Yesterday there was a big event by some of today’s biggest artist to together really kick off the music service Tidal. It’s the newest and most likely candidate to challenge Spotify’s ownership of the digital music throne. I should like it. But here’s why I don’t – and keep in mind these are MY issues, they don’t apply to everyone!
– The artists keep saying that this service will reward the actual artists way more than the evil Spotify. And that sounds noble, right? Well that certainly goes against most research I’ve read that says Spotify is most certainly paying their share – it’s just not going to the artists. Reason for that is.. well, they aren’t the ones with the contract with Spotify, the labels are. (their own report can be found here and here is a report from Time.com)
– They say it’s good for consumers. And usually I’d agree, nothing like some good competetivness to bring out the best in people and companies. But this is different. With Spotify I have ONE music service where I store my music library. And I can access that music from any cellphone brand I want, from my TV, from any of my computers, from my Playstation, my Sonos and even my TV. If you add another service which has material the other one doesn’t it forces you to either choose or have both which will cost you €20 per month. How is that good for consumers? And the amount of time it will take for Tidal to be supported by say my Samsung TV, Sony Playstation or Sonos… it’s just not good for consumers – IMO – from that technical point of view. It’s the same with the “video on demand service” – I wouldn’t mind paying €50 for one service that had it all, but I don’t wanna pay €10 for 5 difference services!
– They say their music quality is better. I don’t know about you but 90% of my music listening is done from my cellphone on the move. And with those small earplugs I dare say noone will ever notice the difference between Spotify HQ audio (and most people don’t even sync their music in HQ mode in Spotify because of storage limits) and Tidal HQ audio. I hear the difference between 128k and 192k audio in MP3’s but above that it’s simply not noticable – for me! Sure there are audiophiles out there that can spend €500 on earphones and maybe they will notice, or I might notice when turning it up in my home cinema. But it certainly won’t be a big enough quality different to hear it!
– I trust Spotify more than I trust JayZ. JayZ with wife Beyonce have enough money to not give a shit for the rest of their lifes. If the Tidal service is bad, “so what”, that don’t matter shit for them, just a failed project. If Spotify is bad they’ll hear it and change because they can’t afford not to. I got pissed when Spotify introduced their “you have to have a Facebook account” but after tweaking it I really don’t mind. And I trust that Spotify will not make an exclusive deal with say Apple that the hottest music will only be available on the iPhone app first because Spotify can’t afford to piss Android, Windows and PC users!
So I’m left thinking this isn’t just a noble thing and JayZ’s gift to the world of music industry that it’s painted out to be. It looks to me more like it’s their way of trying to increase their revenue. Which is totally fine by me, I wouldn’t wanna work for free. But just don’t make it sound so noble and say it’s for us consumers.
I rarely do movie reviews. Simply because I don’t feel that my taste can be applied to anyone else and also… everyone has an opinion, mine is no more special.
But last summer I saw the trailer for the movie “Guardians of the Galaxy”. Both me and the wife kinda scoffed at is as kinda rediculous waste of time seeing that movie. We rarely have time to see movies so when we do they better be good. And the other day I saw it. And it was rediculously fun!!! It had the right amount of everything – right amound of action, right amount of humor, right amount of scifi, right amount of villain – everything was right (or “lagom” to use the famous Swedish word). It’s really great when you have low expections of a movie and end up loving it! Kinda like “Gravity” last year. And exactly like “Gravity” last year I went straight ahead and ordered the 3D Bluray. Not only because it was a good movie but because Sam is going to love it in a few years! I also loved the music in it but I feel like they should’ve have amped it up a bit – I mean “Hooked on a feeling” in a home cinema should really feel more than it did.
So no, it wasn’t a waste of time at all.
Wind back the clock some 17-18 years when I was working as a computer guy at Min Dator spending my days building computers and installing them for our customers. I thought I was pretty darn good at what I did and good with computers. But then we merged with a consultant firm and getting to know those guys with high certification levels made me realise I didn’t know a helluvalot. And then we merged with Pulsen and I tried being a consultant but I could never compete with those guys. And it didn’t help when the boss referred to me as a “resource filler” – that kinda killed my ambition. Then I worked at the lawfirm and it was the most secure employment I could ask for and I had no need or reason to get certifications. But as I was doing my two rounds of trying to get a job before and after the Carema disaster one question kept coming up during interviews. “You’ve done a few courses, do you have the certifications?” – which I didn’t. I never heard anyone say that was bad or that was the reason I didn’t get a job but it showed me that employers actually do care about that.
So when I got the job here I said I didn’t only want to take the courses I wanted to take the certifications too – and my employer said ok to take that expense (granted, it’s only €100-€150 each but still a nice gesture). And after I had the first course, studied for the exam and made it with flying colours I realised how easy it was for me. So my boss and I sat a goal for me (which we use for bonus calculations) to become MCSE – Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert.
Now 2 years and 7 exams later I did it! It doesn’t change my salary, it doesn’t help me with the ladies, it doesn’t do much at work or at home at all – but it’s a personal achievement that has been in the making for quite a while but I never got the thumb out of my ass to do. It’s also something of a growing up thing – which is totally lame thing to say 3 months shy of being 40. But it is for me! I don’t expect anyone to really understands what it means to me since I’m the only “me” there is – but just respect the fact that for me it’s AWESOME! AND EVERYTHING IS AWESOME!! (yeah, we just saw The Lego Movie)
I’ve tried alot of photo albums addon for WordPress but not really liking any of them. So I decided to use a feature in my NAS for this because it works pretty damn good. One feature that I’m working on is the ability to geotag photos so you can map out where we’ve been and the photos from that place (in the top right corner, simply choose “Map”). Unfortunately this means going through every picture and you know me and how retro I can be when I go down that path!
Anyway here is the address for it : http://photos.kristoffer.com/photo/
The login is “Gäst” and the password is the Swedish, short name of my employer.
After Sam’s birthday party he immediately felt ill and was tucked down in the soffa for the rest of the weekend. And by Sunday evening I was feeling it a little bit too. So I called in “VAB” (Swedish phenomenen of telling your employer you’ll be home for the day with a sick child but still getting 80% of your salary thanks to our social welfare system). But by Monday afternoon I was out as well. My wife worked the night shift this week and by Tuesday morning she was feeling it a bit too.
And then we spent the entire week tucked down in bed with ~39-39.5 degree fever. And by Thursday Sam was feeling better and ready to play – but had noone to play with since we were both ill. So we took turns being “up and about” for an hour or two each. It was really rediculous. Then we spent the weekend getting better and by Monday I was back to work. Well almost, I was attending a SharePoint course and doing my best not to cough too much and spread the germs.
But that was one helluva week for the household!! Fortunately we’re all 100% back to normal now. Unlike the last time I got a bug like this which made my tinnitus worse 🙁
So my son Sam is 5 already. That went pretty fast if you ask me! And this time we thought we needed two birthday parties for him – one with his friends from kindergarten and one with the family. Since so many of the kids in kindergarten have birthdays in January-February-March we set a date (Saturday Feb 21st) and announced it and got about 12 kids who wanted to come. Not a problem, right?
Well come February 21st and one after another called in sick thanks to some very contagious flu at the kindergarten. Half of them were out sick so it was only 6 kids but that was plenty to keep us busy. My wife had really gone the extra mile(s) to get things ready and fix games and “activity stations” for them so they wouldn’t get bored. And they never did – they kept going and going for 2 hours.
Then one after another went home and we noticed that Sam got a bit tired too and by 6 pm he was down and out, tucked down in the soffa watching Netflix. And this was only the start… To Be Continued
Images from the birthday party can be found here. (login as “Gäst” and the Swedish name of my employer)
Oh that never gets old, does it? Over the past month there has been alot of talk about how companies in the air line industry shuffle employees back and forth between companies more or less o for profit. And it’s nothing new really, Ryan Air have been using the practice of not actually employing pilot’s at all but rather have them start their own company and being hired on a flight-by-flight basis by them to not have to deal with the HR issues and costs.
But what’s got me riled up about this is how the management of for example Norwegian Air doesn’t see a problem with doing it this way. Or any other airliner seems to have an issue with it either seein as SAS are having issues in Denmark over the same thing – changing the corporate structure and where the people doing the actual work are actually employed. It seems to be total common practice in the airline industry now. In the IT industry it’s pretty common to ofcourse, when I was laid off from my job at Pulsen I almost started my own company as “just a computer guy”. But that would have been more profitable for me then what I actually did which was to look for a normal office job when I could have been paid double for doing the same work. But with these issues in the airline industry I don’t think anyone can ever argue it’s for anyone else than the company to do all this restructuring and reshuffling.
And what pissed me off was that when the strik was in full force and some flights still made it off the ground and everyone called foul and yelled “strikebreakers” – and the company didn’t know what they were talking about because this was a different company that they got the aircrew from. And they really didn’t get how that was just wrong. It’s like they are living in a different reality where you can get away by just having a big enough buffer of companies and sub-companies between you and the actual work.
And in the middle we have us, the consumers who don’t want to pay more than we have to to get from A to B even though their expenses are going up 🙁
A total disclaimer here – I have no insight at all of the structure of our own airline, we may be just as bad, I have no idea.