Apple Music Wish List for an iTunes Edge Case

Apple Music is coming out. Apple’s purchase of Beats last year, in addition to a ton of recent rumors, makes it pretty clear that a new iTunes update is going to be announced at Apple’s software developer conference, WWDC, on Monday. It will likely integrate the Beats streaming music catalogue into iTunes on all Apple devices and introduce some new features.

I am currently a happy Spotify user. I am also a pretty efficient dude. I hate using two music apps and cannot wait to use just iTunes for all of my musical needs. I am also an extreme edge case when it comes to digital music libraries. I am not a casual listener. I am an archivist. iTunes is not just a way to casually listen to my favorite songs. It is a tool for managing educational resources, searching for recordings spanning a lot of genres and time periods, and general purpose audio file organization. My iTunes Library is about 600 GB and I have no wish to massively downsize it any time soon.

Below, I have detailed some wishes for Apple’s new streaming service. Some of these suggestions will likely be announced on Monday. Others are reasonable but not going to happen just yet. And a few are incredibly unlikely just on the premise that Apple is not going to pump major resources into features that are appealing only to me and not the mass market.

Unify local and streaming playlists, make them both feel native

I want to search for Snarky Puppy and see the albums of theirs that I own, and those on Apple’s streaming service. And I want them all to appear in a smartly organized list where all of them are ready for playback as if they were living on my computer’s hard drive.

When I find something in Apple’s streaming database, I want to add it to my music library and playlists and have those songs appear alongside the ones I own, listenable offline if I so choose.

Separate iTunes on the Mac

What is the worst part of Apple bundling a streaming music service into iTunes? iTunes is a terrible app. It is slow, bloated with features, and used for a ton of things beyond music listening.

I hope Apple takes a cue from the iPhone and separates iTunes on the Mac into five separate apps: Music, video, podcasts, iTunes University, and iTunes Store. Bonus points for separating any current iTunes features relating to the upkeep of an iOS device into a separate app.

iTunes Match upgrade

Paid storage

I currently subscribe to iTunes Match, a service that uploads your iTunes library to the cloud. Songs that are on the iTunes Store are matched, other audio files are uploaded. There is a 25,000 song limit for files that are not on the iTunes Store. Hopefully the pending update to Apple’s music services will allow users to upgrade their storage limit and use iCloud Drive storage that they have purchased towards more file uploads.

Support for all audio files

There are audio file types that iTunes supports on a Mac but will not sync over the cloud. Hopefully Apple fixes this in the coming update. I want to access my entire library on the go, not just those that Apple deems valid.

Better metadata and search

It would be fantastic if iTunes could use its new streaming catalogue to clean up my album art and other poorly organized information. In some cases, I have attempted to do this manually and iTunes Match has actually reverted back to old cloud backups, undoing tedious work.

In my perfect world, iTunes would also allow me to tag music and consistently add information to tracks and albums including but not limited to: personnel on jazz recordings, director/ensemble/composer on classical recordings, record labels, etc. It would be even better if iTunes could differentiate, say, a recording of works by Beethoven, properly tagging each work with the various conductors and ensembles that performed them. This metadata could be cloud based and crowd sourced. For example, I could elect to add it myself, and have it sync across devices[1] or choose to have my files augmented with popular user submitted data. If this were not already useful enough for better organizing and searching a personal library, imagine now how powerful this becomes if it is built into the global search of iTunes. For example, I could search for “recordings of Fritz Reiner and Chicago Symphony Orchestra between 1956–1960,” “albums that John Coltrane played on,” or “records released on Blue Note.”

It would also be really interesting if Apple would extend their system wide tagging feature to iTunes songs. I would love to tag audio files with keywords and have them appear with other files with the same tag in the Finder. I could, for example, tag a recording of my middle school band with “Lake Elkhorn Middle School.” When searching for this tag in the Finder, I would be greeted with all of the documents on my hard drive that I have tagged this, alongside related iTunes files.

Lyrics

Here is a feature for both power users and the masses. Allow for better support with lyrics. I should never have to leave my music app to see the lyrics of a song. Ideally, these could appear with the click of a button, with each word highlighted in real time,[2] and the possibility to easily copy and paste them.

Simple social

Keep this one simple, Apple. Here is all you need: add friends, share playlists, follow playlists, follow playback, one click sharing to social media.

Never happening

I have always wanted iTunes to allow for third party plugins. I find myself often slowing down and looping small sections of music for practice or educational purposes. It would be cool if these power features could be added to iTunes so that I did not need to start up a project in GarageBand or Pro Tools every time I want to do something as simple as slow down a track or splice out a short audio sample. Oh well…

We will see what happens on Monday. I am banking on the streaming and playlist features I mentioned above. There will probably be some attempt to make radio more engaging by perhaps the hiring of artists to DJ human curated stations. Expect some simple social features as well.

1. If you didn’t notice, iOS devices do NOT support the viewing and editing of metadata added on OSX.  ↩

2. Spotify has this and it is great!  ↩

Apple Watch Reviews

Apple Watch reviews came out on Wednesday. I have only read a few so far.

Overall, the design and function of the watch is receiving huge praise. One of the most common complaints about it, or at least the one I care about the most, is that watch wearers will need to get used to the display not always being on. See below, written by Joshua Tapolsky at Bloomberg (click here to read his full review).

But what about the watch as a timepiece? I’ve found the experience somewhat inferior to that with a conventional wristwatch, due to one small issue. The Apple Watch activates its screen only when it thinks you’re looking at it. Sometimes a subtle twist of your wrist will do, but sometimes it takes … more. Many times while using the watch, I had to swing my wrist in an exaggerated upward motion to bring the display to life. Think about the way people normally look at their watches, then make it twice as aggressive. As a normal watch-wearer, the idea that I might look down at my wrist and not see the time was annoying.

Sometimes, even if you do the arm-swing motion, the screen doesn’t turn on. Sometimes it turns on, then off. Sometimes you tap it and nothing happens.

For all the noise Apple has made about what a remarkable time-telling device its watch is, I found it lacking for this reason alone. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t keep excellent time—it just doesn’t offer the consistency of a traditional timepiece.

I am most surprised, but also encouraged, by John Gruber’s remarks about feeling of the Digital Crown, Taptic Engine and force touch (click here to read his full review).

At Apple Watch’s introduction and several times since, Apple has emphasized that each breakthrough product in the company’s history, starting with the Macintosh, has required new input technology to support the interaction design. The mouse for the Mac. The click wheel for the iPod. Multitouch for the iPhone. (Unmentioned: the stylus for the Newton.) Apple invented none of these things (with the possible exception of the click wheel), but Apple was the first to bring each of them to the mass market.

For Apple Watch, Apple is billing the Digital Crown as the breakthrough input device. And, to be sure, there’s no other watch, smart or otherwise, with a crown like this. Eight years of daily iPhone use had me swiping the Apple Watch touchscreen to scroll at first, but I quickly learned to adopt the digital crown instead. It truly is a good and clever idea, and, presuming it is patent-protected strongly enough, the lack of a digital crown is going to put competitors at a disadvantage. You can scroll the screen by swiping it, but scrolling the crown is better.

But fundamentally, what’s novel about the digital crown is the context of the wrist. As a concept, it’s pretty much the same idea as a scroll wheel on a mouse — you rotate it up and down to scroll/zoom, and you press it to click.

To me, the breakthrough in Apple Watch is the Taptic Engine and force touch. Technically, they’re two separate things. The Taptic Engine allows Apple Watch to tap you; force touch allows Apple Watch to recognize a stronger press from your finger. But they seem to go hand-in-hand. The new MacBook trackpad has both haptic feedback and recognition of force touches, and Apple Watch has both, too. I don’t think Apple will ever release a device that has one but not the other.

This is the introduction of a new dimension in input and output, and for me, it’s central to the appeal of Apple Watch. By default, Apple Watch has sounds turned on for incoming notifications. I can see why this is the default, but in practice, I keep sounds turned off all the time,5 not just in contexts where I typically silence my phone. Taps are all I need for notifications. They’re strong enough that you notice them, but subtle enough that they don’t feel like an interruption. When my phone vibrates, it feels like it’s telling me, Hey, I need you now. When the Apple Watch taps me, it feels like it’s telling me, Hey, when you get the chance, I’ve got something for you.

Taps go hand in hand with force touch. When you initiate a force touch, the watch gives you haptic feedback — thus there’s no confusion whether you tapped hard enough to qualify as a force touch. (Force touches also carry visual feedback — on any force touch in any context, the display animates back in a “bounce”, even in contexts where force touch has no meaning. Also, I believe that on Apple Watch, force touch has no location — the only target for force touch is the entire display. There’s never any scenario where you force touch this button or that button. Makes sense on a display this small.) The taptic engine also ties in with the digital crown. Scroll to the end of a list and Apple Watch has a rubber band “bounce” animation, much like iOS. But on Apple Watch, the rubber band animation coincides with haptic feedback that somehow conveys the uncanny sensation that the digital crown suddenly has more tension. It feels like you’re stretching a rubber band. Now that I’m getting used to this on Apple Watch, it makes the haptic-less rubber band end-of-scrollview bounce on iPhone and iPad feel thin.

And without taps, Apple Watch is rather dull. The first unit I received from Apple seemingly had a hardware defect. Taps worked at first, but I found them surprisingly weak — so weak they were easy to miss, even with the watch strapped relatively snugly to my wrist. By the end of the first day, taps weren’t working at all. Apple sent me a replacement unit the next day, and it was like an altogether different experience. Without the Taptic Engine, Apple Watch is not a compelling device.

I have already stated that I am buying this device, but I will be sure to share any other information that I find compelling in future posts.

Why I Am Buying an Apple Watch

I have spoken about the Apple Watch at length with professionals in and outside of my field who I would consider power users. These are people who own a Mac, iPad, and iPhone, and use them to their fullest potential. I am a little surprised that most are not interested the device, viewing it as a gadget and fashion accessory more than a professional tool. Now I know that Apple Watch is intended to be just as much a fashion accessory as it is a piece of technology so I will not argue against that cause. But I see a utility in this device beyond its novelty and “hot” factor.

Most of what I think about the subject has already been said better here. Still, I will have a go at explaining my enthusiasm and why I, for the first time, will be early adopting an Apple Product.

the Apple Watch will save time

Most of my app purchases and tech ventures center around saving clicks, frustration, and most importantly, time. If there’s an app that will make me do even the tiniest little task faster, I buy it, and I adopt it fast. The Apple Watch will cut corners in so many tiny little ways by allowing me to interact with my data without taking a phone out of my pocket. Answering quick phone calls from my wrist. Dictating responses to text messages. Seeing what calendar appointments are up next at a glance. Seeing my OmniFocus tasks that are due today. Taking quick notes through voice. I don’t underestimate the time I spend fiddling around with devices throughout the day just to make simple interactions with common apps like email, calendar, and reminders.

the Apple Watch will make some apps BETTER

Ever realize that certain apps seem made for the iPhone, some for the iPad, and some for the Mac? Sure, I love all three, but reading scores on my iPad is a richer experience than it is on a iPhone. Checking my Twitter feed is a more focused and mobile experience on an iPhone than it is an iPad. Creating documents and recording music is still faster and more powerful on Mac than it is an iPad. What apps will be better on a watch?

I have owned a Pebble smart watch since their launch two years ago, and aside from the notifications I get on my wrist, one of my absolute favorite apps for it is a metronome. Metronomes do not need to be too complicated. Some simple tempo and playback controls are all you need. The nature of metronomes as often being a quick reference tool really lend themselves towards a small and convenient screen that is always on you. I sincerely hope that the folks over at Frozen Ape are on top of this. Their app, Tempo, has always been my go to metronome on iOS. The Apple Watch uses haptic feedback to send signals to your wrist. Imagine a metronome app that could discretely give you the tempo without vibrating or making a sound.

Other music apps that would be great on a watch come to mind. Tuners and remote controls for audio software to name a few. The sky is the limit.

not just for business

Of course, I am leaving out the fact that the Apple Watch also comes equipped with compelling hardware and software features outside of productivity. I am looking forward to tracking my bike rides with Strava, checking my bank balance with Mint, turning off and on the lights in my house with Philips Hue, and more, all from my wrist.

somehow I become an early adopter

I have always held out for second or third generation versions of Apple hardware. Maybe it’s because I didn’t have as much disposable income when the iPod, iPhone, and iPad launched. Maybe it’s because Apple really tends to knock their products out of the park the second or third time around. I admit, the Apple Watch would be a stronger sell if it were a little slimmer, had better battery life, and a better water proof rating. Still, I think the difference this time around is in the software. The iPhone was immediately compelling when it was announced, but it wasn’t the pocket computer we see it as today until after a few years, once it had 3G, the ability to take decent photographs, and an App Store. I feel like the Apple Watch is entering into a very different software ecosystem than the iPhone. The difference being that it is already highly developed, even before launch. Though the hardware is first gen, Apple already has tons of third party apps lined up to release with the watch on day one. The watch doesn’t seem to be missing features like the first iPhone. If anything, it could be criticized for doing too much and lacking focus. I am confident that it will not disappoint me as long as it works as advertised and lasts a day without requiring a charge.

which model?

I have not decided which model I will buy. I will need to walk into the store and check them out in person. Right now I am leaning towards the cheapest model, the Apple Watch Sport, with the intention of selling it down the road if it doesn’t work out. I would probably get the 42MM model in space grey with a black sport band, adding the purchase of the blue leather loop band for more formal situations. Though pricey, the steel Apple Watch is also tempting. You can see all of the models and configurations here.

🔗 Highnote: Tempo And Key Control For Your Music

Highnote is an excellent little app for iOS that allows you to change the tempo and key of the music in your library. Like all Mac and iOS apps that require access to your device’s music library, it can only work with audio files that are locally downloaded. My iTunes Match subscription allows me to stream my iTunes library from multiple Macs and iDevices without the files occupying any space. Other apps cannot access songs in the cloud unless they are also downloaded to the device. This is a disappointment of mine that I wish Apple would address. While it is a drag to have to go into the Music app and download songs before use, Highnote is still a great little utility for slowing down, speeding up, or changing the key of the songs in your music library, tasks I typically associate with doing on a desktop computer.

For $1.99, it is worth checking out. And they’ve already announced an Apple Watch app! Good for them, though I’m not sure I will be needing to use these tools on my wrist.

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🗒 Session notes for "Going Paperless with iPad." MMEA, February 20, 2015

Click here to see the live notes to my session, “Going Paperless with iPad.” This is a living document. Any updates or additions I make to the document will automatically be pushed to your device.

The notes are a a direct copy of the outline I used to create the presentation with the following additions:

• Highlights describing which apps are free, paid, and “freemium”

• Links to download and learn more about apps

• Additional comments about each section

If there is something you would like to see added to the notes, please let me know at robby@robbyburns.com

🗒 Session notes for "Going Paperless with iPad"

Click here to see the live notes to my session, “Going Paperless with iPad.”

This is a living document. Any updates or additions I make to the document will automatically be pushed to your device.

The notes are a a direct copy of the outline I used to create the presentation with the following additions:

• Highlights describing which apps are free, paid, and “freemium”

• Links to download and learn more about apps

• Additional comments about each section

If there is something you would like to see added to the notes, please let me know at robby@robbyburns.com

Avid announces a Sibelius-based cloud technology for publishers

Click here to read “Avid announces a Sibelius-based cloud technology for publishers” on the Sibelius Blog.

According to the release, the technology is called Sibelius | Cloud Publishing. Avid says that the new technology is based on Avid Everywhere and built upon the Avid MediaCentral Platform.

The service is targeted at music publishers. One of the main differences between Sibelius | Cloud Publishing and current technology based on the Scorch browser plug-in appear to be that, in fact, installation of a browser plug-in is not required in order for visitors to experience and purchase the music.

Wow! This is both deeply exciting and disappointing at the same time.

I have long awaited the time that my professional creative software begins to move to the cloud. It was a smaller but important step for productivity software like Microsoft Office, iWork, and Google Docs. And that software is still experiencing growing pains [1]. I knew it would take longer for video, audio, and photo editing software to move to the cloud given the complexity of such software, the size of the media they manage, and the fact that it would just really need to work consistently for professionals to depend on it.

My major disappointment is that all of the cloud features Avid is adding are intended for online playback and publishing, not for collaboration or storage. I can appreciate that they have a certain focus on how they see cloud technology influencing notation software, but isn’t it possible to have two or more collaborating on the same Sibelius file at the same time with the current technologies available? If Avid’s Pro Tools is gaining the ability to collaborate on the same audio project in real time with multiple people all over the world [2], how is it not possible to collaborate on a score?

It also seems that Avid doesn’t consider the ability to store scores in the cloud or edit them on tablets to be important. The latter I can appreciate. It is certainly their choice to envision what platforms the most powerful of score editing features are designated too. But I feel that the Avid Scorch app for iPad could at least allow the user to do minor editing on the go, like for example, move a few pitches around the staff. The Notion app for iPad is doing a great job fitting score editing features on the iPad's screen size while managing a pretty clean user interface in the process.

The Scorch app for iPad should at least be able to access documents from services like Dropbox and Google Drive. iOS now offers developers the ability put a document picker in their apps so that users can access files from anywhere, not just those stored in the app. See my post here for more details about how this works.

Maybe at least Scorch for iPad will get an update. It hasn’t received any new features for years and still looks like it belongs on iOS 6.

Perhaps I am short sighted because I am not actively composing and publishing my own work. These future updates could really take away the friction of sales and distribution for freelance composers. But I had hoped for a lot more.

1. I exclude Google Drive from this statement. Their software is extremely mature, particularly with regards to it’s consistently, collaborative features, and availability on all platforms. ↩

2. See it in action here --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Pz_6ZIy2To ↩

Presenting "Going Paperless with iPad" at MMEA and OMEA Conferences Next Month

I will be presenting a new session of mine, Going Paperless with iPad, at the Ohio Music Educators Association conference on February 6th and at the Maryland Music Educators Association conference on February 20th.

If you will be attending either of these two conferences, I hope to see you there.

Here is a short description of the session:

Learn how to move your organization, planning, and paperwork to the digital world through the use of apps, cloud services, and connected devices. The iPad, with it’s convenient form factor and modern software, becomes the hub for consuming and interacting with all of your work.

Here is a longer description of the session:

Most teachers feel overwhelmed by organization, planning, and paperwork to the point that actual classroom instruction seems a tiny part of the job. In this session, I will detail my strategies for achieving a paperless workflow, where work is digitized, easily accessible, and manipulated through an iPad. The session will primarily focus on capturing, organizing, and consuming. More specific points of discussion will include: transforming physical documents to digital, PDF management, file organization, searching, cloud drive organization, tagging best practices, file backup, grading, automating, task management, calendar tips, iPad as a creation vs. consumption device, iPad as computer replacement, working with the limitations of file management on iOS, and more.

The session will emphasize how a desktop plays a unique role in the capturing and organization of data. Some software specific to the Mac will be referenced, but a Windows PC is completely suitable for taking advantage of the major points in the session.

To ensure that the session details the most powerful tools available, the session will include discussion of paid software and hardware, particularly premium apps and scanners.

Audio Hijack 3

Click here to learn more about Audio Hijack 3 I have only spent a little bit of time with this app and I already know it is going to solve countless tiny little problems with managing audio on my Mac. Audio Hijack lets you create custom “sessions” for performing what seems like an infinite number of possible actions for managing audio. In the picture below, you can see a few of these quickly accessible presets. One of them is set up to record the audio of my web browser, another to give the volume of my laptop speakers a boost, and the final one to record my microphone input and the other end of a Skype conversation (perfect for podcasting).

Save quickly accessible presets audio recording and management.

Audio Hijack in action, recording the audio of a video I am watching on the web.

Audio Hijack makes it easy to manage the audio you record from these sessions by organizing them in one, easy to find, place.

Audio Hijack Recordings.

You can even set timers for Audio Hijack to turn on and carry out operations by itself. Perfect for recording live screencasts while you are away from your computer.

Audio Hijack Schedule.

It is clear to me that this will prove an instantly useful utility for managing multiple inputs and outputs on my computer in a simple and hassle free way. These are just the features that are a click away. Check out the link above to see more of what it can do.

🔗 Paul Lansky's Three Moves performed by Jonny Allen

Never seen anyone make this piece look so easy before. http://youtu.be/DTliXQ0GxB0