For the last 5+ years the number of physical CDs I buy has decreased over and over. I am very grateful for the fact I can listen to all of my music on my phone, work computer, laptop, and Apple TV. It is really nice to have “my” music. Yes I know the word my is relative since really I don’t really own the digital music. I get it, but I choose to ignore this fact. It is still mine dammit. Get over it. Before the iPhone came to market there were phones with the ability to play music and take pictures. I really felt listening to music on my phone or taking pictures with my phone was an absolute stupid idea. Let me tell you I really enjoying eating char broiled crow. You should try it some time, the meat kinda reminds me of frog, but the taste is totally chicken through and through. If you want the recipe, contact me offline and I send you my special smoked recipe I got from George R.R. Martin.

During this same time period the birth of online music sites have cropped their heads up. The first note worthy site paving the way for others is Pandora. Being the first mainstream music service everyone flocked to it and the site ended up restricting the number of hours you could listen each month for a free account. I liked being able to create my own play lists, but I didn’t get to decide what I wanted to listen to. I ended up getting limited to the number of dislikes per x number of minutes. It took a lot of work to get a playlist sounding the way you wanted. I got fed up and gave up.

I tried over and over to organize my physical CDs into a digital library for easy listening on my iDevices. It was pain in rear though. I would get some organized, but there wasn’t album artwork all the time. Sounds like something small, but there were other issues as well. Over the years I would upgrade my computer and trying to get a new iTunes Library setup from a previous library never was the easiest task in the world. On top of all of this I had to physically sync everything to my devices. Guess what I did? Yup, your right. I gave up!!!

The next fews years I was pretty happy with my music. I would buy all my tunes from iTunes and everything showed up every where I went. New Apple TV, there is my new music. I was happy and still pretty happy, but I was finding I was missing some of my older music. I would buy the old CD from iTunes so I could listen to it. Oh well, it is only money right?

Ouch, stop it. That hurts. Oh thank you for slapping a little bit of sense into me!!!

It appears the current craze in online music seems to be services offered from Google, Spotify and Beats. I refuse to move my music listening habits to Google and no you cannot slap me for that choice!! Google took the evil empire slogan from MircoCrap a little while back. I really don’t like the fact Spotify has the ability to clog up my Facebook timeline, this only left one option plus it is now an Apple company. Drinking more Apple juice makes me feel so warm and fuzzy inside might as well spike it a little and have a drink with Dre!!

With Beats, I signed up for the trial and gave it a try. First strike against it was the stupid proxy I am behind during the day. One word, blocked. GRRRR. I install in on my iPhone and iPad. The interface was confusing, but I still pushed forward. I wanted desperately to be part of the kewl crowd again. It felt a lot like the days of Pandora again. Nope don’t like that song. Don’t like that song. I really don’t like that song. Next. I started playing with the interface on the iPad and found people had playlists. Ok, cool. I liked this feature. I decided to head out for a bike ride and tried to find the playlist I liked on the iPad. Nope, can’t find it. Seriously!! Fine, I will still give it a shot for my bike ride. Guess what happened next? Oh no, you are so wrong!!! I told Siri “Play Vampire Weekend” and you know what? Siri listened. I had Vampire Weekend playing in no time and I had an enjoyable bike ride.

I am so unkewl and turning into a grandpa who had to walk to school in snow uphill both ways. This can’t be happening to me. I am a techie geek. I live on my phone. My life is on my iPhone, iPad, and other iDevices. This can’t be happening. There has to be a solution right? Honestly at this point I am like screw it. I will just forgo my CD collection and just move on. I really don’t like online music services at all. I want “my” music when I want “my” music. If I want to try out other music I will turn to iTunes Radio, I just don’t like the commercials.

Wait! There is an option on iTunes Radio to remove the ads. If you have an iTunes Match account the ads go away, plus any CD you import into iTunes goes to iCloud which means I can listen to “my” music on any of my iDevices and computers. I look at the price and it’s a no brainer. $25/year compared to $99/year for Beats. I dive in head first without even thinking hoping I am not in the shallow part of the pool and end up in the emergency room for a cracked cranium. On top of this, the day before I finally got my physical CDs back from a year long hiatus (another story for another day). I was so excited, when I got home yesterday. I enabled iTunes Match on my Mac Mini, Mac Book Pro and started importing. Things were syncing up between the two computers. Sweet!! Next was to enable iTunes Match on my iPhone and yes there is all of “my” music.

Today I get to work and “my” music is magically there waiting for me. My ears have been soaking up tunes I haven’t heard in years. I cannot wait to get all of my CDs imported and I can still wear my techie badge with honor and pride. All in all I am glad to be kinda kewl, but again I don’t understand the online music services. I don’t understand SnapChat either. Shit, I am becoming a grandpa, hopefully I can be “Bad Grandpa” and at least have some fun while listening to “my” music when I want.