Every time I make playlists, only 1 of them actually transfers to the phone. So say I make a playlist for “classical” “workout” “misc” and i make all them the same way, only one of them ends up on the phone.

Rhapsody is slow, clunky, takes forever to do anything.

Does anyone know of alternatives that I can use to make playlists—unfortunately its got to make playlists. I tried Windows Media Player but I don’t think its capable of that.

Thanks
BigSend
http://bigsendworld.com

Alas…

Ha, I guess I am. :D

I mean, the big labels are so mentally bankrupt, they think the average consumer who buys their music actually cares, or even understands what DRM is! :D Meanwhile, those of us who do want DRM to be removed from all music generally don’t care for most of their transient pop artists anyway and of course, are aware of the ability to remove FairPlay through CD burning and reimporting.

It’s just tiring to hear the DRM issue brought up again and again and again, in a desperate attempt to prove the success of the iPod and/or iTunes is due to FairPlay.

I think you’re giving the media and the labels too much credit! The labels are *scared* of iTunes. It doesn’t let them screw around with pricing. It doesn’t let them differentiate by schmaltzy means in general … being such a level playing field for content as it clearly is. They sense that power Apple has over their bottom line. And, boy, do they not like it one bit.

Meanwhile, the media just loves to cry: “boo! Apple do DRM and the other guys don’t! bad Apple, bad!” Why? Because it’s a cheap way to “balance” a story which would otherwise so often be unmitigated success for Apple while their rivals struggle. It’s also music to the ears of anyone with a real agenda too.

I’m not paranoid about the media by the way. I largely follow the Fake Steve school of journalist’s nature … itself quite similar to Hunter S. Thompson’s. They’re people with a job to do. And being lazy about it is always just such a tasty option.

Same for the labels!

Yeah, I certainly don’t want Apple screening out music, movies, apps, etc. that they don’t particularly care for. While iTunes has a great variety of content, in the music category, they’re being held back by three of the Big Four labels, who are only offering their music in DRM-free form through competing stores like Rhapsody, Amazon, and SkyTunes (that last one’s pretty new). What bugs me is how some of the tech media pundits talk about these iTunes alternatives as if Amazon and Rhapsody’s music catalogs are equal to iTunes’ catalog in terms of variety/selection of music artists, which simply isn’t the case. These stores lack a lot of the indie artists iTunes has. Just seems like the media is going off the number of songs and saying “wow, and it’s DRM-free,” instead of considering what’s actually being offered.

The big labels will likely give up their ineffectual games soon, thus the DRM vs. DRM-free argument will finally come to an end. When that happens the playing field will be very level and then we can move onto more telling metrics for comparing these different music stores. Who has the best indie selection? Who has the most artists? The most albums per artist? The best promotional deals? Who gets the new releases up on the store the fastest? Who offers more “classic” bands?

And then of course, they could focus on things like each store’s ease of navigation, visuals, etc.

You just made me think. When was the last time a record store succeeded based on not selling crap? It’s not as though anything but the most niche shop would make a point of screening out records based on their taste. We as consumers just don’t expect that sort of thing, and sense it to be snobbery in fact. We want to walk in and know that the selection is big enough we can find what we individually want.

The App Store is turning out to be quite like that. I made the popular mistaken assumption that Apple would screen the apps available by a combination of security, contractual obligation and … essentially taste. But they did not. Handy Randy and other monstrosities were there for launch day.

The idea seems to be much more like iTunes than I expected. We’re not talking about limited shelf space in Apple’s own physical shops. Or necessarily Apple’s brand of approval. But instead the vast scale and selection of iTunes, itself based on the experience in any sufficiently vast record store.

Back to your point though: of course even conceding that there’s crap in there is a ludicrous idea to slap on an advert! I couldn’t argue with that.

Yeah, I just can’t comprehend why LG would essentially admit there’s actually bad music to be had. I mean, I love iTunes, but there’s a good helping of corporate pop, corporate rap, and corporate rock, yet Apple never mentions it (probably due to their tense relationship with three of the Big Four labels).

It’ll be nice when we finally see iTunes and its competitors being compared based on artist/band selection/variety, rather than who offers the most songs and has the largest selection of DRM-free music; the latter metric will cease to matter once the big labels stop colluding against iTunes.

And no one stands like that, ever! Clearly the marketing juniors got hold of this one and were given some rope to go hang themselves….

So the deal is that you by a crap phone, download a crap music service with loads of crap you don’t want (but some you might… crap that is) and headphones that look like they are from the 1970s…

Oh joy…. let me throw up now??