As my penance, I’m now sending her a weekly song to make sure that her musical foundation is sound. These won’t necessarily be the best, most popular, or my favourite songs (though sometimes they will be all three). Rather, they will be influential to my musical tastes and worth her consideration.
Given how this started, the first song is Solsbury Hill by Peter Gabriel. There are plenty of his songs to choose from. I think this one is a great place to start.
A side benefit of my kids being old enough to drive, is that I actually get to hear their music now.
At home, they’re always listening with their AirPods, unlike when I was a kid. My parents had to endure our music: my brother and I both had component stereo systems with large speakers. Plus, we lived across the hall from each other, so we had to play our music loud, to be able to hear it over the other’s music!
In general, both of my kids have pretty good taste. Though, of course, some of the new music is too weird for me. I’m always pleased when I hear one of my favourites show up on their playlists. Evidence that I raised them right.
🎶 Emerging from a delightful revisiting of The Tragically Hip. It started with this episode of the Strombo show, moved through the No Dress Rehearsal series, and ended with the Long Time Running documentary, all accompanied by their many albums. Gord Downie’s courage really is inspiring.
There’s a fair bit of overlap between No Dress Rehearsal and Long Time Running. NDR covers their entire history, while LTR focuses on their last tour. LTR also has much more content from Gord Downie. If you pick just one, I’d suggest LTR.
Here’s my list. I’ve really shifted to defaults over the past year. I’m conflicted about this: I really like a good indie app, yet find my needs don’t justify the complexity of using non-defaults.
🎶 After a last scrobble on Dec 4 2007, I’ve resurrected my Last FM account and connected it to the Albums app. This should encourage me to listen to more complete albums, while also tracking what I’m listening to. I’ll keep using the Apple Music app for those “in between moments” when I don’t have an album queued up
As an experiment, I spent the past week listening only to the Activity Playlists in Apple Music. So, whatever I was doing, I picked the most closely related playlist.
Often these were straightforward. Cooking dinner with help from the kids: Cooking with Family; triaging the morning inbox of email: Checking Email; mind mapping a project: Brainstorming.
Other times it was more mood oriented. Reading by the fire when it is -20ºC: Winter; augmenting an early Wednesday morning coffee: Wake Me Up!.
Overall, the playlists are good.
The ones I listened to are meaningfully distinct from each other and the song choices do match the general mood of the activity. Just as one example, although their names are quite close, I did get different vibes from the Deep Focus, Peaceful Focus, and Creative Focus playlists.
In general the song choices are, not surprisingly, oriented towards the pop genres. That said, they aren’t just a collection of current hits. Playlists include some old gems and more obscure songs. Clearly, the songs were chosen with care and not strictly driven by machine learning algorithms.
One unanticipated side effect of this was that the rest of the family noted how much better the music was in the kitchen. No more of that “weird Dad music” 🙄. I take some consolation in the knowledge that in about ten years they’ll rediscover and appreciate these “classic songs” and finally realize that, in fact, I do have good musical tastes.
Although the music is generally good, discoverability is terrible. MacStories pointed this out and created a very helpful Shortcut for grouping and playing these playlists. Even when you select “See All” from the Just Ask Siri section, Apple Music shows some random selection of the playlists. I haven’t noticed any particular pattern of which ones are displayed and can’t understand why Apple is making it so difficult to browse them. Maybe they’re still experimenting?
I never did find reasons to listen to many of the playlists, like the whole series for Zodiac signs or the one for square dancing. This just shows the diversity of playlists available and, again, points out the problem with discoverability.
This was a successful experiment that forced me to actually experience the feature. That said, I wouldn’t want to continue relying on only these playlists. I’ll keep using them when I can’t be bothered to carefully choose an album or playlist and just want something appropriate to the mood or activity, which surely is the whole point of them anyway.
I’ve listened to a few Spatial Audio songs on Apple Music and I’m impressed! If you listen to a familiar song, you can really notice the difference. Lots of space and previously unnoticed details in these new mixes 🎧🎶
I added a HomePod to the newly renovated house. The sound quality is definitely as good as advertised and I appreciate the Apple Music integration 🎶. Siri has worked just fine for me so far, though I only really use it for reminders and calendar events.
