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I missed an option in my previous post: Ubuntu One: Mobile
To be fair, I deliberately missed it - despite my day job, I am openly addicted to products from Cupertino. Since my day job revolves around web development, most of my work takes place in virtual machines (mainly because I’m targeting 10.04 LTS, but also because MacBook Pro support in 10.04 LTS is flaky), which means I’m still using OS X as the host operating system to get the most out of my hardware. (I am running 11.04 natively too, but I still use OS X + VirtualBox more.)
I also run a Windows Vista (Home) PC in the living room, which is the shared/gaming (Steam, World of Warcraft and Minecraft - all cross-platform) computer. There’s also various iOS devices to consider.
All of these are supported by Dropbox and Spotify, so I don’t really bother with Ubuntu One which is, naturally, Ubuntu-focused. They are going to put more emphasis on other platforms soon, but Dropbox and Spotify work now.
Still, Ubuntu One (+ Mobile) is another option, and freedom of choice is important.
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Shawn Blanc writes about the state of cloud-based music services (with a natural North American bias).
Here in the UK we can’t get Rdio or Google Music, and although we can get Amazon Cloud Drive (via amazon.com, not amazon.co.uk) we’re blocked from Amazon Cloud Player.
Where does that leave us loyal British subjects?
I love Spotify. So do my kids (which is my my “recently played” and “top tracks” lists aren’t public - we don’t share the same taste in music!). I’ve had an on-and-off subscription, and the recent changes to limiting tracks (and time) have prompted me to subscribe again - for the price of an album or two on iTunes, I have access to the the full Spotify catalogue. Result.
Anyone who knows me knows I do love my fruit flavoured hardware, and although I like iTunes (insofar as managing my media and various iOS devices and iPods), I love discovering music through Spotify more. Will the much-rumoured “iTunes Locker” or “iCloud” change things? I don’t know. I love the cross-platform nature of Spotify and Dropbox, and I love that Spotify isn’t limited to just my library.
On the other hand, all these cloud-based services are making it much easier to reduce the amount of stuff stored on my laptop, and justify that SSD upgrade…
Considering that the monthly subscription to Spotify is roughly ~1 brand new album on other music stores, why do I keep cancelling it?
I’ve listened to far more that £9.99 “worth” of music today, let alone this month.
When using OS X I vary between listening to local (iTunes) and remote (Spotify), but I’ve been frustrated by not being able to use the built-in media keys to control playback. Every time you press Play/Pause key, iTunes assumes it is the only media application running. Which can lead to amusing situations where you either end up with audio from both applications, or alternating between the two. Not too helpfully when you just want to pause…
Quitting iTunes isn’t an option either, since when you press the keys it reopens.
I’ve found a solution though: Shift (⇧) + Option (⌥) + the media key of your choice will control Spotify (and presumably other applications), but will be ignored by iTunes.
