This week a classic "I don't have to work" project: sorting out my music library.
My music collection has been all over the place for a while. I have been using iTunes Match since it came out about ten years ago. It's a good service, allowing you to match any DRM-free audio file with the iTunes catalogue and download it to any other iTunes-equipped device, still DRM-free. I've also bought a lot of (DRM-free) music from iTunes over the years.
All of this adds up to about 35 days of music, but it's all been in Apple's cloud storage -- until now. I downloaded the lot, and it's on both a drive attached to the Mac mini (which acts as a server) and on my ThinkPad. That's about 127Gb of music, or 13,552 tracks. Crikey.
I also downloaded the music I have in Amazon's cloud. In 2013 Amazon came up with a terrific idea: if you bought a CD, you got DRM-free MP3s with it for nothing. The service was called AutoRip and amazingly it's still around – although it's not available on every album. If you have the physical space, buying music on CD is usually better than just purchasing the digital file (I think musicians tend to get paid more, and you get a physical backup).
The three things which most caught my attention
- Over in Russia, Putin has signed off on measures designed to limit access to information he doesn't like, including making it illegal to tell people how to use a VPN. Don't think this is only happening in Russia – I'm sure that our current government would love to do the same, probably in the name of "protecting children". You only have to look at the Online Safety Bill to see that.
- Jane Friedman found a bunch of AI-written books published under her name on Amazon and of course Amazon doesn't do a thing about it. Why should Amazon care? They get paid either way. The company has long gone through the enshittification window.
- Local-first software is a bit of a backlash against the complete control which cloud services deliver to corporates and I am totally here for it.
Things I have been writing
On Cnet Deleting its Archive: There's been a controversy over Cnet doing what it calls "content pruning" for SEO purposes. I've done a lot of SEO work on publisher sites, and I think the controversy is overblown. In fact the guidance they give about when and why to do it is exemplary, as are the safeguards they take to ensure it stays available on the Internet Archive.
Things I have been reading
I had a quick canter through M John Harrison's The Centauri Device which is a book I must have read a dozen times, but which I always love. It warped my head a bit when I was 10 and first read it (it was the only SF paperback in the English newsagents when I went on holiday to Spain) and, once you read it, explains a lot about me.
