1. Find an alternative to iTunes that let’s me access ALL of my music on the go with a low barrier to syncing/listening
2. Cleanup my music collection (meta tags, filenames, etc.) since my iTunes use (abuse) has left many songs forgotten and neglected
3. Free my Music… while I’m in the mood to completely ditch iTunes I might as well get rid of all my DRM-protected music.  I’m doing this for both philosophical and practical reasons.

SubSonic (http://www.subsonic.org/)

Subsonic is an open source music (free) java-based streaming server for Windows, Mac, and Linux.  Right of the bat, I have to say it’s one of the most impressive open source apps I’ve come across.  I had it setup on Ubuntu in < 5 minutes and it works flawlessly!  Subsonic provides a web interface so you can access and listen to your music from anywhere.  I have it hosted on my own personal server and have tested it seamlessly over both 3G and Wi-Fi. The great thing about this product is there are applications for iPhone, Android and Windows 7 that let you stream music to your phone.  The app I chose for iPhone was iSub Music Streamer.  It cost $5 USD, but is probably the best money I’ve spent in the app store.  Things I really like?

• Transcoding – Even if you don’t have all .MP3s on your server, Subsonic can convert and stream other types on the fly (like AAC, AIF, M4A).  You can also customize audio bitrate based on bandwith usage (Wi-Fi or 3G), but by default I don’t limit.
• Caching – Once you’ve played the song it will be cached.  You can also queue or cache songs ahead of time and force the app into offline mode.
• Playlists – You can create both server-side and client side playlists.  This makes it really easy to share with multiple devices (iPhone(s), iPad, PC, media center, etc.)
• Podcasts – This feature completely eliminates the need for Iphone.  Plug in an RSS Podcast URL and Subsonic will download your podcast .MP3s and keep them updated on demand.

A viable alternative to iTunes?  You bet!  No sync times and music is available from anywhere.  I’m rediscovering my music collection all over again and listening to music I haven’t really bothered with in years.

Jaikoz Audio Tagger (http://www.jthink.net/jaikoz/)

Years ago I used a very good Windows program called MP3Tag to cleanup my music collection.  This program would let you bulk-edit the MP3 ID3 tags (Artist, Album, Track, Year, etc.) and rename files.  This program still works well but I found an even better alternative.  Jaikoz (20GBP-~$33USD) is another amazingly slick app. It does everything that MP3 tag does plus more:

• Integration with online metadata sites like MusicBrainz and Discogs to automatically identify files
• Acoustic fingerprinting using Amplified.  If you have a file with no identifiable information in the filename or metadata Amplified will most likely find it (think Shazam or SoundHound)
• Adds album cover art and lyrics

A few years ago I blogged about an incident where my first iPod Video music db became corrupt and I lost information on about 500+ songs (meta data was non-existant in most of them and files were renamed to something like QD3K33.mp3).  Unbelievably Jaikoz was able to recover about 95+% of the files and even added album cover art and lyrics!

Noteburner (http://www.noteburner.com/)

Since Rhapsody and Amazon started offering .MP3 downloads all of my online music purchases have been through them.  However, I still have (had) hundreds of DRM-protected songs that I purchased through iTunes and Rhapsody.  Back in 2008 I went through some pain to burn the Rhapsody purchases to CD and then rip them again back to .MP3.  This time around I wanted to find a way to make it easier.  I’ve used virtual CDRW software in the past like CDBurnerXP and it worked well.  Noteburner, a worthly alternative ($39.95), offers many of the features of CDBurnerXP but also burns to CD and converts to MP3 in a single-step process!  Simply install, select as your preferred CD-RW drive for burning and burn the playlist.  Noteburner will automatically create the virtual CD, read the CD-TEXT provided by itunes, and create the .MP3 file.  Once you have all your converted files, simply load them into Jaikoz and get the full range of meta tags including album cover art and lyrics.

My total cost for this little project was less than $75 and I couldn’t be happier.  I now have a clean music collection that I can access from anywhere in the world, and don’t have to feel the iTunes pain ever again.  C-ya!!

The first site SimplyNoise offers up some white, brown, and pink noise to help drown out distractions.  And the second site RainyMood plays a gentle 30-minute loop of rain to help you relax and wash your stress away.

One of the best ways to discover new music online is with Last.fm, a music recommendation community. Last.fm serves you up new tunes based on a marriage of your unique preferences and the rest of the huge Last.fm community. Last.fm is a pretty simple way to listen to tunes, but there are a few quick and dirty ways you can oomph it up a little. Keep reading for fifteen ways to tweak your Last.fm listening experience.

Summary from YouTube:

Using a computer generated photo of the ideal beautiful woman as a baseline(credited to faceresearch.org), I fed this photo into a face transformer (from perceptionlab.com). This transformer can convert a photo based on age, race, and other options into a new photo. I then used a morphing application to transition between these photos.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uENxJAlN1wM

A few people have asked what song I used for the background music. And, the answer is that I actually created the song using Garage Band. I posted about my first song last July (titled “Transition”) in the article Creating Music With Apple Garage Band. I started work on a second song, but only partially finished. Then, a few months later I completed the song. As I was working on the Morphing Faces of Beauty video, I realized that this song would be the perfect fit.

Here is the song:

M3U Stream

MP3 File

And, here’s a quick summary from NotCot:

“The Discover interface of Burst Labs is mesmerizingly brilliant ~ and there’s a melody for every mood you could possibly feel or imagine, and truly one of the most refreshing flashy user experiences i’ve encountered recently. Burst Labs is the latest brainchild of The Burst Collective: which Compose + Produces Music, Licenses Music, Records Music, and now gives you an incredible multi sensory experience to browse this ambient digital music space. Odds are you’ve already heard their music and didn’t even realize it… ”

I compiled a list of compelling music visualization resources last November. I’ll be sure to include the Burst interface in my next major update.

Lee Byron at megamu.com has posted an article illustrating some visualization using the Last.fm social music service.

I was planning on restoring, and then importing all music and videos from the backup drive. However, after a little Googling I came across a lifesaving article on LifeHacker:

Hack Attack: Add music and movies to your iPod from any computer without iTunes

Adam Posh reviewed a cross-platform iTunes replacement called Floola. The reason why I was even investigating an iTunes replacement was to find a way to copy a number of .mp4 files directly to the iPod. I use Rhapsody quite a bit and have purchased a number of albums over the last 2 years. Although Rhapsody does support transfering the files to the iPod in MP4 format, these files are not playable in iTunes. In fact, since these songs are no longer recognized on the iPod, if I try to import them I get an authorization error. My thought was that Floola would allow me to perform the copy, but that was not the case.

Fortunately, I discovered an option in Floola that allows you to “repair” a corrupt iTunes database (under Tools -> Advanced -> Repair). Apparently this rebuilds the iTunesDB file under the hidden iPod_Control directory based on the existing music and video files that are on the iPod. Sure enough, after clicking and waiting for a few minutes, 4,000+ of my songs and videos were recovered. This didn’t include the tracks purchased through Rhapsody, but I’m sure I’ll be able to recover if I re-transfer using my PC laptop.

Thanks to LifeHacker and Floola, I saved a ton of time in trying to solve a tedious problem!

Parody

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