Jim Barraud

I turned the ripe old age of 31 last week, and in a moment a reflection I thought it would be fun to create a playlist. A playlist of songs and artists that have made me who I am over these past 31 years. I applied a couple rules when creating this list.

• One song per year.
• One song per artist.

The songs are listed in rough chronological order. The order being the time in my life that either the song or artist played a significant role. Song placement in the list does not correspond to the year of my life. I couldn’t tell you what I was rocking out to at the age of two (Although I do recall rocking out to Disney’s “Mousercise” on my little Fisher-Price turntable around the age of 5 or 6. That and countless kids audiobook-type 45’s). It wasn’t easy narrowing down the plethora of song options down to 31, so song choice came down to three basic criteria, in the following order:

• The song marks a significant milestone or period in my life.
• The Artist has been of significant listening enjoyment throughout my life. Selection of a song to represent this artist could either be the song that got me interested in said artist or picked entirely at random.
• I dig the song so much that the previous two rules need not apply.

As to which songs fit which criteria, we’ll leave that part a mystery.

My original intention was to create an iTunes iMix out of this playlist, but it turns out the whole iMix feature kinda sucks. I can understand a song not being included if it’s not available for sale in the iTunes store, but songs I actually purchased on the iTunes store weren’t being included either. So I linked up whatever songs I could to Amazon’s rocking new MP3 downloads store.

If you’re interested in what I’m listening to nowadays, I suggest you check out my Last.fm profile. So without further ado…

1. Pour Some Sugar On Me : Def Leppard
2. Thunderstruck : AC/DC
3. The Four Horsemen : Metallica
4. Animal : Pearl Jam
5. Digging In The Dirt : Peter Gabriel
6. The Fly : U2
7. Two Of Us : The Beatles
8. Closer : Nine Inch Nails
9. Sympathy For The Devil : The Rolling Stones
10. Interstate Love Song : Stone Temple Pilots
11. So What’Cha Want : The Beastie Boys
12. Wish You Were Here : Pink Floyd
13. Elephant Talk : King Crimson
14. Dancing With The Moonlight Knight : Genesis
15. Starship Trooper : Yes
16. Limelight : Rush
17. Bitterblue : Cat Stevens
18. Misty Mountain Hop : Led Zeppelin
19. Hanging Upside Down : David Byrne
20. When We Were Free : Pat Metheny Group
21. Song-Song : Brad Mehldau
22. Still Learning How To Crawl : Daniel Lanois
23. No Blues : Wes Montgomery
24. Yolele : Papa Wemba
25. Lie in Our Graves : Dave Matthews Band
26. So What : Miles Davis
27. Paranoid Android : Radiohead
28. Cowgirl : Underworld
29. One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces : Ben Folds Five
30. I Belong To You : Lenny Kravitz
31. What Light : Wilco

In my previous post about the new Nine Inch Nails album I mentioned it was purchased using iTunes “craptastic pre-order mechanism”. Let me explain.

This was my first pre-order through the iTunes store. I did so since I was going to purchase the album anyway, and if you pre-ordered it you would receive a bonus track. Another advantage of pre-ordering was when you placed your order, the current single would automatically be downloaded. You would be charged 99 cents for the single, then charged the remainder when the album was available. So I figured why not.

I was notified via email when the album was available for download. Upon downloading the album I noticed something strange. Then entire album was being downloaded except for track 3. Which was the previously downloaded single. Not a huge deal, I could just update the ID3 tags of the file so it had the correct album name and more importantly, the correct track number. It’s current track number was 1 since it was the single that was previously downloaded. Updating the album name and track number would put it in the correct track listing order, or so you would think. No matter what I updated on the file, what should be track number 3 would always be listed last. And after searching Apple’s support forums, it turns out I wasn’t the only one.

But there was something else strange. iTunes has a feature where it places an arrow next the selected track, artist and album. Clicking this arrow takes you to that particular track on the iTunes store. At least it should. Clicking the arrow on these tracks produced the error “Year Zero will be available in the store on April, 16 2038”. So obviously something was wrong.

I sent an email to Apple support explaining the track listing issue. Which essentially boiled down to the following. You can sort by Track Number and everything is peachy. But if you sort by album, the previously downloaded track is placed at the bottom of the track listing. The iPod sorts only by album, so it would never be listed in the correct order on my iPod. Apple support promptly responded with a suggestion of creating a custom playlist to sort the tracks correctly. To which I responded that this was not an acceptable solution. That something was obviously wrong with the file and explained the date issue upon clicking the track arrow. Apple support then responded that something was indeed wrong with the files and apologized for the fact. I had expected them to just give me the ability to re-download the album, but they actually provided me with a refund for the album. I have to give them credit that they exceeded my expectations in resolving my issue. Will I pre-order an album again? No. First impressions are the most important. And while the support response was great, I still wouldn’t risk having the issue happen again. But I would by more tracks from the store, I’ve purchased plenty already. They just won’t be pre-ordered.

You’d think I would have just turned around and repurchased the album on iTunes. But no, I didn’t. With all the cool things I’ve heard about the packaging and the heat sensitive label, I went out to my local Target and purchased the CD. I then ripped it at a higher bit rate then what’s currently available on the iTunes store. And I have the freedom to put those tracks on any device I choose. I also have the ability to share this great album with friends who may not have discovered it on their own, <cya>not that I would do that of course</cya>. Maybe that EMI company is on to something.

I’ve been listening to this incessantly since it was first available as a full album stream on yearzero.nin.com. Quiet simply, awesome. It harkens back to earlier Nine Inch Nails albums with a return to a more industrial sound. It’s also refreshing change in that it’s not another “woe is me” melodrama. But a concept album about an apocalyptic future as a result of an oppressive government. And now that I’ve purchased it through iTunes’ craptastic pre-order mechanism (I’ll cover that later), my morning commutes are full of Year Zero goodness.

Yesterday EMI announced the ground-breaking decision to release it’s entire music catalog DRM-free. And at a greatly improved sound quality to boot. Apple’s iTunes will be the first distributer of the new files starting in May. iTunes will be selling the new and improved tracks as a premium at 30 cents extra per song. Going from $.99 to $1.29. While no one ever likes a price increase, I’d happily pay the extra 30 cents for the superior sound quality and freedom to play the song on whichever device I wish. Two really nice features are that album purchases will remain the same price as the current DRM versions. And you will also be able to upgrade your currently purchased tracks to the new DRM-free higher quality super-hotness for 30 cents. Which brings up two questions I haven’t seen asked.

1. If you previously purchased an album, will you still need to pay 30 cents per track to upgrade that album since the album prices aren’t rising for the new format?
2. If you acquired tracks through iTunes free weekly downloads, will you need to pay the 30 cents to upgrade those? (I understand we got them for free in the first place, but it’s still worth asking.)

Regardless though, this is a tremendous advancement in digital music downloads and I’ll certainly be purchasing more music online because of it. At least from EMI artists.

More info on this can be found from EMI and Apple.