Thoughts on streaming features from a brand new streaming user:
I used physically owned but digital music (roughly 125k songs mostly ripped from my cd and vinyl collections, but maybe 5% of it digital purchases too) managed in iTunes from about 2007 through 2025.
At the end of last year, staring at looming retirement and fixed income I decided to stop buying music and jump both feet into streaming. (I'm using YT Music, mainly because I was already paying for YT Premium and so it's free. If I switch it would likely first be to Amazon for the same reason)
The missing features that make streaming MOST frustrating to me:
1) No song ratings. Binary 'like' is better than nothing, but having spent almost 20 years listening via smart playlists that distinguish between songs I want to hear again every now and then (three stars) and songs I genuinely love (four stars and five stars)....having to flag them all with the same binary flag makes me want to pull my hair out
2) Smart playlists. There's just a world of difference between 'randomly play from these 200 songs I manually put on this playlist' and 'randomly play from all the songs I gave four or more stars to that were released in 1976-1978 and that I haven't listened to in two years'. An intricate system of smart playlists is THE way to listen to self-curated music.
3) Listening history, visible and usable. iTunes only gave me playcounts and Last PLayed..... but even just those two things gave me so much smart playlist control. See the example above in section 2. Or "give me shuffle play from all Rolling Stones songs [or all songs on my 1945-1954 R&B playlist, etc] I've listened to less than 20 times"...
It's so bad that basically I'm just using two parallel systems.....YouTube Music streaming of anything that came out (or I discovered) after Dec 2025 or my existing iTunes physical library and playlists....and never the twain shall meet.
Thoughts on streaming features from a brand new streaming user:
I used physically owned but digital music (roughly 125k songs mostly ripped from my cd and vinyl collections, but maybe 5% of it digital purchases too) managed in iTunes from about 2007 through 2025.
At the end of last year, staring at looming retirement and fixed income I decided to stop buying music and jump both feet into streaming. (I'm using YT Music, mainly because I was already paying for YT Premium and so it's free. If I switch it would likely first be to Amazon for the same reason)
The missing features that make streaming MOST frustrating to me:
1) No song ratings. Binary 'like' is better than nothing, but having spent almost 20 years listening via smart playlists that distinguish between songs I want to hear again every now and then (three stars) and songs I genuinely love (four stars and five stars)....having to flag them all with the same binary flag makes me want to pull my hair out
2) Smart playlists. There's just a world of difference between 'randomly play from these 200 songs I manually put on this playlist' and 'randomly play from all the songs I gave four or more stars to that were released in 1976-1978 and that I haven't listened to in two years'. An intricate system of smart playlists is THE way to listen to self-curated music.
3) Listening history, visible and usable. iTunes only gave me playcounts and Last PLayed..... but even just those two things gave me so much smart playlist control. See the example above in section 2. Or "give me shuffle play from all Rolling Stones songs [or all songs on my 1945-1954 R&B playlist, etc] I've listened to less than 20 times"...
It's so bad that basically I'm just using two parallel systems.....YouTube Music streaming of anything that came out (or I discovered) after Dec 2025 or my existing iTunes physical library and playlists....and never the twain shall meet.
Anyway, really enjoyed this column.....
This is cool feedback