Random Thoughts

[Angrboda]

Weird. The track "Burning House Of Love" on X's Live At The Whiskey A Go-Go on Amazon Music Unlimited is not the recording that is on the original album or CD. Instead it's some other, Country & Western flavored live performance that doesn't hold a candle to the original Whiskey A Go-Go performance. Thankfully, even though I no longer have the vinyl album, I do have a good copy of the CD on disk that I can play using PLEX. It's just a bit disappointing and disconcerting to find Amazon peddling knock-off merchandise under its flagship music service.

I know a lot of people like Spotify, but I've never gotten into it as I've found finding music on it difficult and, because I listened to a playlist of old Christmas classics, its recommendation for music I might like is stranded in old fogey land, recommending Sinatra, Crosby, and the Carpenters. I have no objection to listening to any of them, but it sucks for recommendations and especially makes their tool for music discovery, the weekly Discovery playlist, essentially useless. I'm finding Amazon Music Unlimited much more useful, and its recommendation engine reasonably good, if not great. That's why I was on Allmusic.com tonight, rating albums on its "recommendation" list. They provide a far broader range of artists and albums to consider than either Amazon or Spotify, even though, alas, they are not a music streaming service. I can find stuff there, and pull it up in Amazon with a little luck. Bundling Amazon Prime and Amazon Music Unlimited is comparable in price for me to the Spotify Premium / Hulu package, and I prefer the Amazon services (somewhat; the series television on Hulu is attractive). Even still, I'm very happy, but it's not perfect. Looking for Klaus Nomi's eponymous work turns up that it is on neither service, nor can I find a torrent as the work is not particularly recent.