Chow Chow Bhaat

The sad state of digital music

Music is what makes me breathe, besides beer of course ;-). Back in the days of cassette tapes, I used to rely on recommendations from my friends to make purchases. & as the local store owner got more familiar with my tastes, he started making recommendations. See the pattern? It was always a very social process. & it was something that worked well.

As I grew up & made more friends - thru college & my work - the recommendations I got became more diverse & eclectic. This discovery process was always a journey for me. My horizons widened considerably as a result. See the power of the social discovery?

Which is why I was excited by the numerous social/crowd sourced music discovery services cropping up, like Spotify & AudioGalaxy. & when Facebook announced that it would have these music services baked in, I was overjoyed! Imagine the fun I’d have discovering music with a far larger & more diverse social circle! It was like Christmas would come everyday!

But……………..

The other day, I was sent a mix that a friend created on AudioGalaxy. Clicking the link took me to the service (I duly signed up), but I couldn’t do any fucking thing with it! I could only see the artists in that mix - symphonic metal, if you must know - but not the songs. The service isn’t available in my region (India).

Then, another friend shared his Spotify list, & guess what I saw… nothing at all! Not even the artists in that mix! I’d signed up breathlessly to Spotify ages ago, only to discover…..nothing, absolutely nothing! This, like every other such service, isn’t available in India.

As a long time multi-genre *legal* music fan, this state of affairs depresses me so much! Especially, in these days of manufactured pop/rap/whatever else. E.g., Coldplay - a hugely overrated band that usually has 1 good song & a half in an entire album! Now, don’t even get me started on the Biebers/Blacks of this world! Why on earth should I spend my time or money on such drivel? Buying songs (singles) that I liked is where digital music *cough*iTunes*cough* changed the world, forever.

What I’m trying to get to, is that I’d like to see what my friends are doing on these social music services. So that I can buy/download them legally, if not share in their experience of streaming!

I’ve been a subscriber of Nokia Music for over a year now. Their incredible catalog, combined with the recommendations (built-in + from my friends) has led to over 6000 songs on my phone already! I have another 7 odd months remaining on my subscription & I’d like to discover more.

There are 2 problems that I see:

1) the unavailability of social music/streaming services globally & ubiquitously.

2) Their silliness in not even showing me what my friends’ are upto.

The 1st problem is something the publishers need to sort out; there’s no point getting into that.

The 2nd is what makes me weep! If only I could see the songs they’re listening to & liking, I could download them legally from my Nokia subscription!

Is this toofuckingmuch to ask?? Seems like they don’t want my money & keep crying about how the big bad interwebz is ruining their industry…

Prize for sticking with this wall of text till the end? A song I discovered via a friend & the muchly underrated Nokia Music Store.

PS: Ignore the visuals, it’s from some family holiday. The audio is quite enjoyable :-)

Thoughts on PureView

Nokia unveiled PureView at MWC a couple of days ago. A lot has already been said about it. Most of the tech & mainstream press seems fixated on the 41MP sensor & some fools have even begun comparing it with the utterly immense Nikon D800!

Rather, what it does, or will do, is allow users to take remarkably clean pictures at more sensible 5MP or 8MP resolutions. There is not much sense in taking a full res 34/38MP pic & then pixel-peeping it on a PC monitor. You can see an example of this when Stephen Elop took a pic of Myriam Joire & posted a zoomed crop on twitter here.

When you do this, all the PureView magic has already been discarded & you get a simple large jpg file. You might beat some compact cams & the N8 this way, due to the much better optics & the far larger sensor.

The magic really lies in the way zoom is handled in a constrained form factor, like a phone, or an enthusiast cam. You get a fixed aperture zoom, which is uncommon at any level of photography equipment. The best of this zoom mechanism? It eliminates noise, enabling super smooth & sharp 5MP/8MP images. For more technical details, check this DPR post.

This is also the reason why RAW output doesn’t make much sense, IMO. There is no software on our PCs that will do the pixel-binning for us. If/when that comes, RAW captures become useful.

Now, had Elop done the zooming, _before_ taking that pic, the results should have been quite remarkable indeed!

We shouldn’t be comparing the PureView results with other phones, or even most compact cams. It should be able to beat them quite handily, when used correctly. Instead, we should be comparing them to the 6MP/8MP entry level DSLRs from a few years ago, then we’ll get an idea of how astounding it really is, in a phone to boot!

PS: we have seen 2 major paradigm shifts in photography these past few months: 1) Lytro, 2) now PureView. I’ll be quite disappointed if dedicated cam vendors don’t explore them further….