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U2 Hijacked My iTunes Playlist

And It Pissed Me Off MUCH More Than I Expected

Right, I had heard the kerfuffle, people were annoyed that U2’s new album came free with new iPhones. Some of the reactions seemed a little extreme to me, I mean, OK someone gave you an album, you can delete it, big deal. Maybe it’s even good. I was curious and I was going to get around to listening to it. I really like some of U2’s records. I finally went and got an iPhone two months ago. I like the thing, I’m getting used to it, I love having iTunes in a unit with my phone and email and blah blah, welcome to iSociety, I’m digging it, but THEN!

I’m driving on the freeway, listening to MY playlist, with music I selected, you know, songs I CHOSE to listen to, and this tune comes on I don’t recognize. WTF is this, I’m thinking. I can’t skip over it, or even look at the iPhone screen, because I’m driving, but then I hear Bono’s voice and immediately realize what has happened. The free download invaded my device. It didn’t wait for me to choose to download it. It crashed my party. It hijacked my iTunes playlist. And I was seriously enraged, just so much more angry than I would have expected. Yelling expletives at U2, I turned off my car stereo, the only thing I could safely do in that moment. I was just NOT going to listen to something that one of the biggest bands in the world forced me to. It turned me off to U2 instantly and properly.

Now here’s the thing. U2 doesn’t need me to like them. They don’t really need to care what any of us think of this. Apple Inc. gave them 100 million dollars to exclusively distribute that record for a period. Of course U2 took the money. Because even if you already have more money than God, as U2 has had for a long time now, you still accept a check for let me say it again: 100. Million. Dollars. I don’t resent them their success and I don’t blame them for taking the dough. But they lost me. I just have no interest in a band that would take my personal music set, that I am deejaying, for myself, and put their record on in an ambush. I don’t even care if it’s any good or not. It could be Sgt. Pepper for all I care.

When this happened, it really surprised me how much it offended me. But on reflection it makes sense. Our music collections are very, very personal. We each have unique, subjective, significant meanings attached to the records we love and the playlists we assemble. Bono, I can forgive his relentlessly self-aggrandizing Jesus cozying up to war criminals to Save The Children schtick, I want to think his heart’s in the right place. Edge, he wants to build a vast compound castle fortress whatever where he’s not supposed to because he can afford to buy the moon and Mars twice, fine, OK, he likes shiny things. Do not jump into my music collection like you are welcome and wanted there automatically for some reason. How fantastically arrogant. No.

I downloaded the delete U2 app. And ran it. I am sure the 100 million dollars more than makes up for pissing off a fan who bought WAR on its 1st pressing, and tickets to see them live several times in the 80’s and 90’s, and listened to Joshua Tree hundreds of time, joyfully and willingly, because I wanted to, and chose to.

This was an amazingly tone-deaf move on Apple and U2’s part, in my perplexingly strong opinion. But I gotta call it as I felt it. My music playlist. Mine.

RIP Yahoo Web / Media Player

LAST AND FINAL UPDATE OF THIS EVER-EVOLVING POST! June 25, 2015

I’ve been meaning to say – beloved WordPress open-source geniuses have solved this whole issue and you don’t need a plugin or anything else to manage audio streams and downloads and playlists anymore, just WordPress. This has been true for a while now I just now finally got around to updating ye olde “Yahoo Player Lament” post =). Done. Closed. Le fin. Or as Jonathan Richman said, bye bye, bye bye. I’ll leave the rest of it and the comments below for posterity as it was such a lively thread for those of us who care madly about this stuff.

LADEEEEZ AND GENTLEMEN! Musicians and bloggers, audio web geeks and music lovers of every stripe the world over, we have an UPDATE! 10-2-2014 :->

It’s not: an update for the dearly departed Yahoo Web Player. It’s not: a solution for streaming video. It’s not: a solution for platforms other than WordPress. It is: a badass new WordPress plugin for audio streaming that works on (praise all that is holy) all major platforms including iOS, Android, etc. I am testing out the free version here. Pro version purchase imminent, as it allows for multiple playlists, drag and drop ordering of songs and other features which will be essential for the “power-user.” Wanted to make sure it hums along and works as intended and so far yes yes yes it does.

I will leave this thread open for further improvements, revelations, or laments about our old pal YMP / YWP. But I’m pretty sure the audio-player wp-plugin question has been finally solved by something solid, cross-platform, stable, and easy to use. Get the plugin here.

UPDATE 2-22-2014! Thanks Jaap for the Playlist function update! Awesome work, it’s great to see that part working again. Thanks everyone for your kind feedback and notes. Glad to see so much interest in this. Please feel free to post any links to your uses of the player, or blog posts about this subject, in the thread below.

UPDATE 1-28-2014! Scroll down to the more recent comments or click here for the latest exciting updates around this.

UPDATE 8-30-2013! OK, to summarize from the comment thread, what we’ve found is that you can host your own instance of the player and modify it to fit your needs. You can download it from here. This is unfortunately not a solution for bloggers who use shared servers and can’t install and run the software locally. What yahoo had going was a neat little snippet of code that activated the player from any domain, and served it up from Yahoo’s servers. The good news is if you can install it, it runs exactly the same way as the remotely served version used to. We have it running again on publicdomain4u.com and it seems to work perfectly. For those going this route: it’s important to note that you need to poke through the player code and make sure that all of the elements are served locally. There still are some images and bits that come off Yahoo servers, and given that they’re not supporting this software anymore, it’s a safe bet those elements will go dark sooner or later. It’s a hell of a piece, as others have stated here, it’s the best web media player out there, ESPECIALLY for music, by a country mile.

Big props to our server admin and chief propeller-hat, Lou Parmelee at Planet Six String for getting the player humming for us again!

UPDATE 8-20-2013! See encouraging developments in the comments below, and feel free to join in the discussion.

UPDATE 8-14-2013! It’s gone again. Bye bye. Yahoo Media Player, or Yahoo Web Player, or whatever it was called. How sad, that was the coolest thing Yahoo ever made.

UPDATE 7-8-2013! It’s on, the Yahoo Web Player is not discontinued, turns out that report was erroneous. You just need to change the URL to access it. View the very simple fix, right here. Truly happy news.

ORIGINAL POST:

Ack! Yahoo turned off their WebPlayer service. What a bummer for all the sites out there that used it. I used it extensively in PublicDomain4U, various other music blogs, and the band sites I manage. I know of roughly a bazillion other music sites that also used it. This was a simple way to make all your .mp3 or other media types load automatically in a neat little player – just by adding a line or two of code to your head tag.

I had wondered how Yahoo benefited from this magnanimous service to the Webmasters of the world. I had wondered what their expense in tech resources and cash amounted to, for making it available. If anyone knows of a media player that works similarly to the late, great, Yahoo WebPlayer, please leave it, or your #$%^&’s and laments about this, in the comments below.

For now, without any explanation or discussion, webplayer.yahoo.com redirects to the front page of Yahoo. I did find one article, on webpronews, which explains that Yahoo is shutting down a stack of services including the redundant AltaVista search engine. That’s understandable. But the Yahoo WebPlayer was a great service, and it will be sorely missed by myself and everyone else who wove it into the fabric of their websites.

Burning Snark or The Death of The Counter-Counter-Counter Culture

I was early to the Burning Man backlash. I avoided taking drugs in the desert long before it became a corporate team-building event. Growing up in Berkeley was enough. All I had to do to see people dancing naked with body paint was walk down the street. Sculptures, art, lunacy, music, it was normal. By the time folks burned a giant wooden man on Baker Beach while drumming with bones through their noses, I had developed an aversion to all things Woodstock-y. I love that it happened, and I love the music that come from it, but giant gatherings of stoned people make me nervous. Now it’s rich vs. richer stoned people with their apps and chefs, and the remaining shreds of counter-culture dangerousness are waning from it, and that’s normal. Soon it will be Budweiser Presents Burning Man and Google buses will arrive by the dozen. Maybe there will be an uprising, as not-so-rich burners rebel against the gentrification of their beloved ritual. I wonder what Burning Man riot police would look like? I’m guessing they’d have glowing neon nightsticks and hover-cars, maybe their own deejay truck with some dubstep theme music. The whole thing could be filmed as a reality show and they could sell tickets to enjoy the experience virtually from afar if you don’t want to actually die in the desert. Heck I might even go if I could stay home.

Tales Of Terror, Fun, and Great Rock n' Roll In A Very Small World

I just listened to a great album that was released in 1984, by a band from Sacramento called Tales Of Terror. I learned about them from this article, ..the story of one of Sacramento’s best, almost forgotten bands by Aaron Carnes. It’s a great read yet a tragic story. The magic of recorded music is that work like this can be rediscovered long after its creation, and I’m just rocking the hell out to this album here in August of 2014. It’s fun, irreverent, original, tight, adventurous and did I mention, just incredibly fun. Wish I woulda seen these guys live, but I was woefully unaware of them. I do recognize some of the songs, probably from KALX, I’m guessing they would have been all over this. Love the lyrics and vocals, great guitar and bass work throughout, and monster drumming. OK, that cues up the “small world” part: I knew the drummer! This guy Mike Hunter, an amazing player with a heavy foot and brilliant rock and punk sensibilities – he played a few gigs with Stiff Richards in the mid 90’s! I had no idea about his history with Tales Of Terror until this morning. And listening to the record, I recognize his playing immediately. I hope their friends’ goals of making a documentary and licensing the album are realized. I’m listening through a 2nd time now (youtube listen #2,146!) and just loving it. It’s downright sexy, and that’s not the 1st word we use to describe most punky records, izzit? Cramps meet Buzzcocks meet Elvis doing 80’s hardcore in a roadhouse with skateboards. What’s not to love?

The Holy Grail Of 8 Bar Rock n’ Roll Guitar Solos

In rock or power-pop music, a guitar solo usually has to explode from the start, take the song’s energy up a notch or eleven, and launch it into the next section. Often this is done in 16 bars or more, but there are some notable examples of short and sweet 8 bar solos which do this beautifully. My favorite 8 bar solo of this type is Mick Ronson’s work on Ian Hunter’s single “Once Bitten, Twice Shy.”

The guitar playing on the entire track is brilliant, starting with an almost comical little drum beat and Chuck Berry style rhythm, building steadily to an ecstatic solo, which sets up the last verse, chorus and outro. I encourage guitarists to try and learn this one. I recently went at it with one of my more advanced young students, and it surprised both of us. This thing is hard to cop! I have spent more time on it than I have spent dissecting much longer solos by virtuoso players like Jeff Beck and Steve Morse. With expert use of amp feedback, note bending, vibrato, and just, insane over-the-top rock passion, Ronson stuffs more energy into this short little outburst than any other short solo I can think of.

100 Greatest Guitarists Ever Voted On By Other Famous Guitarists

While on hold listening to endless hold music this morning, I stumbled upon Rolling Stone’s “100 Greatest Guitarists Of All Time” list from a few years back. To see if it has any relevance, I checked, and Roy Buchanan isn’t even on it, so it’s puffery. Also they should specify “Rock Guitarists Of The Type Rolling Stone Likes.” I mean, to leave it open as “Guitarists” and not include Andrés Segovia and Charlie Christian is just preposterous. Django Reinhardt and Wes Montgomery aren’t on it, I mean, shut up. Of course it’s silly and just entertaining content, but, glad I’m not the only one who found it even further off the mark than it should have been. Steve Newton’s take on straight.com is fun. Bruce Springsteen? A guitarist? He’s a great songwriter and performer and bandleader and all those things but please. This is a guitar player:

RANCID – "Let's Go"

One of the great punk records of the 90’s, RANCID’s 2nd LP is the one that really announced them to the world. It was an exciting time with GREEN DAY and RANCID blowing up out of the east bay scene, and suddenly punk rock was a mainstream genre. When I co-wrote “Name” with Tim Armstrong, all the big labels wanted to sign them. Coming from the Lookout Records school of DIY glory, they weren’t terribly interested in becoming sanitized pop stars. So instead of watering things down, they stayed on Epitaph Records and kept getting MORE punk!

"HOBO," the cleverly titled CD by HOBO

Recorded with my fellow UPTONES Ben Eastwood and Paul Jackson in 1992 with Tom Pope on drums and Matthew King Kaufman producing, this is an eclectic set of songs we created while touring as HOBO. “Sky High” has a funky syncopated bass/guitar line in the verse and a hard-rock/power-pop chorus. “Fish In A Tree” and “Gearing Up For A Breakdown” also don’t fit squarely in any one genre. “She’s A Mystery,” one of my favorite Paul Jackson songs, is probably the most “pop” thing on the album. Some wild stuff on this one. Available from iTunes Store.

hobo-promo-shot350

G'morning

I like mornings. Mornings are great. Every time I get one, I think, wow, another one! We get a certain number and then we don’t. Some folks find morning people annoying. I understand that. I’d find myself annoying in the morning too if I weren’t me. I mean I get so damn chipper with the brisk fresh air and birds chirping and coffee making noises. I’m going to update some web thingys, write a few posts, sip fine Peets’ Sumatra (they don’t pay me to say that but they should), babble at the cat, hum some happy little melodies, and by God, wear my bunny slippers, yo. I’m hard core like that.

RANCID – RANCID LP

One day in the early 90’s, Tim Armstrong knocks on my door and asks if they can cover “Get Out Of My Way” (which I wrote with UPTONES singer Erik Rader), in their new punk rock band. “Sure, go for it!” I answer, “of course!” We then write another song called “Outta My Mind” and a few months later he brings me their debut CD with both songs on it, and they’re off and running.