BMW Connected Apps Protocol - <AUTHOR> https://hufman.github.io/stories/bmwconnectedapps <comment><USER2> > asked if I could get access to the BMW Ready SDK ... They declined.

Sometimes this is all the motivation a person needs. Now it's (almost?) reverse-engineered and it could be a big headache for BMW in the future if a exploit/bug/fun-stuff is found by the right people.

Companies: share your SDKs. The guy/girl doing a RE is not your regular "coding demo SDK apps" engineer and will go deeper.

<comment><USER3> This happened to me with GM

I tried to get developer access via a form and never got a response, so I tried sending a message the head of the infotainment on LinkedIn

Thankfully he was able to get my application to the dev site moving... but unfortunately, they required a business use case to get an API key once you had access to the site.

So I tried to pick the API key out of the app.

They had the most novel obfuscation I've ever seen for an app's API key

 _The key was inside the image data for the launcher icon_

There was a weird transformation applied to it too, so instead of trying to reverse engineer it I just fired up Charles and intercepted it from there

With the API key and the documentation for the API from the dev site I was able to write a program that started preconditioning my Volt when I left my apartment (the car was in an attached underground garage, so it'd be at the right temperature by the time I got down)

<comment><USER4> I am thoroughly impressed! How did you find that the key was obfuscated inside the image though?

<comment><USER3> Similar to what netsharc describes

Found the call that added the header for the API key to each request (even with Proguard's obfuscation string literals are preserved, so searching for "x-api-key" worked)

From there I followed the call chain to their transformer, then looked at the input for the transformer and it was loading a subset of bytes read from the same resource as the launcher icon (and sure enough, opening it in a hex editor there was some weird "garbage" that I'm honestly surprised Android doesn't choke on)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I bought a mid-tier BMW last year. Regardless of how you look at it, it's a big, expensive luxury car. And being a big, expensive luxury car it's big and carefully made and feels like driving around in a well appointed living room or a first class cabin.

And the UX is pretty good. The computer controls can almost be used by memory, they're very close to hand and well laid out. The nav is so-so but the in-dash lane view makes it sane for big cities.

But the software is _awful_. It's not poorly designed, necessarily, but it's buggy as hell.

Half the time I enter the vehicle the car thinks I'm my wife. She's a foot shorter than I am which means I can crawl into the seat for about 30 seconds before my legs start to cramp. In that time, the following invariably happens:

1\. I painfully get a foot on the break and hit the ignition.

2\. The computer prompts me to confirm that I'm my wife.

3\. While I'm trying to select my profile CarPlay kicks in and opens the media screen.

4\. I navigate through several menu levels to set the correct driver profile, swearing the whole time.

Now, I can move the seat back before I enter, but it's slow and clumsy. Then I still have to go through the same process, just minus the leg cramp.

<comment><USER6> It sounds like all of these problems have to do with the driver profile. My grandpa's 1999 Buick Park Ave had 2 key fobs. Each fob was paired with a different driver profile. Depending on which fob unlocked the car, the seat and preferences were adjusted instantly. Surely BMW can do something similar here. My only advice is to talk to your salesman / dealer and see if they can set you straight.

<comment><USER7> I have a completely new Audi A4 2019. Unfortunately I have the same problem. Additionally, it takes ages to switch profile. When I select my profile, it loads 2-5min until an error pops up, promting me to select again. Then it takes like 5secs. What is wrong with IT culture at German car manufacturers?

<comment><USER8> It's latency, as the key fob has to communicate with the German servers, and that round-trip takes a while.

.......

I'm only kind of joking, I don't know the real reason, but I dislike the fact I can't just get a simple mechanical car. It worked for decades, why did we need to add janky software to everything?

<comment><USER9> Hey, it's not easy REST-ing in German:

{"AnfrageArt":"Personenerkennungsschlüsselanforderungsanfrage", "ParameterListe":["HerstellerSpezifischePersonenkraftfahrzeugidentifikationsnummer":"1NXBR12E31Z463785"]}

}

<comment><USER10> This is giving me flashbacks to reverse-engineering some German-made code with only a veeery basic understanding of German and no technical dictionary. Google Translate usually had a seizure with technical terms and by the end I was just going by the "shape" of the code, despise having full function names. What a language!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's a very interesting article. I'm also impressed by such dedication. Hashing the strings from the decompiled APK to easily debug the protocol in Wireshark is inspiring.

On the topic of using a BMW with you phone without being frustrated, some people put a third-party box between the screen and the car infotainment computer to get Android Auto. I heard the experience isn't perfect.

Personnally I use Google Assistant and I think it works relatively well. I can use it to get directions, make the sound of random animals, change radio, play music on Spotify... To trigger it, you can long press the voice command button on the steering wheel.

<comment> bmo-at Yeah, I 'inherited' a 2015 BMW 1-series with very basic equipment from my grandma. Plenty of car for a cs student, but I really wanted Apple Carplay and Android Auto in my car.

You're right though, it is not perfect. But I was surprised how well it's integrated. It definitely connects faster and more reliably than the default Bluetooth connection in the car and it can be removed without a trace afterwards, since it's just a piggyback box.

I do experience a crash though sometimes, and then I have to stop, turn off and lock the car for ~30 seconds just to restart the box.

I have a binary firmware file from the manufacturer, was thinking I might try to decompile it and make my own version, but I don't have a the experience or the time atm.

<comment><USER12> There is a slow movement to Reverse Engineer carplay (mostly the problem lies with apple MFi encryption) but it'd be great if more people joined in to make a truly opensource carplay implementation

The most advanced RE effort I've found: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnS_TP18VBk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnS_TP18VBk) (comments) [https://gist.github.com/Wh1terat/f06c8b4a41f93f482bf5892095b...](https://gist.github.com/Wh1terat/f06c8b4a41f93f482bf5892095bbd40b)

<comment><USER13> What's there to reverse? CarPlay is extremely basic, you send a surface geometry to the iPhone and you tell it what it can be used for, a lot like Apple Watch complications, and then CarPlay can decide what to send to the buffer.

Example: In a Mini, with wireless CarPlay I get a Main View for CarPlay's springboard, and configurable split screen for other car functions, however one of the functions is a media view for currently playing media. This allows me to use any car functions in the main view and still see what media is playing from any source including CarPlay, and it shows the Album View from CarPlay.

[https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=12&ved=2ahUKEwj- wIOr95LnAhUnFjQIHYUSCYkQFjALegQIBRAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fdevstreaming- cdn.apple.com%2Fvideos%2Fwwdc%2F2016%2F722x2eefo3u2rp8k8qs%2F722%2F722_developing_carplay_systems_part_1.pdf%3Fdl%3D1&usg=AOvVaw1hlezk8GKtUDeGcCFj1-Gh)

<comment><USER12> The (MFi?) authentication prevents you from making your own carpc compatible with carplay because of encryption, there are efforts to break it (extract key) but AFAIK none of the public ones have succeeded so far

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> IPs removed and anonymous because it's a little intrusive

Someone at BMW added me accidentally as a nexus repo. I get loads of BMW traffic now, and it's really annoying.

Leaks a bunch of fun stuff.

[BMW'S IP] - - [20/Jan/2020:08:52:11 +0100] "GET .... com/bmw/cc/b2vngtp/statusAPI/20200120.074026-feature_2020-T1.5-CDNGTP-3818-improve- stability-of-integration- tests/statusAPI-20200120.074026-feature_2020-T1.5-CDNGTP-3818-improve- stability-of-integration-tests.war HTTP/1.1" 403 1364 [MYSITE] "-" "Nexus/3.15.1-01 (OSS; Linux; 3.0.101-108.87-xen; amd64; 1.8.0_92)" "-"

<comment><USER15> Dang, there is something odd with the (unusual high) number of newly registrated comments on this post. Good comments, but could all be from the same person?

From zwb's bio: "(..) Hacker News is an online game you can play where your score is up in the top right corner and there's a leaderboard, and you get points by posting stuff and making comments people like. (..)"

<comment><USER16> E-mail exists. Please use it.

<comment><USER17> Should you though? So some drone in the legal department can accuse you of "hacking" or "stealing proprietary information"?

With a tech company, maybe you could but it's still a risk. With a big, 'old school' company? No. Hell no. Unsolicited advice on anything security related is a bad idea.

<comment><USER16> He is supposed to mail email@example.com. That way dang actually sees it. And the guidelines specifically ask for doing such meta communication off HackerNews.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I can't help but feel for this guy having done my own reverse engineering of BMW's i-bus back in the day. You get to the point where you see such possibility if the carmaker would just open up a little damn bit. It's a real shame that automakers feel that every software or hardware integration with their vehichle should be something to monetize. Even the forward thinkers like Tesla are no better on this front.

<comment><USER19> Another possible explanation (other than keeping everything in case it can be monetized) is being concerned with mirriad of ways it can bring liability to the company. Perhaps, it is not a practical way to keep such risk away, but I can see how it can be most rational decision by a big company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> These comments are reminding me why I like analog cars.

I do wish I had adaptive cruise control, though.

<comment><USER21> Yes completely!

I want an electric car. I don't want any screens though. Analogue dials, switches, buttons.

I don't expect to own a vehicle for 20 years, but what is the real life- expectancy of those LCD screens and back-lights? I'm driving a 9-year-old car right now and half of the 'tech' on it doesn't work worth shit. It drives ok, but it's nearing it's serviceable EOL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm confused why just 1 car company doesn't allow end-user developed apps. A model lineup like that seems like it'd be easy to turn dealer inventory. You have the historical success of both PC and mobile to understand how nobody can compete with a proprietary systems.

</comment><comment><USER23> "<java something-something> bytecode is really easy to decompile"

by the 3rd time i was laughing at this...

"not a problem, barely an inconvenience"

</comment><comment><USER24> > Cries for help on the Spotify forums were ignored

Yea sounds about right :(</comment>


Looking at German Traffic Signs - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/kasperfred/looking-at-german-traffic-signs-1hf9 <comment><USER2> > _In Submissions

Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter._

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

The first line of this article points out that it is a republication from a different canonical source.</comment>


Xmarks: Alive and Kicking - <AUTHOR> http://blog.xmarks.com/?p=2007

<comment><USER2> Xmarks is a prime example of why it's better to be lucky than good sometimes. Had these guys bothered to ask for money before simply deciding to pull the plug, they may simply never have raised the necessary funds and gone under like a ship in the night. Perhaps the only reason they don't have to pull the plug now is because they decided to throw in the towel too early, generating loads of buzz and getting their users on board. They tried their best to fail, and fate would have none of it :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Does this mean they found a way to sell all that user data?</comment>


"Why" questions trigger feelings bypassing data input and thinking. - <AUTHOR> http://www.stickyminds.com/sitewide.asp?Function=edetail&ObjectType=COL&ObjectId=16600&tth=DYN&tt=siteemail&iDyn=2

<comment><AUTHOR> Key points:

       "Why questions" have the ability to both gather data and to probe for
       underlying thoughts and decisions that lead to action. Other interrogatives
       (what, when, where, how) provide a better way to gather data since
       they focus on physical items or actions.

       I've learned that if I want data, I should use data-oriented
       questions that start with how, what, when, and where, and use why
       as a last choice.</comment>


Show HN: HNMention: Email notification when someone mentions you on Hacker News - <AUTHOR> http://www.hnmention.com/

<comment><USER2> Cool, just signed up to try it out.

<comment><USER3> Kevin Khandjian. </testing>

<comment><USER2> Didn't work, but I think it's based on username (tehwebguy, test)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup. Only username. It works like Twitter. You will only get notification if someone mentions you like @tehwebguy</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Recipe for OpenID-Enabling Your Site - <AUTHOR> http://www.plaxo.com/api/openid_recipe <comment><USER2> curious--is anybody actually using OpenID or is it like one of those things everyone promotes publicly on principle (like feeding hungry kids in 3rd world countries) but ignores privately?

<comment><USER3> We are (or rather Robert Morris is) working now on adding support for it on news.yc.

<comment><USER4> with sitepass?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That little phishing problem is still unsolved, yes?

<comment><USER6> In the sense that a rogue site can pretend to support openid, but actually present a copy of the openid provider's site, yes. People just have to be careful to check the domain name and SSL cert, just like everywhere else.

Wordpress.com has an interesting way of handling this; when you use your wordpress.com openid, it doesn't let you log in from the page you get redirected to. You have to manually go to the front page by typing in the address, log in there, and then continue. It's annoying, but probably patches the hole.

<comment><USER5> Thank god openid is here to make logging in so much easier!..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like the idea but I dot believe it will work. Major players (Amazon, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft) are NOT interested in open standards for _their_ user authentication. This is why Microsoft Passport failed and this is why Google Checkout will fail and OpenID will follow their "lead".</comment>


SoftBank Deal Values Food Startup Zume at $2.25B - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/01/zume-reportedly-snags-375-million-from-softbank-for-its-robotic-food-operations/ <comment><USER2> This is a head scratcher.

Its a mobile pizzeria...

<comment><AUTHOR> The CEO says "Pizza was our prototype. There's no reason why this technology wouldn't work for any restaurant or any food category."</comment></comment>


Show HN: Paperbin – Note Taking and Bookmarking and Read Later (online, Mobi, Epub) - <AUTHOR> http://paperbin.co <comment><AUTHOR> I was inspired by Pinboard and its business model. Over the next few weeks I hope to introduce more features for power users (like IFTTT support).

</comment><comment><USER2> Looks interesting - FYI your links to Privacy Policy and Terms is 404. Also, you built this on wordpress?

<comment><AUTHOR> > Also, you built this on wordpress?

Yep. It started as a personal blog and as I started to add features, I didn't see a reason to stop using WP.</comment></comment>


Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/15/technology/personaltech/music-streaming-cd.html <comment><USER2> I'm definitely on board with physical media. Almost all the vinyl I've bought comes with a download code anyway, and album artwork shines on a 12" x 12" canvas much more than it ever could on the tiny thumbnail you get on a music player app.

That being said, indie music stores like Bandcamp are digital only, but offer one-click DRM-free MP3 downloads for purchased songs/albums. The UX is focused on buying music first and supporting individual artists, rather than commoditizing their sound into an algorithmic playlist where they're lumped in with everybody else.

I honestly find Spotify and Apple Music bad for music discovery if your tastes aren't really adjacent to Top 40 (is that even a thing today?) style pop music. Back in the day, Last.fm used your iTunes/Foobar play history to show you bands you'd like. The algorithm was based on user-submitted tags, and the recommendations weren't limited to bands that had deals with the platform. I discovered a ton of new music across very different genres there. Unfortunately it doesn't look like the site is very active these days.

<comment><USER3> > I honestly find Spotify and Apple Music bad for music discovery if your > tastes aren't really adjacent to Top 40 (is that even a thing today?) style > pop music.

I strongly disagree. Spotify has dramatically increased the variety of music that I listen to and introduced me to lost of tiny artists with great music.

I'm looking at the official chart top 40 online and have to go down to 7th place to find an artist I know (Taylor Swift). Only one song on my "Release Radar" is in the Top 40 list (Sixteen by Ellie Goulding).

I think you get what you look for with Spotify. If you listen to a bunch of Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift, you'll be recommended a things like Aria Grande and AVICII. But if you listen to An Horse and Houndsmouth then you'll aparently get recommendations for The Mountain Goats and Me Not You.

<comment><USER4> > _I strongly disagree. Spotify has dramatically increased the variety of > music that I listen to and introduced me to lost of tiny artists with great > music._

I've used a number of music recommendation applications over the last decade.

With Spotify, I've noticed that it will become "stuck" in what I describe as similar artist troughs and valleys. In other words, the Spotify recommendation engine will pigeonhole your recommendations into certain subgenres, niches, or related artists more so than say Pandora or Last.fm would.

<comment><USER5> Yup, I've had to work around this. I'll pick a song I like, and do "song radio" to find more like it. But this makes a playlist which is basically 6 more similar artists, and no variety beyond that. But I want to branch out more, several steps beyond that. So I'll open a particular song from that playlist, go to "song radio" for that, and drag a bunch of songs I don't recognize back into the first playlist. Repeat this for a few more songs. Then once I've added a bunch more variety, do "playlist radio" again.

It's super obnoxious. I wish they had a slider for "be more adventurous" versus "hew close to the line". Do I remember Pandora having something like that?

<comment><USER6> Spotify automatically creates a playlist from songs you've "liked" while they're playing on radio. So just start a certain song radio, like the kind of songs that go into the direction you want, and then start playlist radio on the "Liked from Radio" playlist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What bugs me is that quite a lot of things are not available. I ripped my entire CD collection and uploaded into Google Music (not sure if that feature still exists). I have all this music available but I can not find it on other peoples google music. So if I share a song, they get an error. Most of this music is nothing special and quite mainstream but if I search on other peoples devices I can not find the songs only alternate versions from other people who made a cover version of the song.

I am also worried now that songs will just disappear. I no longer remember specific names but instead hit thumbs up to add them to a list. If the song gets removed from google due to license expiring or what ever that song just disappears from my list and in have no idea that I every had it on my list.

<comment><USER8> Man, I lost my precious childhood videos after "saving" on the cloud. Google deleted it because of some seconds of the background music of AC/DC's on the radio.

<comment><USER9> You played AC/DC on multiple videos, and deleted all your originals and other copies after uploading it to YouTube?

<comment><USER8> Oh, now I understood your question. I lost my physical backup, and now I can't recover it from Google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've got all my music ripped to FLAC, sitting on my file server, a little N40L microserver with 8tb mirrored storage (my music takes about 300gb total). On the server, I've got a script that uses ffmpeg to convert from flac to whatever format I want (currently aac and mp3, which my player devices support). The script also applies replaygain to keep the volume consistent. I run the script once and it processes the whole shebang.

This means that I control all of my music, stored in lossless format on a backed up server in my house, able to be deployed to any device I want whenever I want, in whatever audio format is popular at the time, in perpetuity.

<comment><USER11> Slightly of-topic but how do you discover new music to listen to?

<comment><USER10> Same way I have for the past 30 years. I listen from time to time to stations that play the kind of music I like. Sometimes I check out various places that have top 100 charts. If I find something I like, I go get it and add it to my collection. Rerun the script and resync my devices.

<comment><USER12> > I listen from time to time to stations that play the kind of music I like.

You're lucky! In my area, there are no such stations. All of the stations are essentially top 40 (in each of the major genres -- top 40 country, top 40 pop, etc.), talk, and sports.

There's nothing in any of those for me.

<comment><USER13> Internet radio may be able to solve your problem. Music podcasts, and internet radio sites/apps mean geographic location is no longer the limiting factor for what you can listen to.

There are big names like iHeartRadio and SlackerRadio but lots of smaller radio stations have internet streams and/or apps. Podcasts are nice because they can focus on niche genres or provide more information about artists/releases. Mixcloud is one of my favorite sites for listening to radio shows.

<comment><USER12> > Internet radio may be able to solve your problem

It's a problem that I've solved long ago, really. Internet streaming services bring their own set of problems, so I don't use them.

I do listen to podcasts (downloaded, not streamed), but not for music.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> No privacy terrors? What short memories we have.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal)

<comment><USER15> To nitpick: Pure musics CD (CD-DA) can't contain any DRM or rootkits, because the format doesn't allow for data - it's all sound.

Only combined CD-ROM/CD-R + CD-DA formats together with the unfortunate eagerness of Windows to auto-execute everything allows such rootkits.

So if you feed a music CD to a real old CD player, or to (say) a properly configured Linux computer: No privacy terrors.

<comment><USER16> To nitpick your nitpick: there were many attempts to implement DRM even on pure music CDs, see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy_Control](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy_Control)

My personal experience with this was with some import CDs (from Japan) that, from what I recall, messed with the error correction part of the data so that it skipped horrendously in my PC (so it was impossible to rip in cdex) but played fine in (most) standalone audio players.

<comment><USER17> From that Wikipedia article:

"As the Copy Control discs do not conform to the requirements of the CD standard, they are not labeled with the CDDA logo, which is trademarked by Philips."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Where are my Rockbox users at? My tiny plastic Sansa Clip+ MP3 player has been going for years, I'd be nothing without it. >10hrs playback, supports >128 GB microSD, plays OGG/FLAC/MP3/AAC/anything. The Rockbox firmware is still being developed, albeit at a slow pace.

By far the best combination of hardware+firmware I own. Unlikely to replace it for another few years. Sadly not produced any more :(

<comment><USER19> Just today I thought how much I appreciate that exact setup and that I should donate considerable money to the project.

So hereby I pledge that I will send 100 dollars this weekend. This is not even 2 dollars per months that this project provided me with a perfect portable media player setup.

Who's with me?

<comment><USER18> I have high respect for you. As for myself, I'll play the student card and bow out, haha :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> A couple years ago I took all my music back out of google music and restored from physical backups where necessary. Now, my audio player is an old laptop running linux, hooked up to some very nice speakers. (it can play podcasts too!)

The laptop just uses Rhythmbox, but you could obviously use whatever player you like. It's the best setup I've ever had. No terrible UI, no syncing, no garbage. I control what music is on there and where it's backed up. And most importantly, it has separated my music from general computer use. Yes it's technically playing on a computer it's the old linux laptop that's hooked up to the speakers. It barely uses any power and the keyboard is in an awkward position to type on. It's not convenient to watch videos or browse the internet on. It's not convenient to type on. It's really only good for listening to music. You can set it on and read, or do chores, or exercise, and never feel the urge to jump on HN, read the news, etc. If it weren't for the podcasts, it'd never even connect to the internet. And therefore it wouldn't matter if it were even updated or password protected.

<comment><USER21> So, do you buy each song separately digitally or physically? Also, after buying, how do you move it to your setup? For physical copies (CDs or Vinyls), do you rip and convert them to .flac or .mp3? For digital, do you remove the DRM?

<comment><USER22> I thought that Amazon and iTunes both have DRM free songs (for purchase / streaming does have DRM)

<comment><USER23> Nice feature I found on Amazon - when I buy the physical CD they add the albums to my "Amazon Music" so I can stream them as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Another reason CDs are still worth considering: classical music and, to a lesser extent, jazz CDs often feature extensive and informative liner notes that have never been posted online anywhere. I myself typically rip all my purchases to FLAC immediately and then I listen through my media centre, so I often forget that I have the original physical release there on the shelf, but when I do go back and look at that CD I am often amazed how good the liner notes are.

<comment><USER25> I agree. I mostly listen to classical music, although I also rip them but most of the time I still use cds. It seems current music players on computers never thought about creating classical music pieces playlist. I had to manually add pieces to create them with correct order or just add albums which is the same as just playing a cd.

In the end, I listen to music with CD players mostly, and still insist on buy a car with CD player

<comment><USER26> This is primarily the fault of later era CDs when the index marks were abandoned and small movements were separated by track breaks. Originally, Redbook audio was supposed to always have a silent pregap between tracks and indexes were for intra-track navigation. You will find this on early classical CDs. Then the problem is finding a player that supports skipping index marks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> My daughter got a record player for Christmas last year and it caused me to think about my relationship to music. After she got the record player, I've taken her to the record store a few times and it was like stepping out of a time machine. I loved everything about it (Waterloo Records in Austin is pretty fantastic).

I ended up buying a CD player and pulling my collection out of the attic. I had forgotten how good music from a CD sounds on a big stereo.

These days, I'm mostly listening to entire albums (even when I use a streaming service). I've also started buying CDs again. When I stopped buying CDs, they were usually between $15 and $25. In the past four months I've bought a bunch and haven't paid more than $8.

I know CDs are dying and now that I'm back into it, it kind of makes me sad. It's shocking to me to think the format was defined 40 years ago. The Philips and Sony engineers did a fantastic job.

<comment><USER28> I had a similar experience last winter when I popped a CD into my desktop. Probably the first time I had heard music with a bitrate higher than Spotify's 320kbps in a few years. Within a day I was off buying my favorite albums on FLAC and making a CD wishlist. Made me remember why I bought nice speakers in the first place.

And I've thought this for a while: With gigabit internet connections spreading, video streaming services that soak up bandwidth (10-20+ Mbps all day), WHY are companies stingy about audio bitrate? My connection can stream multiple 4K videos, yet audio is the same (or worse) bitrate than what I burned on CDs in 2003.

<comment><USER27> I think the bitrate stingyness comes from the fact that people tend to watch Netflix at home over wired internet and they listen to streaming music over a more expensive wireless connection, often on crappy headphones.

There are higher bitrate services out there. Deezer will stream FLAC and there are probably others.

Where are you buying FLAC files from? For now I'm still happy with physical CDs although I have ripped them to ALAC. I'm not sure what the difference is, but when I scroll through my library on iTunes there's never anything I want to listen to, but if I look through my physical discs I always find something I want to put on.

<comment><USER28> I like to get higher bitrate stuff from Bleep and Bandcamp.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I mostly buy my music via bandcamp nowadays and from time to time I buy a vinyl. I don't believe in the idea of the superiour vinyl sound, but I like that it makes listening a concious ritual.

Because I DJ from time to time I like to _have_ the stuff I like on my drive and so it ends up beeing either a download or vinyl. CD has totally fallen out of favour with me..

<comment><USER30> I once was chatting with a producer who worked for Disney for around 15 years. He said the so-called "warm" tone of vinyl vs the "harsh" sound of CDs is really that the vinyl format acts as a partial low-pass filter. So it's really just that you're hearing less high-freq sound on vinyl than on a CD.

<comment><USER31> Perhaps. I have heard they also master differently for vinyl since it can't provide the same dynamic, frequency, or stereo range as digital. Some listeners find the result more appealing.

<comment><USER29> Sometimes the vinyl master _is_ in fact better, because it is less compressed, because a mastering engineer can assume that people listening to vinyl got a decent sound system, while mastering for "web" means people have phone speakers, laptop speakers, hifi systems, whatever.

<comment><USER30> That's interesting, but I'm not sure what you mean by "compress". Do you mean data compression, or a compressing audio filter?

Web distribution (iTunes/etc.) files come from running the CD master through an AAC/MP3/etc. converter which does data compression only. But a 256Kbps/16bit/44.1KHz AAC (like you'd get from iTunes) is a lot higher quality than vinyl.

<comment><USER29> You are right thats ambgious, but in this context compression refers to the dynamic compression of the adio wave (so essentially reducing the difference in perceived loudness between the loudest and the most silent parts of a recording).

Data compression doesn't make much sense here, because you usually use uncompressed audiofiles anywhere unless it goes to the web.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I buy CDs occasionally and rip them, but it's 2019, there's no real need to amass a CD collection (unless you want to).

For most of my needs, spotify works out. I don't mind paying $10/mo since I use the offline listening so much. I only buy and rip CDs for my own collection if I -really- like that album or a song on it, and a web download isn't available. Occasionally spotify doesn't have a very specific version of a song– _Legend of a Mind_ by the Moody Blues from the 1967? BBC recording sessions comes to mind. Or artists like King Crimson.

I don't buy through itunes because of drm and the lack flac/alac options–why would I buy an mp3/m4a/aac file that I'm stuck with and can't transcode if needed? Bandcamp is a great alternative if the band you want happens to be on there. The app isn't too bad either if you forgot to download and sync an album.

Other benefits of ripping a CD or downloading a flac/alac file include having a perfect lossless copy. I can then transcode to any format that I want, whenever I want, however I want, from now until forever (or at least until the storage goes bad/breaks), without losing any quality.

With spotify pro + ublock origin, I never see ads on spotify or youtube anyway.

<comment><USER33> Just wondering how you manage Spotify + your own music collection. Is there an app that can play both Spotify _and_ imported files and present them in a single UI?

At the moment I can't enjoy anything that's not on Spotify simply because I wouldn't be able to listen to them really. I have hours of music on Spotify playlists and I would only need maybe a dozen of songs that aren't on there, so manually switching apps for those few times would be annoying.

<comment><USER34> Spotify allows you to import tracks from your computer and add them to playlists as if it was on Spotify. Obviously you can only access them on the computer you added them from though.

Not sure about the mobile app, I assume it will skip the missing tracks in a playlist as normal but it might be possible that it picks them up if they're present on the device somewhere.

<comment><USER35> You can share them to an Android or iOS device [1], but it's a little fiddly. I'd love for them to offer a cloud music system like Apple Music or Google Play does, as Spotify checks all the other boxes that those services don't.

[1] [https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/features/listen...](https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/features/listen- to-local-files/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Worth noting here that ripping a CD is a copyright infringement, yes even for individuals, here in UK. We had about 2 years when it wasn't.

Yes, that means Apple iTunes and the like provide tools for copyright infringement -- far worse than the young adult that got extradited to USA for providing links on a website (which is allowed in UK law) -- and in theory could be sued for contributory infringement.

<comment><USER37> Worth noting that the UK (along with Malta) is an exception in Europe. In the other European countries ripping a CD you own for personal use is completely legal.

<comment><USER38> Worth noting that the UK never had a proper revolution

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> "Why play music from your hard drive? No Ads, No Privacy Terrors, No Algorithms"

<comment><USER40> Yeah, I feel like people have forgotten mp3s somehow.

\- Storage cost is trivial even with multiple backups

\- Can be better quality than streaming

\- Available offline, forever, at no extra cost

Sure, in some jurisdictions it's not legal to rip CDs you own but it's easy enough to defend morally if you're doing it for private use.

<comment><USER41> Pretty sure you're using 'mp3s' in a general sense, but I'm going to nitpick because I love audio format geekery.

If you're going to rip your CDs, you should consider ripping to FLAC and Opus. The only reason to rip to mp3 is that basically every legacy device out there understands the mp3 format and knows how to play it. If you're playing back on a phone or PC or a more modern device, you should use a modern format. Both FLAC and Opus are totally open source.

FLAC is lossless and will reproduce your source CD bit for bit, but in a compressed format. Listening to music in a FLAC format is the same as listening to the original CD. Opus is a lossy format, so you lose some fidelity by necessity, but if you make that trade it's the best quality you're going to get. A double blind test had it outperform AAC and Vorbis, and significantly outperform mp3.

I rip my CDs to FLAC and store those files on my NAS. Then I convert the FLAC files to medium quality Opus files and those go on the SD card in my phone. I don't use old mp3 players, so I can do without mp3s.

<comment><USER40> True. My collection is all in mp3 format but any local DRM-free audio format has all the same advantages and usually fewer disadvantages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> This headline smacks of fear mongering. Privacy TERRORS. ALGORITHMS! Walking, talking murder bots! Seriously?

Please. If you pay for your streaming service, you don't have ads. Privacy concerns are an abstract existential concern that don't have practical effects at least in the context of music streaming. And algorithms? I don't understand what the fear is here. Just a general anti-technology sentiment? Why not make a playlist of your own or simply listen to and album from beginning to end?

Maybe we've lost a little something moving into the realm of the purely digital, but that is the essence of change. It involves tradeoffs. And change is inevitable.

Face change with courage - not by dearly holding onto everything that was.

<comment><USER43> I agree with everything you just said, but I want to add a counterpoint. About a year ago, YouTube Music started playing ads for depression medication for me constantly. My music choice is...err...not particularly happy most of the time. I actually first noticed the ad after listening to a song called "Happy Pills." I have no evidence that I was profiled based on my music choice aside from this one coincidence, but it was enough to make me question if I want Google to know everything I listen to.

Music gives insight into the emotional state of a person, so it could become a very real privacy concern, if it isn't being exploited already.

<comment><USER44> My phone has this feature where it periodically checks if I'm still looking at it, to turn off the screen if I'm not. It doesn't take the opportunity to spy on my facial expression, but I reckon it won't be long.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Most of the music I listen to is from Bandcamp I like it because I can directly support the artists and I get to show off my collection online, while still keeping my (easily redownloadable) mp3/flac collection offline

I do like Spotify (even have a Premium subscription), but it's often missing the artists I like and the program itself is pretty terrible compared to something like Foobar/AIMP/PowerAmp In addition, having local music files opens up a whole world of new possibilities, like being able to add them to videos, having fun mixing/editing them and playing rhythm games like Audiosurf and Riff Racer

<comment><USER46> Me too. In fact, I find the prices and especially the flac extra price something from the last millenium, when storage and bandwith where expensive. Also the discography option is so wonderful, it helps with the backlog if you dive into something new. I already got 2 or 3 labels to be there because there was no proper place to get their music :)

<comment><USER45> I feel like Bandcamp is also more geared towards artists. When I discover new music on Bandcamp, I see the custom-designed artist pages and make a connection between the music and the artist while on Spotify and YouTube it feels more like going from song to song, but not focusing on artists separately (which is not necessarily a bad thing, but I personally prefer the former)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I honestly prefer Spotify. The reality is that I have 1014 songs on my playlist at the time of writing, and it sets me back the equivalent of about $5 PM (Converted from ZAR), and I get to be picky about what I listen to frequently. In an album from someone, odds are that I might like 2 of the songs at most, so buying a CD for only 2 songs is a pointless activity for me.

This means that to collect 1000 songs that I like on CD I'll have to buy 500 CDS total. That's a lot of money.

I also enjoy being able to mix up my music and not having to swap out discs when I get tired of an artist. I understand privacy is an issue for some, but I don't really care if Spotify collects the data of who I listen to, it only improves their algorithm and makes my music discoveries easier.

The reality is that you're always connected to the internet, and even if you listen to CDs on your computer the media player is still collecting your data and behaviour.

<comment><USER48> > even if you listen to CDs on your computer the media player is still > collecting your data and behaviour

I'm not sure what OS or media player you use(d), but implying that it's somehow inherent to playing music on your computer in general is an overstatement, to put it mildly.

As a counterpoint to your argument: I tried Spotify and went back to offline music. I don't use CDs of course, it's all ripped to MP3 and sitting there on my hard drives, with some of it copied over to my phone.

The internet is always there except when it isn't – cross the border to a non- EU country with crazy roaming charges and suddenly you'd wish that you had stuff offline with you. On the other hand with online services the music collection you have "with you" is effectively infinite, as long as the data connection is up. There's ups and downs to everything.

The thing that ultimately turns me off from Spotify is the client: I've come to expect the ability to add a few albums to a makeshift playlist, shuffle the tracks, remove some of them because I don't like them, reorder a few songs whenever I feel like it etc. Whenever I try out Spotify it seems like my options are either to listen to whatever The Algorithm[tm] serves me or painstakingly create a custom playlist every time I want to listen to something non-standard. The "Play Queue" management in Spotify is next to nonexistent (or hidden so well in the UI that I couldn't find it), and compared to regular desktop players like Cantata it's just annoying to use.

<comment><USER49> I started using Youtube Music last year. Recently I flew overseas, and for this reason I had downloaded some music (300+ songs) with their download for offline play feature. During my layover I connected to some airport wifi, and almost instantly I lost access to offline play of most of my songs because of licensing issues with the country that I was in. I've since learned to always use a VPN that terminates in the US before launching Youtube Music.

<comment><USER50> I think this is more of a Youtube issue than a music issue.

I can't imagine Youtube Music is going to exist for long, given that 90% of the GPM subscribers I've talked to would rather swap to spotify than use YTM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I've been collecting CDs for a few years now. I rip them for archiving and for easy playing (iPhone, etc.), but also enjoy handling the real object. I like the experience of simply listening to album the way it was originally intended by the artist, in the original order, with the production values intended at the time, not mixed up with other songs. Streaming, or even shuffling, often makes me tense and anxious (radio did too).

Because it's a bit of a pain to get music to the iPhone (with ALAC conversion, etc.), I recently experimented with matching albums with Apple Music and just using that version. However, I've been disappointed that many of those albums aren't actually the same ones as my CDs! (Again, this is Apple Music: other streaming services might be different.)

For example, tracks might be remastered (sometimes for good, sometimes not), and often the album is a 'deluxe' version with extra tracks. If there was a way to 'hide' those extra tracks, I'd be okay with it, but sadly it feels like the original intent of the artist has been corrupted by the record label to sell more content.

So I'm slowly returning to my first method, and only listening to ripped music, an album at a time, in its original order.

<comment><USER52> > _in the original order_

I agree with most of what you said, but so many albums include awful filler music between hit songs. This was one of the reason mp3 downloads became so popular. Everybody knew record companies were just adding filling to get to a certain album lengths.

<comment><USER51> For typical single-based pop/top-40 that could be true.

But for the long tail of most album-oriented music (including the fairly obscure stuff I listen to), its the producer and musician(s) working together to create a coherent artistic work.

Obviously that doesn't always result in an album of consistently great songs, but in my experience as as an occasional musician, recording engineer, and producer, there's always more material than will fit on the album. Part of the creative process is to build that into a form that best expresses the concept of the work as a whole. That usually involves selection & curation, not adding extra filling. My opinion, of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> CDs are massively inconvenient. When I get a music cd, I just rip it to FLAC.

From that point on, I have a file. Much more convenient to work with, and easily backed up with all the other files. Having a good backup strategy, I'm more likely to be hit my lightning than lose a flac file.

As for buying DRM'd music online, I haven't so much as considered it. It just won't happen, ever.

<comment><USER54> You can now buy non-DRM music from many downloading sources, including high quality FLAC. Example: Bandcamp

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I have been buying CDs lately but only because of market irrationalities - bizzarely at times CD + autoripped MP3s are cheaper than just downloading. I can only assume this bizzare inefficency is related to someone's bonuses related to disc sale metrics or accounting and logistics which encourage reducing unsold stock over the effectively infinite downloads.

<comment><USER56> You can also buy CDs second hand off ebay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> The biggest problem I have with the way I listen to music these days is that I'm basing tricked into thinking my "library" is a collection of my music.

I get that a $10/m subscription isn't selling me each song I listen to, but it is letting me collect them, and that collection is a lie.

At any moment it may change, songs can be deleted at will by Apple, or Spotify. This service is great in that it exposes a much wider quantity of artists to me, but it's a price for a radio service, not a music collection.

</comment><comment><USER58> Any recommendations for music stores which sell mp3's? I ordered Nokia 8110 4G and ditch my smartphone once it arrives. I think it only supports mp3's so I need to start buying albums and not rely on Spotify.

<comment><USER59> [https://bandcamp.com/](https://bandcamp.com/) ?

<comment><USER60> Bandcamp is truely the best music platform and one of the best websites there is today. It's fair to artists and its UX is in the rarest of states: done. I hope to god they never change a thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> apt-get I listen to a lot of japanese doujin music (self-released albums produced by amateur circles at conventions). This is often a couple hundred albums every year, between Comiket, M3, and other smaller conventions. The overwhelming majority of it simply isn't available as a physical release on typical online marketplaces, much less on streaming services. Importing the physical release + ripping or relying on community downloads is often the only way to listen to these.

These are arranges or sometimes heavily sampled albums that simply wouldn't pass on typical streaming platforms. Just something like Death Grips' cult Exmilitary album got removed from Spotify because it used a tad too many samples to their taste (although luckily it's available for free on their website).

<comment><USER61> Is there an online community for doujin? Sounds similar to the vapor/future/chillwave community on Bandcamp.

<comment> apt-get Officially, not really. The 'scene' is a tad too big for that, although some circles publish on bandcamp sometimes (mainly those who can't attend the physical convention).

In the west, there used to be forums (like doujinstyle) dedicated to sharing new releases after every event, which turned into large discord servers in the past year. Otherwise, a lot of the releases can be found on Asia-oriented private trackers as well.

These are often the only way to get a chance of actually listening to the album, since there's generally a limited number of physical albums available for sale at the event, and reprints during the next edition of the convention are uncommon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Instead or privacy terrors you have other terrors like wondering if the CD will even play, especially if you've listened to it a lot over 5+ years, even with good care.

I'm surprised the article doesn't cover a more relevant approach like just playing local mp3s from your computer. You get the same no ads, no privacy issues, no algorithms but you have the added benefit of not having to lug around a binder of CDs to play the songs you want.

This is how I've been listening to music for around 20 years and it works nicely. Been using foobar2000 since the beginning too (shortly after the Winamp rewrite that made it suck). It's a minimal mp3 player that uses about 5mb of RAM but has every feature I'd want for play back.

<comment><USER63> I'm curious why a CD would not work anymore after listening to it a lot? Is the laser powerful enough to damage it or is it the heat from the device itself which is degrading the material in the long term?

<comment><USER64> The polycarbonate substrate could degrade due to temperature, humidity, exposure to sunlight, and other environmental variables. These are concerns for institutions with large CD-based archives (e.g., Library of Congress). [1]

In practice, though, it's far more likely that the the disc will get corrupted from small scratches.

[1] [https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/08/18/34...](https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/08/18/340716269/how- long-do-cds-last-it-depends-but-definitely-not-forever)

<comment><USER65> I have taken several CDs (mainly my Dad's, not my own) from unusably scratched to relatively pristine. The really bad cases need fine grit sandpaper (wet!) followed by plastic polishes. I generally start with Meguiar's plastic polish and work my way to Radtech Ice Creme. In my own collection I have CDs that are around 30 years old and are error-free. I'm not interested in formats or services that won't last at least as long or can't be backed up to my own NAS (nor am I interested in anything less than Red Book quality).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> We act like we can control the internet, like a drunk thinks they control the booze.

</comment><comment><USER67> A few years ago I bought an 'old' ('00 Integra) that had the stock head unit. It would only play CD ROM. It was a total pain to find actual CDs and not DVDs. I dug up mine and my girlfriend's old zip-up CD books full of ripped/torrented mix-cds from when we were teenagers, and it was an actual blast. It felt so good to rediscover some albums I hadn't thought of in the last 10-15 years. The Integra is getting a little long in the tooth, and I'm going to be sad that my time machine to 2005-2007 is going away.

<comment><USER68> I have the same year integra! It's leaking every fluid now and I'm going to get rid of it soon, but the original clutch is still gripping strong

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> I keep pointing this out, but Spotify's shuffle algorithm is absolute horrible. It plays the same 10 or so songs for hours on hours before it moves on to the next 10 or so songs.

Their offline feature has become rubbish. Every morning I have a 10 minute walk to the train station and I usually open spotify right after I lock my door. Throughout this walk, spotify has played for about 1 minute in total, on a good day this number might jump up to 4. Sluggish as hell. When I open any of the items (my songs/home/individual playlist) the first time I load up the app, it doesn't even load for several minutes. So until it loads, even that 1 min or so, I can't even choose a song.

I've been wanting to move away from spotify, and for me, the only other viable streaming platform is Google Music (does that still exist?). Having tried it for a few months, and completely cancelled spotify, it's the same shit but combined with an even worse UI. What gives? I have a Galaxy S9. One of the top of the range Android phones. I used to have a Xperia Z3 Compact. Which at the time was pretty powerful.

The annoying thing is, from here its hard to move away. The only thing I've found that makes it easy for me to move away is some project called spotitube, which matches songs against YouTube and downloads them from there and converts them. So sure, if I used it, I'd get the songs back, but now it's shit quality and it's illegal.

<comment><USER70> Try putting your phone in airplane mode, or possibly Spotify's own offline mode. I've found that Spotify works great when you have a good internet connection or when you have none at all. It doesn't do well when you have 1 bar of edge reception, or your phone is struggling with cell/wifi handover.

<comment><USER69> So I've had it on offline mode since you've mentioned it. It works much better. No sluggish start ups or sluggish song changes. This is really strange as I've got 1Gbps connection at home and it still does this when it on the WiFi. More reasons to get rid of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Off topic but...

I buy a couple of 4K Bluray movies every month. I want to get the best possible quality and also support film makers, but damn, other than the image quality getting movies from torrents is still the best user experience. It's not even a money problem for me.

Not only pirated movies are available weeks before you can buy them in Amazon, but you don't get any anti piracy ads, or trailers that you can't skip.

The available catalog in torrents is immense too. I waited like 6 months before I could buy the Dark Knight trilogy in 4K because it wasn't available anywhere. The Nolan 4K collection is also very difficult to get without spending an arm and a leg in my country.

You also don't get all the regional BS. I can't even get the digital online versions of the Bluray discs I buy because I don't live in the US. I've considered buying digital (iTunes, Prime, etc) but the regional catalog we get is poor. Google Play Movies for example doesn't even have 4K and, hear this, not only most movies are dubbed, if you want the original audio and the dubbed audio for the kids you have to buy 2 movies. Yeah. And then, since you don't really own the digital movie you bought, it can disappear from your library or you can lose the 4K version like what recently happened with iTunes.

I love movies, I want to spend money on movies, but damn the studios and distributors need to find a better way of selling their content.

</comment><comment><USER72> You can achieve most of the convenience with a downloaded collection of mp3 / flac / alac

why use CDS?

<comment><USER48> I guess the CDs are the symbol here more than anything else.

I do a similar thing: I buy CDs, smell the paint, rip them into mp3, put them on a shelf and never touch them again. Everything nicely managed by MPD.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> I ripped my CDs ages ago and have listened to music in my car or on my motorcycle through iPods or my iPhone since then. I would love to be able to get rid of all the CDs that I have accumulated throughout the years. For the last few years all my purchases have been through iTunes with an exception or two done through Amazon. I even downloaded a few albums and tracks made available by the artists themselves.

The key to me is that I am pretty much set in my music preferences. I still hear and occasionally buy new music but for the most part its static and I am just fine with that. Now of the streaming or the one satellite service give me enough flexibility to hear only want I want to hear. Worse, why would I want another monthly bill? Radio, I used to use it for commute traffic only and for the most part its the only reason I can see using it. Even now my car can update traffic on the navigation frequent enough to let me know what I may encounter

<comment><USER74> > The key to me is that I am pretty much set in my music preferences.

I used to think that until I got a music subscription. I end up finding old music that is new to me. About the only genre I do not like is country, but even that isn't a hard rule. I also find it fun to just get lost exploring genres of music, but I understand that may not be a common thing to do.

> Radio, I used to use it for commute traffic only and for the most part its > the only reason I can see using it.

For me, podcasts killed the radio. Terrestrial radio feels like it's more commercials than content. If I do turn on the radio and on the rare chance it's not on a commercial, one is coming in the next minute or so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> On a tangent: Does anyone here have a good solution for self-operated music playback for kids? Suitable for age 2+?

Moving away from physical media has made selecting their own music much more abstract and difficult to manage for kids.

I am aware of the Toniebox (in germany) which operates with NFC-figurines (i guess) which are pretty expensive.

<comment> m-i-l I got a Taf Toys "My First MP3 Player" a few years back. Parents could load a USB stick with MP3s on any PC (including Linux), then plug the stick into a secure compartment on the device (requiring a screwdriver for access, like the battery compartment). Children then had buttons for play, stop, next, previous, volume up, volume down. Only minor issues/features were that the maximum volume was pretty low (presumably to make it safe for babies), and it would switch itself off if no buttons were pressed for a short while (again presumably so it would be safe to leave unattended). Was going to post a link, but it seems it is no longer available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> How does the algorithm actually negatively affect your experience? I use mostly Spotify, and in their case, their suggested playlists and discover weekly actually put me on to a lot of great musicians I wouldn't have known otherwise.

<comment><USER77> But who picks the pickers? The suits plan ahead and begin with the algorithm.

Part of the solo hobby of listening for me is discovering stuff and getting into a favorite artist's discog in depth. Having an algorithm just recommend stuff to you ruins the fun.

Plus, my taste is weird enough that my experience with streaming services is they either slowly nudge me towards either the mainstream where the algorithm can actually recommend stuff, or a weird overfitting where they end up playing the same stuff over and over because it can't grok the true form of my preferences. (To be fair, neither can I.)

<comment><USER78> I feel the same, but fondly remember the old last.fm recommendations. Those were pretty good (I hope that's not just nostalgia speaking). Plus browsing scrobbles [=playback history] of people with similar tastes was a good way to find more great music; or explore new genres.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm not married to CDs, specifically. I buy them, but them rip them into digital files and save the CDs as backups.

However, I don't use music streaming services either -- they are unacceptable to me for the reasons the article states, and more. Instead, I keep a library of digitized music, and either stream it from my own streaming server or put a subset of them onto an SD card and play them from there.

That satisfies my need for quality control, to be free of tracking and ads, and to have confidence that the music will never just disappear on me. Not to mention avoiding an unnecessary ongoing expense.

</comment><comment><USER79> > No algorithms

Seems like people actually have no idea what that word means.

</comment><comment><USER80> This is why I rip Blu-Ray and DVD discs, then play from the file. I don't keep the files. I just can't stand the forced advertisements.

</comment><comment><USER81> Why not play a DRM-free audio file (Opus, while having lossless FLAC backed up) instead of an obsolete CD?

I don't use renting services for music, but I don't buy CDs either (unless it's the only way to _buy_ it). I buy audio files. The benefit of CDs though is also getting the lossless version, when digital one sold is lossy only. Other than that - I don't see the point.

</comment><comment><USER82> I buy most of my stuff from amazon and bandcamp. The convenience of amazon just sending you a zip file is just too good of an option to me.

<comment><USER83> >amazon just sending you a zip

I just googled this and it looks Amazon lets you download your music from them, DRM free?

</comment></comment><comment> yoz-y Don't all streaming services have a way to add albums to collection and listen to those instead of a randomly generated stream? I use Apple Music and have both albums that I can stream and music I have uploaded there myself.

There are no ads, I believe none of my privacy is violated and there are definitely "no algorithms" assuming the author talks about curation.

</comment><comment><USER84> I use streaming services like Spotify and even YouTube purely for discovering new music, on my terms. Music I want to listen to is music I own, as in I have it locally, managed by me. Ads, privacy, audio quality and many other issues plague streaming services.

</comment><comment><USER85> I went the CD road too and use a squeezebox. Very fine.

Except that ripping audio cd is tedious. Does anyone know about a music player that, once it sees a new CD, plays it _and_ rips it at the same time (so I just play my CD and, next time, magic !, my CD is ripped)

</comment><comment><USER86> Not to go against the grain but I love Spotify, the Discover Weekly is killer for finding new music. I also have a large collection of vinyl at home for when I really want to enjoy an album.

Also because Tool won't release their albums online =(

<comment><USER84> I also use Spotify as a great music discovery tool. That's where it stops at though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> You know what else doesn't have ads, privacy terrors, and algorithms?

Vinyl.

But really, I think the pleasure of vinyl is the pleasure of being fully engaged in the act of listening. The privacy is the privacy of your own experience.

<comment><USER71> Yeah but knowing that every time you listen to a record the needle removes a bit of its lifespan is not a great feeling.

<comment><USER87> Eh. With proper care and a well-configured turntable, records can last a long time. And you can always buy a new one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER88> Or just skip the middlemen and buy directly from the artist via bandcamp?

</comment><comment><USER89> I still only buy CD's when buying music, then rip to FLAC for other uses. My Pioneer receiver can play them both, streaming services, and the horrible local radio, so all bases are covered.

</comment><comment><USER90> Unless it's a Sony CD... In which case, watch out for rootkits!

</comment><comment><USER91> Not to mention superior sound quality! I've been listening to classical music on Spotify and it sounds awful to my ears using headphones, even with so called HD audio enabled.

</comment><comment><USER92> The only place I've heard music in years is YouTube on my phone, car radio, or live. There's so much on YouTube that I frankly don't care to look almost anywhere else at this point.

</comment><comment><USER93> I've reverted back to using a standalone mp3 player. I got one of the newest Sony Walkmans and threw a large SD card in there. Something about it just feels right.

</comment><comment><USER94> It also sounds pretty good.

But I wish iTunes/Apple Music would switch to Apple Lossless - then I wouldn't bother buying CDs, ripping them, and shelving them.

</comment><comment><USER95> Reading headlines like these kind of makes me wonder -- is going back to analog/old school devices the new micro-counterculture?

</comment><comment><USER96> Remember when Sony BGM put the rootkit on their CDs? I guess as long as you're not putting it in a computer, you're good.

</comment><comment><USER97> Time for the weekly NYT article lamenting the progress of technology I see.

</comment><comment><USER98> I used to be a serious CD holdout, but then a few things happened that changed things for me.

 __Storage __

Look, I 'm in my late 40s. I've been buying music on CD since I was about 17. I have LOTS. It's not really sustainable, so when iTunes went DRM-free, I started buying the odd thing there.

I live in a place with a proper record store, so I still buy things there, too, but mostly stuff I know I really want the best experience out of. Random music that I kinda know I'll tire of and probably never revisit, though? Definitely iTunes.

 __Fucking Sync. __

I 'm in the Apple ecosystem, because this works best for me and my family, but one thing they never really sorted before Apple Music was whole-family-uses- same-library. It was awkward and vexing, especially to the non-technical members of the household, and so (e.g.) my wife ended up just not really having music with her on her phone.

That's annoying. Plus, even for someone like me, it was annoying that if I bought a CD (or a vinyl record with a download code), getting that music on my phone was a hassle.

So when Apple Music happened, I eventually signed up, and holy cow I haven't really looked back.

What's great about it for my wife is that she never has to bother plugging her phone into a computer to get music at all. She can just add stuff on the fly, from Apple Music. Maybe it's stuff we own already, but that wasn't on the phone yet. Maybe it's new stuff she wants. Doesn't matter; still easy.

We still buy records and CDs from our local shop, too -- mostly the same algorithm, between "I want this forever" and "this is probably transient" \-- but overall we're both listening to MORE music than we did before. I mean, think about it: I'm paying Apple basically the cost of a CD per month for our family account, but the world is literally our oyster. MANY times since I signed up I've found myself reading a review of some album somewhere, and wanted to hear it. Before, I'd have to make a note to go find it online somewhere, or find a Youtube clip, or whatever. Now I can just _have it_ , almost immediately, on my preferred device and through good headphones. It's pretty great.

Now, I'm really only willing to do this because the vendor is Apple, and I trust them with my listening habit data. I wouldn't trust an ad-driven provider AT ALL, which is why I never signed up for Pandora or Spotify or whatever. But with Apple, all this is easy, and I'm not concerned about the privacy implications.

I still have a shitload of CDs and vinyl, though. It used to be that "hey, pick a record" was a fun party game, because so few folks have big record collections. Now CD has picked up some of that novelty, too, and people enjoy browsing through the CD stacks when we entertain. But that's all a special corner case. ;)

</comment><comment><USER99> So, is the Loudness War finally over? Or are CDs still clipped to hell?

<comment><USER100> CDs in general aren't. Some genres perhaps. But the clipping is going to be the same even when you're streaming the songs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER101> Clickbait title... Article is just an interview with a nyt journalist who covers the music industry. Was interested in the discussion of cd vs streaming.

</comment><comment><USER102> If you have a phone nearby you will never be sure who else is hearing to your CD.

</comment><comment><USER103> I still use SoulSeek.

<comment><USER104> SoulSeek was awesome for discovering music. Unfortunately, the quality of the music shared was usually at lousy quality (96-128kbps), with the result that I usually ended up deleting the albums later and re-acquiring them at higher quality from somewhere else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER105> lol where do I even find a CD player..

</comment><comment><USER106> I think people are missing the point - his point is simplicity. This is actually why I've stopped buying albums and switched entirely to streaming internet radio like di.fm. I spent way too much time and effort managing my mp3 library over the years. (ripping, tagging, file naming, album art, etc)</comment>


Ask HN: How to find help marketing an MVP to programmers?  - <AUTHOR>

We're a small team of two programmers, and we've just launched our MVP (www.pushlayer.com, if you're interested). It's a service geared towards iOS developers, and we're looking for someone to help us out with the legwork of getting feedback to validate our concept.
We've been spreading the word ourselves, and tapping our own connections for feedback, but as our backlog grows, we'd love to get someone else involved to help us continue spreading the word.
Has anyone successfully found another person (even someone just helping out in their spare time) at this stage of their company? We're wary of any true "marketing" person, as we're really looking to reach out to fellow programmers.
Thanks for any and all advice! <comment><USER2> I wouldn't at your stage, at such an early stage the founders need to be interacting with users, you'll lose too much (information) in communication overheads if you bring in someone to do it.

<comment><USER3> That's just bad business advice. You need to market right from the start. Having a dedicated person to do it is actually more productive than the founders themselves doing it.

<comment><USER4> >> That's just bad business advice.

I'm no MBA or startup guru, but I don't often hear "Founders in very early stage/prototype stage should avoid interacting with their users". Early stage interaction is critical to the success of the product.

>> Having a dedicated person to do it is actually more productive than the founders themselves doing it

If the goal is to get to know their audience needs, and iterate the produce development quickly, then dev-to-dev feedback is absolutely critical. Now is probably not a good time to clog the feedback filter by adding another human to the mix.

You can spend 30 hours working on your product backlog of features that haven't been vetted, or you can spend 30 hours getting to know your audience and discover that NSCoreLibFoo gives people the most trouble with push notifications.

What would convert more: a homepage hero about the three new features you dreamed up OR the fact that PushLayer can fix everything that sucks about NSCoreLibFoo (which half of your audience hates with a passion as you discovered).

<comment><USER3> I did not say founders should not interact with users. What I said was that if possible, a marketing person should be assigned or brought it as soon as possible. Founders have to realize that they don't have to do everything. Letting others do for them is what helps a business grow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Would be too shocking if I consider this a "How to find a non-technical co- founder" question?

Because I think that is just what you need. I don't think a freelance, temporary or part-time marketing person would be a good choice. A real co- founder, responsible for marketing your product would be ideal. Someone that could hack the distribution part of your product.

Actually, I don't have any practical tips of how to find this person, but my advice is that you should think of her as an essential part of the team, not a disposable labor with a specific mechanical job. Don't be the "code guy" versio of the HN stereotyped "idea guy".

Maybe something you could try is trying to find, on startups' events, that non-developer young guy, who is kind of lost there, not pitching any of his ideas, just trying to understand this environment and learn a few things. My guess is that this persona, with the right potential skills, could be a good distribution co-founder.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's great advice, and perhaps that's really the answer. Based on what I've been directly observing, most of the "marketing" that I do is pretty mechanical: A/B testing, posting updates to our existing users and soliciting feedback, adwords experimenting, and writing blog posts and other content.

In terms of prioritization, spending my time improving the product and offloading this mechanical work just seems like the right thing to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have a background in marketing/sales/adwords/social-media-hacking, and im finishing up a 3-month web-dev course. I guess you can say I will be able to speak the language of your target clients (i'll have to read through some objective-c tuts to really know what they struggle with).

What kind of work are you looking to get done specifically? Two things that I would do is: spend about 5 hours a week on Quora tapping iOS developers, spend about 5-10 hours a week on StackOverflow tapping iOS developers. All non- spammy.

Other things to do are: guest-blogging, requesting reviews.

Work requirements would include advanced analytics of incoming links to see how all of the off-site activity is performing.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm not sure I would get it out to more users, yet. If your still working out a large backlog of issues you may want to focus on the product. If you have a small but dedicated group of users, you might want to focus on making the product better until that users are refering others to the point its starting to grow on its own. Then, you know your product is ready for hockeystick growth.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, and that's been our overarching strategy.

What I'm concerned about is that, as we work through the backlog of features, we also want to grow the users simultaneously. This will help us avoid a "bias of small numbers", in that our small group of initial users keep us focused most specifically on _their_ needs, potentially taking us away from building features others might find compelling.

Hockeystick growth is for later, when we've achieved product-market fit. For now, I just want slow, linear growth to make sure we're consistently filling our backlog with compelling features that users actually want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Have you given any thought as to how you might grow later on, when you want to scale? I ask because this is a good opportunity for you to also test ("validate" as you put it) that part of your business concept.

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely. From a technical standpoint, it's Rails app on Heroku (using unicorn), using Sidekiq. I've got a ton of background with Rails and scaling on this platform, though not a lot with Sidekiq. I'm very excited about the possibilities with this though, and I've used redis quite a bit. On our backlog is to do some serious load testing. I'm also quite aware of the recent RapGenius/random routing stuff.

I'm planning to do a series of blog posts about how we built the site and some cool lessons we learned.

From a marketing perspective, the plan is to make an absolutely killer product that developers will enjoy using, and will tell anyone within earshot of it. We also have a couple of cool features that haven't been tried before with push notifications that I think will be intriguing enough to land us some general tech press. I don't have terribly specific scaling plans around marketing yet, as I don't want to put the cart before the horse (i.e. I want to prove there's a product-market fit first, then spend more effort on getting the word out.

<comment><USER9> I would avoid prematurely optimizing. Scale when you need to scale. Right now it's pretty clear that scaling is the least of your problems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> In plain words, what does the product do for me?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's an API you use to send push notifications to iOS devices that have your app installed.

More specifically: it (a) makes debugging missing notifications easier, as it often feels like a notification just disappears into the ether, (b) it's priced based on actual usage, and (c) it saves you a ton of time from having to deal with Apple's APNS, which in my experience can get quite hairy.

Based on our split testing and other feedback, one of the next items on our list is to rewrite the about page. Thanks for the feedback!

<comment><USER10> You know, your pricing page says the same thing you just did "It's priced based on actual usage". That's not true. It's a flat fee of $25 per month. Priced on usage would be $0.01 per push message or something, so the price scales based on actual usage.

That being said, I want to use this.

<comment><USER10> Actually... It does say lower in the page that pricing is $0.02 per notification, but you're to prepay for them. That's kind of conflicting with the "$25 per month" that I saw above that. I assume if I prepay $25 and don't use all of them then it carries to the next month?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is great feedback. The $25/m gets you 2500 notifications prepaid, but it's a use-it-or-lose-it kind of thing.

I'll definitely clarify that. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just sent you an email. Would be great to talk.</comment>


Time to switch from Backbone to Knockout - <AUTHOR> http://blog.stevensanderson.com/2011/08/31/knockout-1-3-0-beta-available/

<comment><USER2> Knockout is coming along very nicely, but, why the title?</comment>


Ask HN: iOS Recipe Managers - <AUTHOR> Which recipe manager app on iOS do you use? Are there any good ones that you use which are not too expensive?
I'm looking for one which should ideally have:
- sync across all devices (iOS and MacOS) - simple manual adding of recipes (I want to add non-english recipes, so automatic parsing from web probably won't work in my language) - tagging or some kind of categorisation (type of ingredients, type of meal, etc.) - advanced search based on tags/categories - a shopping list would be nice too
Am I maybe missing any good features? Are there other features that you use regularly which I should be aware of?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Paprika. Often has a Black Friday sale if you think it's too expensive.

It can also scale recipes up and down.</comment>