Google Play Music UK launch

Huzzah the Music section has finally arrived to these shores; not only do we now have the ability to purchase music from Google directly, but we now have access to Google's Music cloud. Upload your music and be able to download and play from any device you can log in to.

Given this has been around in the States for quite some time I was surprised to discover a couple of oddities though.

Firstly it doesn't seem to be able to handle .m4a music files despite these being natively recognised in Google's own Android operating system. Annoying, but work-aroundable. However the biggest oddity was sorting by Artist.

I have quite a few compilation albums and the Album Artist is set to either "Various Artists" or "Soundtrack"; a method that follows Google's own policy. If I were to examine the very first album of such a type in my collection it would be "Anthems Electronic 80s 2" the first track would be "Don't You Want Me?" by "The Human League" all present and correct.

If I were then to examine my list by Artist and scrolled to the H section I would expect to find "Human League, The" and I don't. Oh no they're not using the "The" are they? Well yes they are - crap; "The Beatles", "The Kingsmen", "The Rolling Stones" all under T. Wait though no "The Human League"; oh of course silly me it's filed under V for "Various Artists"

So not only do they not ignore the "The" prefix but they're using the Album Artist field to sort rather than the, actual, Artist field.

Ah but that's the web interface, the actual Android App might be better. And it is in that it ignores the "The"'s, but still uses the Album Artist field to sort by. Oh and introduces a new error in that it can't recognise accented characters in the Artist field, but oddly enough can in song titles. So "Motörhead" which displays correctly under M in the browser interface is now an "Unknown Artist" in the Android App, but "The Dark of the Matinée" by "Franz Ferdinand" displays correctly.

[Update - It appears the artist character error was from the tracks already on my phone; those from Play displayed and sorted correctly]

Given how long this has been active for... those are kind of stupid mistakes not to have been picked up.

The Bratii and music

Post game session I chatted to the Bratii and the topic of the new BBC series of Merlin came up. Major was catching up with the previous so he hadn't seen the latest, but he'd seen the adverts.

"Oh in that case do you recognise this?" I asked and plugged my phone into an external speaker and checked my Deezer playlist for "Knights of Cydonia" by Muse.
"I know this" he said "but I don't know why or who it is?"
"How can you know you know it but not know it?" asked Minor
"He recognises it, but his brain isn't making the full connection as to what it is who who it's by" I replied
"Oh"
I took pity on him and told him it was Muse
"I knew that" he said

I flicked through to "Uprising" also by Muse.
"'Uprising' by Muse" he said within the first 5 seconds.
"Yeah I heard it during the Olympic opening ceremony and it caught my fancy" I said
"I thought it would make a good song for the Olympics"
"So Muse, how about 'Supermassive Black Hole'?"
"I've not heard of that one just those other two"
So I played him that and then worked my way through other music; which is where I started to feel my age.

Neither had heard of Jefferson Airplane, they'd not heard Alex Winston's "Velvet Elvis" as made famous by the Google Chrome advert. Minor knew "Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny" by Lemon Demon and happily started singing with The Beatles "Yellow Submarine" which Major didn't identify though at least he recognised it as The Beatles.

Minor enjoys "Iron Man" by Black Sabbath, but Major finds it repetitive. Neither had heard of Gorillaz or any of the songs I had by them. Major had heard of Blur, but couldn't name any specific songs he knew as being by them. Major knew, and Minor enjoyed, "Firestarter" by The Prodigy. Kudos though as Major instantly identified "Paradise City" by Guns 'n' Roses.

Spotting a theme with Major he's not that big on repetition, "Iron Man" Utah Saints, "Jump in the Line" by Harry Belafontane. He also needs an instant grab; anything that starts of with simple melody he'd have turned off before it builds. Minor seems more willing to listen to see if he likes it rather than make a snap decision. Between a 16-year old and a 10-year old I'd have thought it to have been the other way around.

The Darkness II Jenny's Cafe Music

Because I liked it and because it took some detective work to find it (I'm sure it's buried in the credits somewhere though) for those who want to know the music playing in the café scene with Jenny starts with Black Betty by The Ram Jams with the dancing music being I Only Have Eyes for You by The Flamingos.

BBC Radio 6 2011 Advert music

Again with the failure that as far as I know has only been handled correctly by Channel 4's Misfits; the BBC have a new advert out for Radio 6 featuring their hosts moving speakers about as they play music. Now try to discover what they're actually playing.

From the comments and elsewhere we get:

Jarvis Cocker - I'll Take Care of U by Gill Scott-Heron & Jamie xx
Lauren Laverne - You've got the Love by Florence and the Machine
Steve Lamacq - Connection by Elastica
Cerys Matthews - ?
Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie -Neat Little Rows by Elbow (thank you Chris G)
Huey Morgan -One Nation Under a Groove by Funkadelic

Bigger laugh is that this is supposedly also promoting their exclusive mixes that can be found here. No it doesn't tell you what they're mixing there either.

Anyway if you can fill in the gaps; I'm sure someone out there would appreciate it.

Freshly Squeezed

With the demise of Big Brother Channel 4's music show Freshly Squeezed is back - yay! At last I have something to stave off the morning doze that isn't either targeted at the young or causes depression i.e. children's programmes and the news, whichever way around you wish to assign them.

Mixing music videos, and interviews with irreverent presenter links it's a bit like a pre-watershed Have I Got Music for You with the presenters famously not really caring about daintily slagging off those whose videos they show.

No change in the presenters Rick Edwards is still about, as is Nick Grimshaw. Miquita Oliver shifted over to T4 a while ago which was a shame as she provided a nice foil. Alexa Chung also whisked over to T4, again she wasn't bad, but produced a desire in me to cook a big meal for her - eat, eat. At the moment we have Jameela Jamil who's doing a fine job while looking good too.

Damn you iTunes

This is way too addictive. Add to the list Epic by Faith No More; the It's My Life cover by No Doubt; Paint it Black and Sympathy for the Devil by the Stones; four classics from Guns N' Roses, Ride a White Horse by Goldfrapp; Rabbit Heart by Florence and the Machine; and LSF and Fire from Kasabian.

Must stop going "Oo I wonder if they've got...?" I've spent over £20, though I suppose it's all stuff I want and it is one-off purchases.

iTunes purchases

As mentioned I've been having a splurge on DRMless music from the iTunes store so far the tally is

Sunrise by Norah Jones; and Face to Face by Siouxsie and the Banshees. Because I like the harmonies.

Where's Your Head At by Basement Jaxx; and I Believe in a Thing Called Love by The Darkness. They just works for me sometimes.

Don't Fear the Reaper by Blue Oyster Cult. Because!

Smooth Criminal by Alien Ant Farm. A cover I prefer over the Michael Jackson original.

Gay Bar; and Danger! High Voltage by Electric Six. Because they make me laugh.

Carol of the Bells by Arthur Fiedler. A slightly more allegro version that I prefer.

Toss-up between the Berliner and London versions of O Fortuna... or Prague? Prague is a little slow with slightly more defined vocal; London seems to emphasise instrumental over vocal... Berliner has better balance for me. Now which of the two ;-) Ah the Sir Rattle 2:32 Da Capo version.

Hey this is fun! Now what the hell what that piece of splash music I heard on the TV the other day...

iTunes convert

Although I like music I've never been a big buyer of it. One of the problems is the standard complaint that I'm either paying an arm and a leg for every single by one band I like, or I'm paying for an entire album half of which I won't like.

Digital downloads seem made for me, except despite they came with a high price - DRM. Now I'm not going to get into a pro and con slinging match over DRM, but for what I want to do - convert music to MP3 so to play in the car it sucked.

Apple recognised this and were slowly changing all their offerings to become DRMless. Now I find that dream has been realised and I can use a single organising programme with built-in wide-ranging store to buy individual songs - yay!

So hassles? Well I pulled my existing music and went to pick up the Album covers for the minority Apple seemed to know about and found I couldn't as I didn't have an account. So I went to create one and it required payment details. Okay if you use the store you need to pay - duh; but I'm thinking of people, kids in particular, who might just want to use iTunes to organise and convert existing tracks. Tying registration to payment cuts them out completely of this simple visual option.

My only other minor niggle is that iTunes knows I'm in the UK, and even asked UK specific questions so why is my default language English (United States)?

Actually one other niggle on the Store - you can't resize the columns so you see something like "Carmina Burina (C..." by "Tbilisi Symphony Or..." from "The Most Essential..." however if you hover over each entry it'll expand in a pop-up... sometimes, because sometimes it doesn't. Hovering through a list it went pop, pop, no-pop, pop despite each title over-spilling. Can't seem to locate a pattern as to why it works only occasionally.

Anyway I'm been having fun with downloading tracks I'll list them in my next entry.