Trending Content: Good or Bad

Yesterday I had a meeting right in the middle of my morning and so I couldn't go out on my usual morning bike ride. At this time of the year, it gets too hot to ride much past 11am and the roads are too crowded before 9am. Instead of riding outside I rode in my nice-cool basement.

To help keep boredom away and excitement levels up during my exercise routine, I listened to music. Sometimes I listen to Pandora and other times Spotify. I don't pay for either service and so I get the pleasure of listening to ads and I do my best to ignore them. Yesterday I had one ad catch my attention. It talked about trending content and if you listened to this particular podcast you would know about all the latest Internet content that everyone is following. That got me wondering if trending is a good thing or not.

I have a friend that I used to work with that despised trending content. He likened it to everyone being sheep and following each other around. He's not wrong as there is a lot to be said for individuality. Given the relative ease of selecting your own music content, shouldn't we all have highly specialized music playlists with only our favorite songs. There are a lot of popular songs that I just can't stand and none of them are on my playlists.

The flip side of individual content is that of discovery. How do you know if you should listen to a new song? A coworker of mine that does a lot of work in the music industry listens to a lot of different music just to make sure she doesn't miss something new that she might like. If you always listen to the same songs, they become routine and eventually like all the other pop music played on the radio that everyone has come to hate.

There are a few songs that come to mind when I think about trending music. The first time I heard "Shut Up and Dance" from Walk the Moon, I instantly liked it. I didn't need to hear it a million times. However without it trending, I wouldn't have ever heard it in the first place.

We live in a wonderful time where we can choose what music we listen to. We can do the same with movies, television shows, and YouTube videos. We are not constrained by being forced to watch or listen to that content on someone else's schedule because we can stream it at will. We also don't have to be influenced by what is popular. However we can let trending content help us decide if it is worthy of our time. Like I wrote, it is a wonderful time right now.

Playing with Spotify

I know I have compared Spotify and Pandora in the past and so I don't need to do that again. I am currently doing a project at work that ties in data from Spotify. Any time I look at data, I try to use the tool that generated it so I am more familiar with where it comes from. While normally I like to listen to Pandora, I have spent the last week and a half listening to Spotify.

Ultimately we are all prefer using tools we know. As I have more experience with Pandora, that is pretty much what I have stuck to. I felt like Spotify was way more complicated and felt like it took way too long to get configured correctly. Part of that is because I didn't understand how playlists are created. With Pandora, I could pick my favorite band and similar music from other artists automatically appears on the channel. With Spotify, only that group's music is on the channel. What I ended up doing was listening to one group for a while, selecting my favorite songs, and having them added to my "favorites" channel. Then I would do the same thing with another group. Once I felt like I had enough music, I could listen to just my "favorites" playlist.

While that is one way to create your own playlist on Spotify, it isn't the only way. Yesterday I discovered that I could just search for my favorite songs and add them without having to wait for them to appear. Now I can just think of a song I like and instantly add it to my favorites. That is a big win for me as I don't like every single song from my favorite groups. Let's be honest, some songs do not illustrate the best talent of certain bands. I watched an interview with Eddie Van Halen once and he admitted that he hated playing "Dance the Night Away" and just wanted to get through it as quickly as possible every time it came up at a concert. So I guess I am not alone in this area.

There is a problem with only listening to your favorite songs: your list never grows because you never hear anything new. I guess the solution is to try other playlists every so often. While I generally only listen to artist-specific lists, they do have general categories as well. I'm not a fan of popular music and so I will avoid those.

After a week and a half of listening to Spotify, I have it set up with the right songs currently. Unfortunately I ran into a technical issue this morning during my daily bike ride. I rode indoors because of the rain and like to listen to music when I am not outside. I started Spotify only to have it freeze on me. I restarted the application only to have the same problem. I tried a number of fixes but ultimately went back to Pandora for my morning ride. The sad thing is I prefer Spotify now as my playlist is perfectly dialed in. Oh well.

Multiple Streaming Services

This morning I went to spend 30 minutes on my indoor bike for my morning exercise when I noticed one of my streaming music services wasn't working correctly. When I go for a ride outside, I never listen to music as I need my sense of sound to keep from becoming a hood ornament. Inside it is a different story. If I don't have music, I have a very difficult time exercising. I have tried watching movies while using an indoor bike but music inspires me the best.

Naturally I closed my music app and reopened it. That seemed to work for 2 songs and then it busted again. At this point I decided to try my secondary streaming music source and used it to finish out my workout. It is times like this that I am glad I have both Pandora and Spotify streaming music accounts.

It is also good to have multiple streaming video accounts. There are a number of times that I will go to watch a movie only to discover problems. Sometimes it is a function of my Internet connection being too slow because everyone on the block is watching movies at the same time. Other times it is just the streaming service having issues. In any event it is nice to have multiple options. When my Internet connection is slow or goes out completely I have a huge library of DVD and Blu-ray discs that serve as a nice backup to keep me entertained.

We all have our favorite places to go for streaming services. Sometimes we spend a lot of time customizing our accounts so that recommendations are exactly what we are looking for each time we connect. This makes us reluctant to look at other vendors of similar services. Ultimately it is nice to have a backup service just in case your favorite is down for some reason. It isn't necessary to sign up for every possible solution but having at least one alternative is a good practice.

So Happy to Hear an Ad on Pandora

I had a really tough time waking up this morning. Normally I get up at 7, eat some breakfast, and then spend some time on a bicycle. This morning I ate breakfast and then fell asleep on the couch before getting out on my bike. I still have to exercise every day and so I had to find time later in the day. I finished a meeting and then jumped on my indoor bike for 30 minutes.

Riding a bike outdoors and listening to music are two activities that should never be mixed. I see a lot of people on the bike trail listening to headphones and it is dangerous. On a bike, you need all of your senses to keep from having an accident. However I enjoy listening to music while riding a stationary bike. Sometimes it is the only way to get through a 30-minute bike ride. In the United States, my streaming service of choice is Pandora. As Pandora is not available in Japan, I use Spotify there.

Lately I have grown rather disenfranchised with Pandora. I am one of those people that really likes to curate my music. If I like a song, I will give it a thumbs-up. If not, it gets a thumbs-down. There is no middle ground. The problem with Pandora is that it is always showing annoying ads. I will go into my phone to give a song a thumbs-up or down and have an ad appear right above both of the thumb icons. I try to click the appropriate thumb and get taken to an ad instead of rating my song. Most of the time it is fairly harmless. Today I went to rate a song and didn't see what ad I clicked. Nothing happened on the screen and I feared I just agreed to sign up for a free 30-day trial of premium Pandora. Then I would have to figure out how to cancel the premium service.

I worried about figuring out how to remove Pandora premium from my account for 3 songs. Then I heard an ad and was happy. I still don't know what ad I clicked on, but at least I am not signed up for something I will end up having to pay for later.

Those ads really annoy me but paying for streaming music annoys me even more. I don't mind listening to an add every once and a while during my music. After all, that is what happens on a normal radio station. However those visual ads are bothering me enough that I may give up on Pandora and start using Spotify instead.

The Internet Does Not Work the Same Internationally

Once again I find myself in Japan this week. When I travel internationally I try to keep my body as close to Mountain Standard Time (MST) as possible. That makes it easier to readjust when I get back to the States. It also means I go to bed at 8pm and wake up at 4am every morning.

This morning I started doing early-morning e-mail and got several from my son. He knows I am looking to replace my 20-year-old car and sent me listings for a few potential candidates. What he doesn't realize is that the Internet does not work the same internationally and I cannot see the listings. Some sites look at the IP address you are using and if you are not located in the United States, block traffic. This is a good way to keep malicious events from happening. Fortunately there is an easy fix. I cannot get my company e-mail without using a virtual private network (VPN). To external websites I now look like my computer is physically located in California even though I am on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.

Another thing that doesn't work as well is the Pandora streaming music service. I have written about this in the past and have to switch to Spotify when I am outside the US. It is not a big deal as I have my Pandora and Spotify accounts set up with similar playlists but it is something to be aware of.

Finally, there is a big difference with Google. Google and all of its consumer services such as the search engine and YouTube are giant advertising places. That means they need to know where you are physically located to serve you the correct ads. They also use your location information to do things like set the language and character set. When I am in London, that isn't a problem because I speak the language. In Japan it does become a problem because the character set is different.

This blog site is maintained by Google and so when I log in from Japan to create an entry, all of the instructions and buttons are in Japanese. Fortunately the placement is the same for all of the buttons in both English and Japanese so that I know what buttons mean even if I can't read the language. Google also allows you to set your language. To do so, just go to https://google.com. If you have a Google account, you will see your avatar in the upper-right corner of the webpage. Click on it and you will be able to manage your account settings. Simply click on "Manage Your Google Account" and you will find the language setting under "Data & Personalization." Now it doesn't matter what country you are in, Google won't try to translate everything into the language of the country you are visiting.

Most of the time, the differences you will experience with the Internet while traveling internationally are easily surmountable given a bit of preparation. Hopefully this little post helps.

Satellite Radio

I bought my wife a new car a few years ago and it came with satellite radio. We had the service free for a year and really liked it. We opted to continue the service. With the ubiquity of the Internet, I am beginning to wonder if the days of satellite radio are numbered. Why limit yourself to someone else's music tastes when you can customize your listening preferences with streaming music like Pandora or Spotify?

My wife's car is a bit special in that it is a Jeep Wrangler Rubicon. That means it is meant for going off road and we do so often. We visit some places so far from civilization, there is no mobile phone service nor Internet. In those cases, satellite radio wins out over streaming music.

Recently I did a road trip from Utah to California and I took Interstate 80 the whole distance. Mobile phone service providers have ensured that Internet service is available the entire way. While I opted to listen to a book on CD, I also could have streamed music on one of my phones. In that case, streaming music wins over satellite radio.

It is also important to point out that the two services are not mutually exclusive. Both can co-exist nicely. However if you have a smartphone and unlimited streaming data, it might not make sense to pay extra for satellite radio. It is that case that has me worried about satellite radio's future. If anyone disagrees, feel free to let me know.

Airport Flight Delays

I am at the Los Angeles International airport waiting for a flight back to Salt Lake and it is delayed by 2 hours. This whole trip has been plagued by travel delays and so I find myself in the airport wondering how best to spend my time. When I left Salt Lake on Monday afternoon, I finished my ham radio magazine due to a delayed flight. Last night I patiently waited an extra 2 hours for my wife's flight to arrive from Salt Lake so we could spend today at Disneyland. Fortunately I had a car and could drive to get some dinner nearby. I ate at the same coffee shop where they filmed a scene for the movie XXX with Vin Diesel and the food tasted amazing. I recommend it highly.

Even before I headed to the airport this evening I knew that this flight would be delayed simply because it is the last flight of the day and my experience with Southwest is that evening flights are almost always delayed. Unfortunately you cannot plan on the flight being late because if it isn't and you miss the flight, the consequences can be expensive and uncomfortable.

So how best to spend my evening? I have 2 smartphones and a laptop with a full battery as well as my PlayStation Vita. My first thought included using my laptop to write this blog entry. Unfortunately the free Internet connection at LAX is only good for 45 minutes and so I am trying to write quickly. Experience has taught me that when the 45 minutes is up, my network connection gets screwy and requires a fair amount of work to get reconnected. When I am done here I will take care of my work e-mail on one of my smartphones. Then I will pull out my Vita and play some Lego Hobbit. If I still need to entertain myself after that, I will probably be too tired to do anything more than listen to Spotify, Pandora, or stored MP3 files on my phone. Hopefully I will remain entertained.

Spotify Scores a Point

I am currently in Tokyo, Japan. Yes I know I was in London last week and No I didn't just keep going East. I actually went back to Utah for the weekend and then caught a Sunday evening flight to Tokyo through Seattle. I have to admit I am doing amazingly well considering the jet lag I should be feeling.

This morning I woke up early and went to use the hotel gym. I find music very inspiring as I ride an indoor bike for 30 minutes. In the past I have tried to use streaming music from Pandora. Unfortunately it is only available in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. Today I started out listening to MP3 music loaded onto my iPhone. Then I thought I would see if Spotify works in Japan. Yes it does and so I finished my workout listening to streaming music.

There are a number of differences between Pandora and Spotify and I have favored Pandora in the past. However if it works in Japan, I will have to start listening to it more often. Now I feel bad for not listening to it while I was in London last week. While I enjoy the songs I have on my iPhone, there are a lot more songs available through any of the streaming music services than I could ever hope to own.

Pandora vs. Spotify

My kids introduced me to Pandora streaming music several years ago and I have to say that I like the service. Recently another service has been gaining in popularity called Spotify and so I thought I would give it a shot. Once again it was my kids that told me I was behind the times and should move to Spotify. When I asked them why, they gave a number of reasons and so I thought I would check it out for myself.

My primary usage for streaming music is during my daily workout session. It makes getting on an indoor bicycle much easier when there is something upbeat to listen to. I never listen to music unless it is on a stationary bike inside a building. That means I always have a WiFi connection to the Internet. Riding outdoors with earphones on is a good way to get hit by a car or another cyclist. My preferred platform is my Android phone.

A second reason for listening to streaming music isn't really for music but for comedy. This is generally done as I travel to and from the airport using public transportation. It also means there isn't any WiFi and I use my phone's LTE Internet connection. For this, I will alternate between my iPhone and my Android phone. It just depends on which one is more easily reachable.

Finally, when I am working from home I like to listen to music and so I will have some sort of streaming music during mundane tasks that don't require much thought like doing expense reports. This is generally run on my Linux computer as I have a really nice sound system connected to it.

Given this background, here are my simple and initial observations:

I started listening to Pandora first and so I have the most experience with it. My memory of it initially is that it is very easy to set up. I created one station called "A Little Bit of Everything" where I entered a number of artists that I like and Pandora plays music from those artists as well as similar bands. After a while I found that my taste in music is so varied that I often end up listening to a lot of stuff I don't really like. Instead of constantly rating songs with the "thumbs down" button, I created a new station for just one artist: Angels and Airwaves. Pandora streams me music from Blink 182, Boxcar Racer, +44 as well as Angels and Airwaves along with other similar bands like Simple Plan. It is great music to listen to while working out.

When my kids had me look into Spotify, I set up an account on my Linux box and was immediately turned off as I was told to download the Spotify computer program. With Pandora I can just use my browser and don't have to install anything. Both streaming music applications require apps for smartphones and provide them for both Android and iOS. I assume they are also both available for Windows Mobile devices but don't really care. I don't have one of those, nor will I ever.

The first platform I loaded Spotify onto was my Android phone and it was a painless process. I typed in "Angels and Airwaves" into the artist section and saw a listing for a number of songs from that band and only that band. I assume that if I wanted to add Blink 182, I could do so but have not played around with the app enough to figure out how to do it. I did notice that there are a lot more Angels and Airwaves songs than I have heard on Pandora and so I believe there is a lot more music to choose from with Spotify, it just takes more effort to set things up the way you want them.

My son claims that Spotify has higher quality music than Pandora. At first I thought that meant more music song choices. Then my son explained that Spotify uses a higher sampling rate for their music and so the same song on Spotify will sound better than on Pandora. I'm not sure about that as they both sound pretty good to me. Perhaps I need a better set of earphones to tell the difference.

Currently my Spotify experience is rather rudimentary and so I still need to spend more time setting up the service. My initial impression is that if I take the time, it will be a lot better than Pandora, I just haven't done so yet. Until then it is easier to continue listening to Pandora and occasionally switch to Spotify when I want a more concentrated "Angels and Airwaves" experience.

Christmas Music

This year I have tried to be a bit more proactive when it comes to helping my wife set up all of the Christmas decorations. Yesterday we put up the outside Christmas lights and today we put up the Christmas tree. As we were working today, my wife wanted to listen to Christmas music.

In the past my wife has kept a ton of Christmas music on her iPhone. For some reason she took it off and so she left it up to me to figure out how to get some Holiday music going while we put up the tree. I thought about setting up a Christmas station on Pandora. However that would have required finding speakers for my tablet or smartphone and so I pulled out an old boom-box with a built-in CD player. My wife then located about 20 Christmas CDs and we put one in.

It worked quite well and we enjoyed the music for about 40 minutes. Then the music stopped. We were still working on decorating and so my wife changed CDs and we kept going. Once again we were good, but only for about 40 minutes. It took us several hours to set things up and the music helped speed the process along. The only problem was that it felt like we were constantly changing CDs.

I'm not sure what is more annoying: listening to commercials every few songs that come with the free version of Pandora or having to swap out CDs every 40 minutes or so. Ultimately I decided that MP3 players like the iPod have really spoiled me and it is tough to go back to older music formats like CDs.

Finally Fedora Core 18 Is Usable

A few months ago I decided to update the Linux version on the desktop computer in my home office. I used it as a chance to decide if I wanted to stick with Fedora or move to Ubuntu. We are moving from CentOS to Ubuntu at work and so I wanted to start with Fedora just to be able to compare and contrast multiple flavors of Linux.

Unfortunately the upgrade from Fedora Core 10 to Fedora Core 18 was not painless. There was the problem with importing my old e-mail that I was able to figure out. The worst problem appeared about a week after the upgrade. For some reason, my Firefox browser kept crashing. I thought I could just download Google's Chrome, but that didn't even load. Previously I had been running the 32-bit version of Linux and upgraded to the 64-bit version. I figured there was some library mismatch in the 64-bit versions of the software and that by constantly sending crash reports to the developers, it would eventually get fixed. In the mean time, I just used the browser on my laptop.

I work in the Bay area during the week and fly back to Utah on weekends. Every Saturday, I would patiently update my system only to discover the bug with my browser hadn't been fixed. One perk I have with my job is that I get to work from home one week per month and this was that week. On Monday, I gave the old update a shot and cranked up the browser. I let it sit there and several minutes later the browser was still running. Next I cranked up Pandora and filled my office with music. It has been running all week with no crashes. I have yet to give Chrome a try, but I don't like Chrome and avoid it if I can.

Running the latest versions of software can be a little dangerous sometimes, as I was reminded. However you can send in the bug and crash reports. Eventually things will get fixed and the updated software becomes the stable version. Just be sure you have a second computer to use in case things don't work.

Pandora

I flew back to Utah on Friday night with a plane full of skiers. Seated several rows behind me were two buddies headed to Park City for 3 days of fun in the snow. One of them mentioned that he worked for Pandora. The whole plane seemed to explode with the question, "You work for Pandora?" It was as if he was a rock star. Children asked for autographs, women swooned, and men passed out business cards.

The plane was alive with chatter the whole 90-minute flight and I got to hear every word. Everyone wanted to know what the Pandora employee did. He confessed that he wasn't technical but sold advertising. He then proceeded to explain how much information they keep about their listeners. This allows them to target advertising with a laser-like focus. It was a great story for someone interested in promoting products. It was a bit concerning for someone interested in privacy.

So what information does Pandora really keep? First, they know your music interests. While that doesn't give them your exact age, it can give them a pretty good idea. For instance, I don't know a single adult that enjoys Selena Gomez. If that is on your playlist, then they can be sure you are a teenage or tween girl that has been force-fed Disney since birth.

Pandora also keeps track of your IP address, which is geographically specific. That means I must confuse them. Sometimes I am in Utah and other times, I am in California. However, it allows them to target ads for my general listening area. As I am in Utah today, I see ads for older single sites specific to the Salt Lake area. I wonder what that says about my playlist?

The information that Pandora tracks that should really bother you is their ability to go through your browser cookies and see the websites you like to visit. I frequently remove all my cookies for this very reason. While I don't visit questionable websites, I also don't feel comfortable sharing my personal interests with the world. I have a hard enough time not buying skis on a daily basis. Imagine if I was constantly bombarded with advertising about great deals. I don't think my credit cards could survive.