Results tagged “iTunes” from ScottandMargo.net

"Gizmodo iPhone Hands On Part Deux: Why Isn't it White and Other Questions" via TUAW

Gizmodo's reporting that, among other things, that the iPhone isn't really running OSX and that they're not going to allow third-party developer support. I guess that answers a couple of questions that I had about it.

That's kind of disappointing. I understand Apple's need to keep the platform pristine and seamless and that they tend to do that by strictly controlling what goes on it (like the way the iPod is controlled). I'm guessing that any applications that come out for the iPhone will be handled through the iTunes store like the iPod games are.

That's a little disappointing to me. Restricting third-party development support like this makes the iPhone a prettier but less flexible Windows mobile phone. The Cingular 8525 isn't as slick, but it's a lot more flexible and ultimately usable because I can go out and find (or potentially write) the software I need to do what I want with it.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Gadgets, iPod, iTunes, Marketing, Technology

Vowe posts a link to a study by Paul Lamere on the statistics that were gathered by his iTunes Registry.

The whole article is worth reading. I found a couple interesting points in the analysis:

“It turns out that 80% of all plays are concentrated into just 23% of the tracks. Perhaps even more interesting is the fact that 64% of the over 20,000,000 tracks had never ever been played (not even once). This means that the average ipod user (with 3542 songs), actively listens to about 800 songs in their collection, and has never listened to about 2200 songs.”

I think that's just nuts! I can't imagine what it's like to have listening habits like that. Are people just listening to the same songs over and over because they like to, or because the random shuffle feature doesn't take play frequency into account? I'm hoping it's the latter but I'm afraid it's the former...those numbers sound like they'd line up with how radio stations work.

Personally, I'd hate a rotation like that. I hate commercial radio because of it. I'm becoming increasingly dissatisfied with XM Satellite Radio for the same reason. I've spent a lot of time since I got an iPod trying to work out how to get a good thorough mix across my music library when I'm listening to music. My most recent thinking is based on what I found in a post I did in March about some Smart Playlist resources I found. Below is a breakdown of my iTunes library:

Collection Size: 4022
Plays: 5694
Number of songs purchased from iTunes: 2
Active songs (80% of Plays): 50%
Sings never played: 872
Manually rated songs: 1215

It looks like my persistence is paying off. I'm getting a pretty good mix of music across my library. Definitely higher than average. How much higher was kind of surprising to me to be honest. Looking at the numbers, I think I'm going to need to raise the representation of unplayed songs in my main mix playlist, and I need to get back into the habit of rating my songs.

Technorati Tags: iPod, iTunes, Music, Technology

Since the iPod Nano needs Autofill post a while back I'm still thinking of how to manage my music on the iPod and in iTunes in general. On Thursday, I came across a blog posting called iTunes Smart Playlists at Andy Budd's blog.

I don't know why but for some reason, I never noticed that one of the rules you can set for a smart playlist is to have it use another playlist or set of playlists as a source. That helps a lot of the issues I have had in the past with keeping an interesting and fresh mix of my music available. I used the playlists in Andy Budd's post as a base and took some tips from SmartPlaylists.com and I've built a decent playlist. It'll get better as I get more music listened to and rated, but it's definitely a good start.

The playlist that I'm feeding the iPod with is limited by total size which I still have to adjust up and down as the size of my podcast list. The Autofill problem still isn't solved, but at least the mix is better.

Technorati Tags: iPod, iTunes, Playlist