PixlBit

Being lazy on Saturday morning while typing up my Quick Hits blog might be my new Friday entry. I like having a random podcast on, while propping the laptop on my legs. So how are you Pixlpeeps? Excited for the 3 Day weekend? I was planning on being lazy today but now I kind of want to go to the bank and deposit my check and maybe visit the Best Buy. Who knows, I might change my mind before this blog is done. Let’s get started!

 

Apple Music Vs. Spotify

So last week I signed up for 3 months of Spoitfy for .99 cents. I’ve had a week to play with it and first general impressions are that I love this service but more on this later. Yesterday I decided why not check out Apple Music and on my phone I have a free 3 month trial, so I signed up. First impressions are meh. Of course this isn’t really fair because I’ve only had one day but here are some first thoughts about both:

 

Spotify: The phone app is easy to use, has a dark skin so when I’m using it at night it isn’t too bright. The desktop app has the Friends feature which should be on the phone app. It’s interesting to see what some friends are listening to. This really isn’t important but if you’re curious and want to make fun of someone who has Backstreet Boys on repeat this is the way to go.

Everything syncs and this is a key feature. You can play a song on your phone, launch the desktop app and see the progress bar in real time and then continue playing to that app. I like this. Also created playlist appear and it’s good to go. Another important feature is that the app on iOS and Android look the same. I have no problems going from my phone to my Android MP3 player.

 

Apple Music: Apple Music uses the music app on iPhone, iTunes on the desktop, and an Apple Music app on Android. The only problem with this is that the background is white and can be bright when using the app in the dark. Another thing I found kind of funky is that you need to use iCloud to create playlists. It works fine on the phone but it seems to drain battery a lot faster than Spotify but this is probably because I was still setting up the service. Also setting up iCloud on iTunes is a pain because it wants to scan every track in your library and try to make it available online. In theory this is awesome because you can have access to your library. Drawback is that if you have a bigger than normal library this takes awhile to scan. Currently I started my scan back up because it was taking too long last night.

 

For the most important thing, the music selection:

 

Spotify: it does a decent job at exposing me to new music. There is a lot of duplicate tracks I’ve encountered while browsing through their playlists. Don’t get me wrong there are some really good playlists and I found an album or two I want to add to my library. I also found the user curated playlists to be interesting.

AM: Apple has a huge library so there should be more selection, and well there is. I’ve found more single on AM in one day than I did in one day on Spotify. Apple also has a section of older albums to check out. I own most of the ones that were offered today but I appreciate the recomendations of stuff that I may have missed. There is a lot to like with this service especially if you are already in the Apple Ecosystem.

 

Podcasts:

Spotify: It offers podcasts and if I go with this service I really don’t need to use Castbox because it offers the same selection and everything lives in one app.

AM: I can’t find a podcast feature, and I refuse to use the Apple Podcast app because it kept unsubscribing me from a couple of podcasts.

 

Radio:

Spotify: I haven’t used it yet, but there seems to be quite a selection of genres.

AM: same as Spotify

 

Others Interesting Things:

Spotify: It has a feature that lets me know which concerts are nearby.

AM: A ton of exclusive content like Apple only recordings of artists, video, and other goodies. Also while setting up my AM on my Android Player I had to verify that it was me and it sent a code to my phone. I dig the extra security.

I haven't tried the download feature to listen offline. I'll give that a try this week and see how both do.

 

Random Gaming Section of Playlists on Spotify

So Who Wins?: I don’t know yet. I like both, Apple does offer a lot but so does Spotify. One thing that may sway me is if I also sign up for iTunes Match ($25/year) that will let me have my entire music library on their servers so I can stream download anything I own (up to 100,000 songs that I did not buy from iTunes) onto any device with iTunes or their music player. So in the future if I decide to go back to Android phones I can still use this service. This is cool even if I already own a program that let’s me synce my Android device to iTunes. If I had to choose today, it would probably be Apple Music because I am already invested in the iStuff but damn both services are really good, and at $10 a month its a great tool to have if you’re like me and don’t listen to the radio but want to find new music.  

 

Chris Reads

I’ve been lazy when it comes to reading for the year and I am now four books behind where I should be so I’ll mix in some comics because Goodreads claims an issuse as a book to bring my numbers back up. Anyways I started reading Dirty Sexy Politics by Meghan McCain, which is about the Presidential Campaign of John McCain. So far I’m a couple of chapters in and the narration feels kind of whiny because Meghan wasn’t made aware that Sarah Palin was the choice for VP. It is interesting to read about what life is like on the campaign, the hierarchy within the tour buses, and other interesting tidbits you don’t see.

 

Pickups

Games

Ok so I bought a bundle this week, but how can you say no to a $1 bundle? From Fanatical

 

Two games, some DLC, and they live on my laptop instead of the Steam Drive. Can’t go wrong. I’ll probably start one of them this weekend, talk about how much I like/hate it and then not play it for a couple of months. That seems like my usual for gaming.

 

Alright Pixlpeeps, I’m calling it here because you good people should enjoy the weekend. Have a good holiday (for you folks outside of the USA, take Monday off too and spend it with us)

 

That’s all for now, more later!

-Chris