Radio Rant: Rachel Platten – Fight Song

Posted on September 5, 2015 by bgibs122

Hello, and welcome to Radio Rants. Whose on today?

Remember last year, when women ran the pop conversations and the pop charts so well that the idea that their place in pop music had been fundamentally rewritten was exciting and entirely plausible?

Yeah, 2015 ain’t having that shit; this year’s mission is all hail the status quo bro. The lone female artist whose made it to number one this year is Taylor Swift, and, of the two times she’s pulled that off, once was on a 2014 holdover, and the other held the top spot for a week, despite weak competition and major promotion. Female representation’s been down throughout the year: of the 14 longest running top ten hits introduced this year, only one is by a female artist, Ellie Goulding’s “Love Me Like You Do” at #8 (7 of last year’s 14 longest running hits included a female performer, including “All About That Bass” at #1).

The austerity has extended to the summer, too, where we’ve only seen three hits lead by female artists. There’s the aforementioned Swift and also Selena Gomez, both of whom have dudes featured, and then Rachel Platten’s “Fight Song”. So, how’s Platten managed to go it alone? Let’s take a look.

Rachel Platten’s story might as well have come from a singer-songwriter movie. You know the beats: played instruments at a young age, sang all her life, and happened into a Big Moment performance in front of thousands. She was probably a lead when her high school did Guys and Dolls or The Music Man. Her formal music career started in 2003, and she’s been active in some capacity since then with just enough momentum to keep going (singer-songwriters get dumped on, but the career path certainly has legs; most other acts couldn’t sustain that long). From an industry perspective, Platten’s has mostly existed in the margins of soundtracking: her songs have appeared in Pretty Little Liars, the movie The Good Guy, VH1’s Basketball Wives, Finding Carter on MTV, and she wrote the theme song for ABC Family’s Jane By Design.

Platten’s resume displays her skill at competently assembled if too broad for its own good adult alternative music in the mold of Andy Grammar, Ingrid Michaelson, and Sara Bareilles. Bareilles especially stands as a comparison for “Fight Song” because, like “Love Song”, it’s an empowerment anthem that doubles as a meta-commentary on the artist’s career (I also didn’t realize until just now that they’re both “___ Song”). “Love Song” was a kiss-off to the label who wanted, er, a love song from Bareilles that works as a general kiss off, while “Fight Song” is Platten refusing to give up on a career that still hasn’t coalesced over a decade that gets perfectly by on being inspirational to anyone.

How you feel about “Fight Song” is going to depend on your tolerance for boring music. Platten’s good at writing to a universal theme with some nice imagery, and as an “I’m going to make it” anthem, the song’s more believable than “Roar”, “Welcome to New York”, or even “Brave”, but it’s still incredibly generic. This isn’t necessarily damning; I’d even argue that “Fight Song” wouldn’t have been blown up like it did if it leaned a little harder in any direction, but there’s still no getting around how pedestrian a song it is.

You even see that in the “something for everyone” music. It starts with some singer-songwriter piano, adds in arena rock sized drums and fake strings at the chorus, layers the vocals, and even sneaks in a drum machine and some acoustic guitar strumming before it ends. You’d be hard pressed to find a segment of the general population who wouldn’t stomach at least part of it, hence why it’s been used in TV (twice already) and in a car commercial. In fact, “Fight Song” made its way all the way up to Taylor Swift, who invited Platten to play “Fight Song” with her on stage as part of Swift’s campaign to have more famous guests than fucking Jimmy Fallon this year.

For my part, the music reminds me of those corny as shit contemporary Christian rock praise/celebration bands whose mission is to make you sway in place and raise your hands in front of you if you feel extra blessed. That vibe is all over the song’s blandly positive tempo, constant vamping, and artificial size, but comes in especially during the “vocals and drums only” version of the chorus after the bridge. If I close my eyes and imagine myself in an ill-fitting polo, I can almost imagine the hack band leader/music director’s call on everyone between lyrics.

“This is my fight song”
“Come on and clap, everybody!”
“Take back my life song”
“We’re gonna take it back through Him!”
“Prove I’m alright song”
“With God, it’s all possible, I wanna hear you sing!”

Lyrically, “Fight Song” holds together well enough. A few of the metaphors don’t make sense (how exactly does a small boat set a big wave into motion? Or how is there a fire in your bones?), some are actually pretty solid (“I might only have one match/But I can make an explosion”), and some are both (“Wrecking balls inside my brain” is some Noel Gallagher level shit). Like the rest of the song, they’re a blank slate by design, and for the time of year that starts with graduation ceremonies and ends with going back to school or starting college, that sort of garden variety determination can work.

Even if my feelings on “Fight Song” come down to a genial shrug, it’s a good song to have around this summer. The music, lyrics, and Platten’s vocals hold up well enough together to resonate with a lot of people going through a lot of shit, and it’s better to have this over something like “Fancy”. It’s probably not going to go down as a classic, but if it gets someone through the next three and a half minutes, more power to them. Bring on another round.

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Radio Rant: OMI – Cheerleader (+Felix Jaehn Remix)

Posted on August 13, 2015 by bgibs122

Hello, and welcome to Radio Rants. And we’re starting with two, four, six, eight!

I think August has become the pop chart’s “fuck it” month. The whole Song of the Summer campaign is pretty much decided, kids gotta get back to school in a few weeks, and the “fun in the sun” thing is a lot less sexy in 95% humidity. It’s usually a slow promo season, so any new number ones tend to be whatever bubbled in the top five and still has a little gas in the tank once the Summit Hit exhausts all momentum in its ninth week or so. Hence our rude awakening last August.

This year’s winner of the “Who The Fuck Knows?” Late Summer Hit-Maker Contest is Jamaican singer Omi OMI (oh God, ALL CAPS flashbacks). OMI’s been knocking around the Jamaican music scene for the last few years, making woo-y world-pop songs with idiosyncratic and stupendously cheery lyrics. Take “Baby Mama Drama”, for example: he’s done with baby mama drama…because they’re going to make it official! “Baby Mama Drama” might be his most on the nose song, but all of his music I’ve found has that same boys-like-girls romanticism and single-minded devotion.

Which is to say that, immediately, “Cheerleader” doesn’t stand too far out from the rest of his work. I say “the rest of” and not “previous” because the original 2012 version was a one-off release with singles before it and singles after it. This version of “Cheerleader” is maybe a little brassier and midtempo than his normal fare (not to mention a bit tighter, possibly due to famous producer Clifton Dillon), and maybe hews a little closer to reggae that world pop in the dubby guitar, limber bassline, and saxophone flourishes throughout. OMI’s vocals throughout are bright and endearing, especially on the warbling chorus when he sings “I think that I found myself a cheerleader” and “She is always right there when I need her”. It’s a breezy and enjoyable if not brainy song that has Song of the Summer written all over it.

But that’s not the version that actually blew up this summer.

OMI might have found himself a cheerleader, but he doesn’t have anyone getting down to this. Sick. Beeeeeeat! like the Felix Jaehn remix does. About a year after the original’s release, a record executive for Sony dance music subsidiary Ultra Music heard the song, and signed OMI while looking for someone to remix it. “Cheerleader” went to a pair of DJs, and Jaehn’s remix was released in May 2014 (which is decades ago in pop music time), when it started gaining traction in Europe before being pushed in the states. The original had done well regionally (Dubai, Hawaii, Miami) and been a hit in Jamaica, but the remix took it somewhere else entirely. Just remember: it takes a German producer to unlock the dance rhythms and feel good vibes in a Caribbean track. Who knew?

The remix speeds up the vocal and guts the instrumentation of the original for a world house beat complete with piano, conga loops, soft pad drums, and entirely too much trumpet. The treatment on the vocals works okay enough on the chorus, but OMI’s verses trip on their own melody sped up like this, and it’s kind of chirpy. Honestly, “Too chirpy” could apply to the whole remix: it’s a little too perky for its own good. It trades the easygoing swing of the original for the peppy, empty calorie bounce of festivals and clubs. Maybe it’s because I don’t know a lot about EDM, but the ThisSickBeat version doesn’t do anything for me. It feels disjointed, like something’s missing. Sure, there wasn’t much to “Cheerleader” in the first place, but trying to appreciate the remix is like trying to divine the nuanced flavor in a Lim-A-Rita.

So, let’s look at some of those lyrics, shall we?

“When I need motivation/My one solution is my queen/Cuz she stays strong…She is always in my corner” It’s cool to refer to her as your queen and all, but seems like you’re leaning on her kind of hard here, no?

“All those other girls are tempting/But I’m empty when you’re gone” Cuz they got nothin’ on youuuuuu, baby. N-n-n-nothin’ on you, baby.

“And they say/’Do you need me? Do you think I’m pretty?/Do you feel like cheating?’/I’m like ‘No, not really'” I just love that avowed monogamist OMI turns down infidelity with the same casual denial you use when someone suggests going to that bar you don’t like.

“Oh, I think that I found myself a cheerleader/She is always right there when I need her” But like, why? The support in this relationship seems to trend pretty hard in one direction. Annie Clark ain’t gonna take that shit.

“She walks like a model/She grants my wishes/Like a genie in a bottle” She doesn’t exist. No way.

“Mama loves you, too/She thinks I made the right selection/Now all that’s left to do/Is just for me to pop the question” See that? Boy meets girl, girl has no interests/wants/desires/needs outside supporting her boy, boy shrugs off other girls who keep throwing themselves at him, girl sticks around because reasons, and he pops the question. And they said the Supreme Court killed marriage.

Not to beat a point into the ground, but you get what I’m saying here, right? I know haranguing a pop song about its dumb gender politics in a world but two years removed from “Blurred Lines” is small time, but it’s hard to ignore the way “Cheerleader” beats you over the head its wonky take. I’m more favorable to the original; the remix keeps me sitting in the bleachers.

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Album MiniReview Round-Up!

Posted on August 2, 2015 by bgibs122

Best Coast – California Nights Whenever someone riffs on Best Coast for being too basic or simple, I can’t help but feel confused. This is a group whose breakout song alternated between a pair of two-chord riffs, and literally rhymed “crazy” with “lazy”; criticizing them for being simple begs the question “what do you want from this fucking band?”

Best Coast’s strength six years into their career isn’t making complex music with tastemaker appeal, but catchy, shimmering, guitar pop songs with surprising durability. A BC album should aspire to be a new take on the band’s sound while containing at least a handful of tracks that’ll still sound fresh a calendar year from now, and California Nights more than hits that mark. The fitness themed video for “Feeling Okay” also describes the album: BC hit the gym this time around. The songs have more heft, partially due to the cleaner production, but also by design. The band’s drums have always had punch, but they’ve never done guitar riffs like the driving “Heaven Sent” (which also cheats in a gloriously air-guitar friendly solo), or extended outro on perfectly mopey “Fine Without You”. The extra punch, plus Bethany Cosentino’s constantly improving vocals, keep standard power pop fare like “In My Eyes” and “So Unaware” from being rank and file. Some of the atmosphere from mini-album Fade Away sticks around on “Jealousy” and “Sleep Won’t Ever Come”, while the title track and closer “Wasting Time” try for grander, more experimental sounds.

Best Coast haven’t made a magnum opus yet, and, mostly on account of a languid second half, California Nights isn’t going to change that. Power pop’s a hard genre to keep fresh, but its thrills can be unending if done right. And as long as Bethany and Bobb can keep firing off catchy, crunchy guitar pop with an emo undercurrent, they’ll be more than an imitation or a cheap trick.

A$AP Rocky – AT.LONG.LAST.A$AP
That second mainstream rap album, man. It’ll get you.

To be clear, we’re not looking at a B.o.B or Kid Cudi situation with A$AP. He wants to be more interesting than that. A.L.L.A leans away from radio singles in favor of dark, psychedelic sounds; forget “cloud” rap, this is rap gone down the rabbit hole. And, like I imagine most drug trips, it gets its “whoa” out of the way early: with the exception of just okay opener “Holy Ghost” (produced by Danger Mouse) and sorta interlude “JD”, the first eight or nine songs here are straight fire emoji. “Canal St.” balances a moody atmosphere with a solid performance by Rocky, who also carries the cheeky “Excuse Me” all by himself. Meanwhile, he swaps rapping for singing on the spaced out psych-ballad “L$D” (fuck subtly), while absolutely lighting up banger “Lord Pretty Flacko Jodye 2”. A.L.L.A proves Rocky can hold on his own, which was the biggest criticism of debut Long.Live.A$AP.

That’s not to say he has to play alone, though. M.I.A struts all over standout “Fine Whine”, which also has a solid Future feature, while Miguel shows up to cover a solid Rod Stewart sample on the only kind of obvious single here (buried at the end of the album) “Everyday”. Kanye’s feature on “Jukebox Joints” is better as production than a verse, but Lil Wayne turns in delightfully loony bars on “M’$”. Longtime collaborator ScHoolboy Q and Rocky both turn in killer performances on the seductive, should-be-a-single “Electric Body”. British singer Joe Fox is all over hooks on the album and always does a solid enough job, even if him on Danger Mouse’s spaghetti-western schtick for “Holy Ghost” sounds like a Demon Days outtake.

Like someone taking the substances it’s inspired by, the significant downside to A.L.L.A (aside a handful of spectacular lyrical misfires) is a lack of cohesion and a tendency to get lost in its own haze. Eighteen tracks is high for most albums, and that goes extra for when the pace doesn’t go faster than a strung-out lurch. And, while most of the album sounds good while it’s on, most of these songs don’t lend themselves to high replay value; I like “Dreams” and “Better Things”, but can’t see myself reaching for them in a few months. Rocky’s at least got a good grip of his identity (again, this isn’t Cudi or B.o.B), and although AT.LONG.LAST.A$AP feels more like a transition than a destination, that’s not to say it’s not a fun trip.

Tame Impala – Currents
Kevin Parker wants you to like his band.

No shit, this is true for most artists, but Currents‘ strain for likability is palpable. You can see it in the gentle coaxing of song titles like “Let It Happen” and “Yes, I’m Changing”. You can hear it in every song’s determination to have a hook. You can feel it in Parker’s delay-inducing perfectionism. Listening to the album is like reading an essay by that kid in class whose self-conscious of how smart they are; the exertion of the creator’s brilliance is coded into every line.

For Parker, all that belabored finesse has gone into retooling Tame Impala’s psyched out rock into something tighter, synthier, and dancier. From the brisk, shuffling pace of “The Moment” to the looser, lounge groove of “Yes, I’m Changing”, the album’s defined by spacey synths and atmospheric electronics grounded by the band’s super-crisp drums and some immaculately produced basslines (and finger snaps in every song–finding the snaps is like finding the Wilhelm Scream in a sci-fi movie). The mixing on Currents is great throughout; it’s easy to hear every moving piece and flourish in place and enjoy Parker’s arrangements. When everything clicks–such as the vocal delay on the chorus to “The Moment”, extra gorgeous arranging on “Yes, I’m Chanigng”, the wailing synth covering the last two minutes of “Eventually”, or the entirety of the sad-eyed, spaced-out funk Song of the Year nominee “The Less I Know The Better”, it’s stunning.

These thrills are scarce to come by, though. For an album this eager to please and as dance-oriented as Currents is, large parts of it leave me cold. The production is stellar, but leaves these songs no room to hide how frequently the same tones are used, and a near constant mid-tempo lets everything blend together. I can’t immediately say what differentiates “Reality in Motion” from, like, “Past Life” outside the latter’s gimmicky pitched down monologue, but neither song makes me care to tell the differences, either. Parker’s vocals get tedious as well; his mournful, Lennon-esque falsetto worked for psychedelic rock songs, but utterly lacks the rhythm or bounce he wants these songs to have (“The Less I Know The Better” in particular would be even better with a more grounded or lively vocalist).

For how much Currents boasts how different and changed it is, it follows a worn trope: guy ditches guitars for synths and wants to prove he’s got moves. But having moves means you risk falling, and Currents is too conscientious to even allow the idea of a stumble. The record’s all about just the right influences and impeccable choices; it might be the year’s least adventurous and most curated album. As a result, it’s all very good, but very predictable. That’s the problem with reading the smart kid’s perfect essay: it ends up being perfectly dispassionate. And you can’t follow that approach with moves or the music that inspires them. Sometimes, even if it’s a wrong move, you have to let it happen.

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Livin’ the Stream: Blake Tries Apple Music

Posted on July 22, 2015 by bgibs122

2015’s going to go down in the books as the year streaming music officially became a norm. Obviously, it’s been a thing for years, but 2015 marks streaming becoming a dominant force, not just in terms of behind the scenes number crunching, but as a cultural phenomenon. You could avoid hearing much about Spotify without trouble, Beats Music came and went as a gimmick, and even now, GooglePlay is the quiet kid in the corner, but through a combination of “the streaming wars” between services and the public’s focus on anything Apple or Taylor Swift do, streaming’s come to all.

Of course, a lot of that has to do with Apple. Apple Music, the tech juggernaut’s streaming service, co-opts the mobile Music app, and nestles its way into the most recent desktop version of iTunes. Basically, Apple brought streaming to you: the next time you went to fire up “Hey Ya” in your Music library, Apple asked if you’d want to start your three month trial period, and, one password later, you were on your way. In our current #HotTake climate, there were a lot of first impression pieces on AppleMusic, so I thought I’d examine the program now that I’ve had a few weeks to use it in my day-to-day.

Set Up
Oh, the set up Bubbles. Upon agreeing to try AM, you’re presented with genres (hip-hop, country, classical, electronic, rock, alternative, indie, hits, jazz, etc.) in bubbles, and have to tap once to “like”, tap twice to “love”, before doing the same with artists within your genre selections, all with the end goal of a highly customized “for you” section in the app. It’s a cool idea with belabored execution: surely, wouldn’t it have been faster to ask me for ten artists and start basing recommendations from there? Instead, I was stuck going through clusters of chosen artists, debating if I liked or Like-liked Alicia Keys, and praying LCD Soundsystem would show up. Sure, you don’t have to revisit this Pepto-tinged ball pit ever again, but it’s a slow start.

My Music
AM brings a lot of bells and whistles to the table, and the iPhone’s Music app was already an efficient and fully formed music player/organizer. As I read about features in AM, I got to wondering how it would work in relation to the longstanding app I already knew. The bulk of the old music app is regulated to one “My Music” section, sacrificing its efficiency in playlist creation and toggling between categories (songs/artist/albums/genres), and a clunky redesign of desktop iTunes shrunk down. On a full monitor, the list of options makes sense, but on mobile (and especially my poor, pintsize 4S), it’s just claustrophobic. The rest of the sections pop with color and sleek designs, but the opposite feels true of “my music”. Design wise, it seems to trump its musical selections while shrugging at yours.

For You
Even in the halcyon days of Last.fm, digital music has treated taste curation and recommendation like an alchemical formula it’s always on the cusp of discovering. It’s never just been about playing your music, but going one-up from there: “sure, we can spin To Pimp a Butterfly, but have you heard of Stankonia?” If there’s a predictive model to music discovery, I haven’t seen it; no matter the platform, the “recommended” tag feels novel and inessential.

Which is why it’s refreshing to see that AM’s “For You” has some teeth. Its pitch is less sexy than the celeb hook-ups at Beats1 Radio or Connect, but it’s the feature with the most potential mileage. Basically, when you open “For You” or refresh it, it comes at you with six album suggestions and three Apple Music curated playlists. It gets started in the bubbles, but seems fairly receptive based on your listening habits. For example, I went spelunking in demos on Smashing Pumpkins reissues, and the next day AM spat a Smashing Pumpkins deep cut playlist at me (score!). “Deep cuts” style playlists are popular, as intro/best-ofs, and the requisite “mood” playlists are accounted for, as well. Some of the best playlists I’ve seen are the ones that forsake these standards for more inventive ones: I had one that was nothing but songs produced by Just Blaze, and another that was nothing but Rihanna hip-hop collaborations. Another boon to the playlists is length; instead of Spotify’s unwieldy 100 song behemoths, these skew between 12 and 25 songs, keeping selection tight and runtime brisk.

Even with “For You”, though, that ideal predictive music discovery model is still missing. It gives me a selection of hip-hop playlists wildly disproportionate to how much of it I listen to (I listen to about as much hip-hop as I do indie or alternative or punk on a given day; a steady 90% of my playlist selections for said day will be hip-hop). Playlist specificity is great until it isn’t: Jay Z playlist? Awesome! Jay Z guest verse playlist? Still awesome! Jay Z Guest Verses With Subtle Digs In Them? Okay, I get it, the Apple Music Hip-Hop team really thought these out–y’all wanna do a Nas best-of?

Likewise, as soon as you get outside canonized punk or alternative records, AM goes blank faced. I went on a bender where I threw Likes/streams/downloads at Title Fight, Candy Hearts, Titus Andronicus, Joyce Manor, The Wonder Years, Allison Weiss, Modern Baseball, Spraynard, Adventures, Mixtapes, and Into It. Over It to trigger some sort of response, and got “Drake: the Deep Cuts” in return. Some of the indie or alternative playlists seem pedestrian as well; I don’t know, maybe the Hip-Hop team’s creativity spoiled me.

Nifty as it is, the feature can be exhausting: AM opens in “For You” by default, even when you just want to throw on some of your music. I get it, they want to emulate the mythical All Knowing Record Store Employee, but this isn’t suggesting a record during small talk, it’s shoving half a dozen in your arm when you walk in.

Beats 1
It’s 2015, and I’m reviewing a radio station.

You can hear the pitch for Beats 1: Apple gets exclusivity on big names, DJs get to be themselves, play some tunes, talk shop; everyone walks away happy. And it’s Always On ™! I like that Beats 1 doesn’t archive their shows, it gives incentive to catch what you want to, and adds a bit of urgency to whatever you hear (it also keeps a show from being an overproduced podcast). The shows have a permanent novelty where it’s not that something’s always happening, but that something could always happen. I caught part of “Money, Pizza Respect” with The Fat Jew–who I genuinely thought was Action Bronson for the first ten minutes–where Lisa Loeb just happened to call in, chatted for a bit, and told a story about a fight between some Bloods and Crips at one of her shows back in the day. I don’t know that I needed that in my life, but I also don’t know that I didn’t need it, either.

The celebrity shows I’ve heard were both of the “Play music we like and comment” sort. Ellie Goulding had a great assortment her influences and favorite contemporaries, while Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age (sidenote: can we appreciate that Homme, whose biggest album has the underlying concept of “DJs suck“, has his own radio show?) played from the same pool of stuff, but would occasionally throw a theme in for a few songs, like “animals”. They were both enjoyable, but nothing I’d make a priority.

What I’d really want to see is someone who won’t play nice. Beats 1 advertises itself as being the most exciting radio station in the world, let’s see someone whose not afraid to go there. Put Tyler on. Give Noel Gallagher an hour. Let’s see Willow and Jaden burn this thing down. That‘s exciting.

Connect
A streaming service has to do two things: play the music you want it to, and justify the existence of any of its add-ons. I can’t say Connect sticks the landing, not yet at least. Connect is a way to “keep up with the artists” and have access to content you wouldn’t find otherwise. Trent Reznor, bless his heart, has been the only one to do something meaningful with this: he put up studio quality instrumentals of two of Nine Inch Nails’ albums up the day Connect launched, and put up some extra music from the Gone Girl soundtrack since (although, full disclosure, he’s also one of the creative directors for Apple Music). Otherwise, Connect is full of the same dull announcements/postings you’ll find on even the most basic social media sites where the uploads are done by the #ContentManagement intern. I see Connect’s SoundCloud/Tumblr/Facebook/Instagram aspirations, but it reads much closer to GooglePlus.

Playlists
Aside from playlists from the official Apple Music genre teams, there are activity playlists and curator playlists. “Activity” playlists are broken down by categories–“Breaking up”, “driving”, “getting it on”, “kicking back”, “running”, “lamenting the inevitable heat death of the universe”, and so on. This seems like a retooled, less whacky version of Beats Music’s Sentence feature, but still more novelty than anything else (and God help whoever’s frantically scrolling through the “Getting It On” section with their pants around their ankles, agonizing between “Bedroom Bangers” and “Trip-Hop Turn-Ons”).

Curated playlists have gotten to be part and parcel of streaming services. I think they’re kind of silly. At their best, they offer a little more (read: any) genre diversity by list, and they’re trite stereotypes at worst (to wit: NME’s first list is “Alex Turner’s Best Tracks”). I’m sure there are interesting lists there, but finding them is to go further down the rabbit hole than I’ve explored so far; most are garden variety tastemaker/”here’s what’s out”.

I’d much rather curate my own playlists, but making a playlist using streamed content only is like pulling teeth. All playlists are routed through “My Music”, meaning that you have to download each song locally, or turn on the settings to show your entire iTunes library just to make and access a custom streaming playlist. A two click process on Spotify or Tidal is jumping between two and three sections and two different settings here. It gets back at the obtuseness of “My Music”, like Apple’s made their stuff as pretty and accessible as possible while cutting every corner of your own input.

I think I’m still going to carry on through my trial period. Right now, it’s not costing me anything, and I’d like to see AM improve its functions (that and give Connect/curated playlists time to update). It’s convenient and it has enough useful features to keep me coming around, but the fact that I can’t get to my own music without it throwing a handful of records at me sums the experience up perfectly: forget ownership. Digital music has always tried to recreate the record stores they supplanted, but AM forgot the end goal: leaving with what you love.

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