2020 Year in Review — Music

January 1, 2021
2 min read

This year I tried to listen to more music, as for a last couple of years I was listening mostly to podcasts. And 2020 was a good year for that.

Plastic Hearts — Miley Cyrus

She is back and better than ever. Electric pop paired with punk sounds together with her voice, it’s just the recipe for success. If you still think of Miley based on her previous albums (which I actually enjoyed) give her another chance. She really has changed.

Music To Be Murdered By — Eminem

Didn’t like the his last album, so wasn’t expecting much and got blown away after the first listen. It is the same old Eminem I loved, before he mostly became a Trump hater.

He plays with words and sounds in this one like before and that is his talent. Was surprised by the release of the second volume, but didn’t enjoy it that much.

girlfriends — girlfriends

This was a surprising hit, a new band with a first album, and it is everything I could wish for form and alternative album. I added every song to the library and that says a lot.

folklore — Taylor Swift

I was surprised as much as anyone when this came out. But played it on repeat for a long time. Great album, made in isolation during the pandemic. Unfortunately can’t say the same about her second one — evermore.

Apple Music vs Spotify

August 22, 2018
3 min read

A couple of years ago when it was hard to find streaming music service in Latvia, I’ve had to learn what is proxy server and how to mask that you are in another country (Sweden if I remember correctly), to try Spotify. It wasn’t a great experience, I’ve had data cap on my phone, so I’ve stopped using it, but I’ve realised – for better or for worse, it is the future of music. Then Rdio and Spotify came to Latvia, almost at the same time. I’ve used Rdio for a long time until switching to Spotify and sticking with it for years. 

Enter Apple Music. I’ve tried the service when it first got announced and didn’t care for it. Spotify was a superior product in my opinion, so after the 3-month trial ended, I’ve cancelled my subscription.

Lately, though, I’ve realised there are a couple of things that drove me away from using Spotify and couple of months ago, I’ve become Apple Music subscriber.

I still like the Spotify design, app icon and interface better, it works closer to how I imagine the streaming music service should work, but there are two biggest things Spotify lacks, which Apple Music has.

First, Apple Music has Russian hand-picked playlists. Russian is my native language, so this is a big feature for me. There are playlists for different genres and general Top for songs in Russian. Spotify lacks it, there is Russian music, but Apple Music just has more of it.

Second, also very big issue, for Spotify Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian are the same, or so it seems. If I listen to one song in Latvian it will recommend me songs in Lithuanian and Estonian (languages I don’t speak and I’m not interested in music in those languages). And I don’t know if I press «Don’t like» button on songs in Lithuanian, will it also show me fewer songs in Latvian? Apple Music doesn’t have this problem. It recommends me a couple of Latvian artists or songs every now and then and mostly I’m glad it does.

Oh, and I didn’t mention Siri, with one of the greatest features – «Hey Siri, play something». It’s amazing how well it works.

It could change in the nearest future, there is a big competition between Spotify and Apple Music, which is good for the consumers, but for now, I’ll stick with Apple Music and see how it goes.

Spotify’s biggest redesign ever brings long-awaited Collection view

April 9, 2014
1 min read

Spotify’s biggest redesign ever brings long-awaited Collection view

Unfortunately, without its famous yellow stars (and with the addition of a few prominent design cues), the app looks more than ever like a darker shade of chief competitor Rdio — but that might not be such a bad thing for Spotify.

I finally got the update and it messes up with the way I interact with an app. I’ve left Rdio because of all those features. I don’t need collections. I was syncing Starred playlist for offline listening on a phone and it was very easy to add a song to that playlist. Now I have to add it to my Collection and then to a playlist for sync? Not great at all. 

What to listen to while running

March 17, 2014
2 min read

In my recent post I’ve wrote about choosing activity tracking app. After that there is even more important and difficult choice – what to listen to. Running without headphones is not an option. I get borred pretty fast and start thinking about how hard it is to run early on. Here are my thoughts about enterntaining yourself while running.

Running with music

About a year ago I completely ditched iTunes and started listening to music only on Spotify. I have Starred playlist with about 700-800 songs, which get cached on my laptop and smartphone. Being lazy person that I am, I didn’t go through this playlist looking for perfect songs for running. Instead I’ve found two playlists [1] and [2], that were a good fit for my tempo.
My first couple of runs were pretty quick. I’ve run a little more than 2km, so listening to music was enjoyable. Then, as my runs got longer, music started to get boring after about 4th song and it does a bad job blocking those “I can’t! I want to stop!” thoughts.

Podcasts

My second choice was – podcasts. I’ve tried many of them, some work, some don’t. They are just too slow and mess up your tempo, but you can find something that will fit you. Looking for a good one in your podcast listening app takes couple of minutes, and then there are ads. If you listen to podcasts, there is a good chance you’ve heard Squarespace ad hundreds of times. Chance are you skip ads and it’s not easy done while running. That means you have to look for a podcast, which doesn’t mess up your tempo, is long enough and doesn’t have ads, easier said than done.

My last choice – audiobooks

As with podcasts, you have to find the right one. Books, though, are much longer than a podcast, which means you can listen to one book for a week or two. This was the last thing I’ve tried and I stuck with it. If it’s an interesting book, you forget about the fact that you are running. Often I get surprised by the distance I’ve run without even noticing.