for a hero” and this one is just funny. There are actually a lot of fan renditions that are a lot better, but here is her version:

Now for Cyndi Lauper’s “Time after Time”. I’m just shocked… I couldn’t even watch more than like 30 seconds before I had to stop to keep from laughing at the HORRIBLE outfits/style. hilarious. I’m not even sure what the heck is going on in the video… What’s with the dog statue, and why is she snuggling with it???

ok after that winner, I had to go for Cyndi’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”. Check it out! 80s computer animations! Oh, and take a look at her dad, lol. Wow… Like Hagrid…

Lol… Heart “These Dreams”… This video is horrible. Just watch like the first 20 seconds to laugh at their horrible hair and how they look like they are rocking out on their guitars even though it doesn’t match the music AT ALL…

Belinda Carlisle “Heaven is a place on earth”. Ok, and this one I don’t know what is going on. Children in masks holding globes, belinda carlisle running around singing to you, and kissing some guy. Interesting contrast with the other ones since she looks normal. No crazy hair and makeup.

ROFL. “The Safety Dance” from Men Without Hats. He looks so angry. They keep making the little “S” with their arms. This is just classic…

and so is this (Turk is awesome)…

Pat Benatar “Love Is a Battlefield”, This one is a shoutout for my wife (she likes this song, doubt she would like the video though). It’s so dramatic… Check out the dramatic climax with the “intimidating” should shaking rofl…

Tears for Fears “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”. No… just… no… I actually couldn’t finish this one without just ruining the song. Pony tail, pink shirt, gyrating, soo sooo gay. But the black guys in tuxes dancing in front of the port-o-pot are hilarious. The video doesn’t even make sense…

lol, this one is actually kind of funny… kind of ‘crazy’ too. Thomas Dolby “She Blinded Me With Science”

And once again Wham! Shows us why you shouldn’t watch men’s music videos from the 80s… If those shorts were any shorter… well… let’s just say they are deserving of the name ’shorts’. Oh, and “choose life”.

Ahahahaha! Whitesnake “Here I go Again”. This dude borrowed Bonnie Tyler’s wig, I swear. So intense… (Don’t miss the giant pink boots the chick on the left is wearing… wait, is that a girl? Can’t really tell, everyone’s hair looks the same…)

Hey, this one is actually kind of cool. Wang Chung’s “Everybody Have Fun Tonight”

And now, the first video ever played on MTV: The Buggles “Video Killed the Radio Star”. Not that great, but funny to see how people are always afraid when new technology comes out. If anything video made the radio star more pupular… I heard this band made this song because they were so ugly they were afraid that when music videos got popular they couldn’t get big with them because people wouldn’t want to see them.

Ok well, that’s it. I’m done with that part of my project, so no more down time. Hope you enjoyed…

Thanks (again) for the suggestions… updated! Again! and Again! and again…

I’ve been far too busy recently (redoing the bathroom, and working 60 hours) to post anything. But I have needed some good up-beat music to keep me from blowing my brains out and my normal collection of “angsty-depressed-little-boy-songs” (as my wife calls my music selections) just wasn’t doing it. So I thought… What is some good embarrassingly epic-like cheesy up-beat music? Then as I was driving to Meijer it hit me like a ton of synthesizers, in the form of Bonnie Taylor crooning out one of my all-time favorites “Total Eclipse of the Heart”. It was then that I knew… It was time for an 80s flashback.

Here it is. It’s my 80s list (alpha version). This is a Finetune list modeled after a playlist I might have if I went back in time to 1990. This means that all of the songs aren’t necessarily *from* the 80s, they might be pre-80s. But none of them should be from the 90s or later.

I know for a fact I didn’t get all the best ones, which is where you come in. What was your favorite song/music/artist from this era? What did I miss?

My list is below. A lot of the list is just filler. I wanted only one song from most of these artists, but because you have to fill your list up with at least 45 songs, I ended up with some not so awesome songs. I want to remedy this, which means I need suggestions. Any are appreciated. Thanks!

A-Ha
Take On Me
Hunting High and Low

Belinda Carlisle
Heaven Is a Place On Earth
Her Greatest Hits

Billy Joel
It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me
Glass Houses

Billy Joel
Uptown Girl
An Innocent Man

Billy Joel
We Didn’t Start the Fire
The Complete Hits Collection 1973-97 CD3

Bonnie Tyler
Holding Out for a Hero
Footloose: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

Bonnie Tyler
Total Eclipse of the Heart
Faster Than the Speed of Light

Bryan Adams
Heaven
Reckless

Bryan Adams
Summer of ‘69
Reckless

Chris De Burgh
The Lady In Red
Into The Light

Cyndi Lauper
Girls Just Want To Have Fun
She’s So Unusual

Cyndi Lauper
Time After Time
She’s So Unusual

David Bowie
Changes
Hunky Dory

Deniece Williams
Let’s Hear It for the Boy
Billboard Top Hits of 1984

Depeche Mode
Policy of Truth
Violator

Eric Clapton
Wonderful Tonight
Blues (Box Set) – CD1

Heart
These Dreams
Heart

John Mellencamp
Authority Song
The Best That I Could Do 1978-1988

John Mellencamp
Cherry Bomb
The Best That I Could Do 1978-1988

John Mellencamp
Pink Houses
The Best That I Could Do 1978-1988

John Parr
St. Elmo’s Fire (Man In Motion)
Billboard Top Hits of 1985

Journey
Don’t Stop Believin’
Escape

Judas Priest
Lost And Found
Demolition

Madonna
Like A Prayer (Album Version-Immaculate Collection)
The Immaculate Collection

Men Without Hats
The Safety Dance(Extended Version)
Collection

Modern English
I Melt With You
Ultimate New Wave Party

Nena
99 Red Balloons
99 Luftballoons

Pat Benatar
Love Is a Battlefield
Back To Back Hits

Pat Benatar
We Belong
Back To Back Hits

Paul Simon
Kodachrome
Negotiations and Love Songs 1971-1986

Paul Simon
Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard
Negotiations and Love Songs 1971-1986

Paul Simon
You Can Call Me Al
Negotiations and Love Songs 1971-1986

Peter Gabriel
In Your Eyes
So

Phil Collins
Something Happened On The Way To Heaven (LP Version)
…Hits

Phil Collins
Sussudio (LP Version)
…Hits

Phil Collins
You Can’t Hurry Love (LP Version)
…Hits

Prince
1999
1999

Prince
7 (Album Version)
The Hits 1

R.E.M.
Its The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
Document

R.E.M.
Losing My Religion
Out Of Time

R.E.M.
Stand
Green

Rod Stewart
Forever Young (Album Version)
Downtown Train / Selections From The Storyteller Anthology

Rod Stewart
Reason To Believe
The Best of Rod Stewart 20th Century Masters The Millennium Collection Best of Rod Stewart

Rod Stewart
Tonight’s the Night (Gonna Be Alright)
A Night On The Town

Sinead O’Connor
Nothing Compares 2 U
So Far…The Best Of Sinead O’Connor

Starship
Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now
Chicken Soup For The Soul, The Triumph Of The Spirit

Tears for Fears
Everybody Wants to Rule the World
Tears Roll Down (Greatest Hits 82-92)

Tears for Fears
Mad World
Tears Roll Down (Greatest Hits 82-92)

Tears for Fears
Shout
Tears Roll Down (Greatest Hits 82-92)

The Buggles
Video Killed the Radio Star
The Age of Plastic

The Cure
Just Like Heaven
Galore

The Police
Every Breath You Take
The Police Live – CD2

The Police
Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
Ghost In The Machine

The Police
Message In a Bottle
Message in a Box: The Complete Recordings – CD1

The Proclaimers
I’m Gonna Be
Sunshine On Leith

Thomas Dolby
She Blinded Me With Science
The Best Of Thomas Dolby – Retrospectacle

Thompson Twins
Hold Me Now
Billboard Top Hits of 1984

Tommy Tutone
867-5309 – Jenny
New Wave Hits of the ’80’s Vol. 5

U2
Pride (In the Name of Love)
The Best Of 1980 – 1990

U2
Sweetest Thing
The Best Of 1980 – 1990

U2
With or Without You
The Best Of 1980 – 1990

Van Halen
Jump
Best Of Volume 1

Van Halen
Right Now (Remastered Album Version)
The Best Of Both Worlds

Wang Chung
Everybody Have Fun Tonight
20th Century Masters: The Millennium Collection: Best Of Wang Chung

Wham!
Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go
Billboard Top Hits of 1984

Whitesnake
Here I Go Again
Whitesnake
BONUS! Post post edits:

Listening now to Bonnie Taylor’s “Holding out for a hero” makes me want to be a big strong hulking man. The kind that walks up to death and laughs in his face, and then goes home to tenderly kiss his wife and kids. I guess it… Makes me want to be the way God intended men to be…

You don’t get this kind of music in the modern post feminazi age. Then again people don’t make symphony like complex music (with synthesizers of course) anymore either (unless they are polyphonic spree, but then they are just an actual symphony so they don’t use synthesizers…).

Ok, I will openly admit, I have a tendency to have an extremely overactive imagination which, on occasion, will spew forth paranoid delusional theories about every day normal random coincidences.

Today’s conspiracy theory? Microsoft is paid by the “record industry” to play certain songs through windows media player more than others whilst WMP is on “random” mode.

Why did my mind suggest this to me?

Simple. I just bought 7 cds at Half Price Books that I have never owned before, as well as loading 8 (or more) cds into my computer to add to the current 8 gigs of music that I legaly own that I burned off of cds (again, RIAA, pay attention, that I own). lol…

Anyways, so I’ve got right around 10gb of music on my computer. I put EVERY SONG into one playlist, UNRATED. Which means the computer has no idea whatsoever what songs I like better than other songs.

Now, since these are new CDs, there is no way I can know which songs on the cds I like the best having not heard them all. So one would assume that out of the 3gb of music I have just placed on my computer, roughly 2/3 of this music I should have never heard before. So this means that I should only recognize 1 out of every 3 songs, correct? WRONG.

I have been listening ALL MORNING and have only “not recognized” maybe 4 songs (this is probably an over-estimate). Huh? How does that work?

On top of that, the songs I do recognize are (well, were, since it is mostly old music) extremely popular.

What’s going on?

I then notice that all of the songs have “ghost ratings” which means that M$ has taken the average rating from all of it’s users who have this same song and shown it to me in gray. I can then override that rating with my own, which will show up in gold/yellow.

This shows that there is indeed some sort of “internet connection” happening, highlighted by the fact that all of the CD covers/song titles/band names were downloaded for me upon ripping the music.

So, what is going on? Why am I not hearing songs I don’t recognize?

In reality it is probably because I just happen to know a lot more music than I would like to let myself believe, and that I really only wouldn’t recognize about 1/10 or 1/20 of my music rather than the 2/3 I thought.

In overactive imagination land it is probably because M$ is paid by the record industry to (during random playback) ensure that certain artists and songs are played more often than other artists and songs, and that the more “the industry” pays for certain artists/songs the more likely you are to hear that artist/song.

This doesn’t have to be an ongoing thing. M$ could have a price sheet that says “$10,000 to have your song have a 5x play rating, $7,000 for a 4x, $5,000 for a 3x, $3,000 for a 2x, $0 for a 1x”. Then forever and ever your song will have whatever rating you paid for. M$ then plays 5x songs most often, followed by 4x, etc. So that out of 22 songs 7 would be 5x, 5 would be 4x, 4 would be 3x, 3 would be 2x, 2 would be 2x, and 1 would be 1x (or something like that, could be out of 40 or 50).

This is a double edged sword. It is advantagious for the user as well as the CD company. The CD company pays for the invisible star rating, these are normally going to be the “really good” or the “really popular” songs. Then when you load a bunch of music on your computer and play it you are more likely to be happy with what is played, and the “industry” has a small amount of control over which songs you are hearing.

What’s in it for them? Why would they do this? To get you to buy the cd. Let’s face it, there are millions upon millions of GB out there of illegal music. Pretty much every nerd/geek/hacker/computer user I know has at one point downloaded/borrowed/gotten through less than legal means music.

So, if you know that people are out there listening to your music illegally, what would be the smartest thing to do? Make sure they listen to your more than someone else’s. Eventually, chances are, once they have the money, they will buy your crap. There are many many reasons people steal music. I won’t pretend to know what the number 1 reason is, but I would be my collection that somewhere in the top 5 is “I just can’t afford it right now”.

Can you picture some 30 something making 100k a year risking his net worth by downloading illegal music? F-NO. Not if he/she is smart. Especially if they have kids.

So, this means that it’s mostly just a bunch of young kids with nothing to lose really. Ok, so what happens when they grow up, and get something to lose (family, job, house, car, junk)? They start behaving a little better.

So when that happens, if you are the industry, you want to make sure that they keep hearing your music so that at this point they might go “hrm… I have a bunch of illegal music, what happens if RIAA comes after me? I lose… well… everything. So maybe I should clean out my collection and purchase my favorite stuff”. Well, their “favorite stuff” is probably going to be the stuff they heard the most. Which means the stuff with the 5x rating. Which is why “the industry” would pay M$ to play their music more than other people’s music.

Oh, and if you keep hearing Maroon 5 (with a 4x rating), then when they come out with a new CD you are more likely to buy it, which is why Sister Hazel never plays in your playlist, they didn’t pay the piper and now they have a 0x rating where Matchbox 20 has a 3x and plays almost as often as Jack Johnson and Snow Patrol who have a 4x, but not quite as often as Keane’s “Frog Prince” which has a 5x (while the rest of the Keane CD only has a 3x, which is why you don’t hear any of their other songs that much). Get it? Got it. Good.

So yeah, I know all of this is paranoia, but now that I have explored it further… why wouldn’t Microsoft do this? No reason I can think of…

(Note: The image that I based my windows media player montage on is from this site: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://img.slate.com/media/1/123125/123051/2111767/2121805/050727_mb_Payolacolor_tn.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.slate.com/id/2123483/nav/tap1/&h=150&w=205&sz=16&hl=en&start=8&sig2=f4isglXsxmYhaYdbuRRQhw&um=1&tbnid=5az-XfPvCRbiCM:&tbnh=77&tbnw=105&ei=DJpIRrm4GoTOiQGv663PCA&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dpayola%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN)

If you are going to cancel your Real Rhapsody account, it actually isn’t as hard as canceling an AOL account. Which is great. However, one little thing to watch out for:

Make sure they actually cancel the account instead of just giving you a free month.

When you try to cancel the account, if you pay close attention, and are able to hear it through their thick Indian accent, you will hear the following:

1. We are “canceling” your account (they aren’t).
2. We are giving you a free month to try x,y,z features
3. If after that month you still want to cancel, click a link in some e-mail

This is my third time canceling a Rhapsody account, and the first time I actually remembered to stop them at this point and say “Nononono, just cancel the account”. The other two times I was like “cool! A free month!”. But guess what? The e-mail “cancelation” e-mail never came. So at the end of the month, my account just continued on as if I had never called.

You have to make them cancel it right there on the phone with you. Good luck, and for pete’s sake, stop renting music. It’s just stupid. Especially now that the price has gone up to $13.00 a month. That’s the price of a CD every month, and you don’t even have anything to show for it…