30 August 2020
I have a good bit of music I had acquired and ripped in the late 90s and had purchased from Amazon later. That all lives in a directory on my big computer. I never play anything from there, and it just sits there for safe keeping.
I continued to purchase DRM-free MP3 files from Amazon Music, and I eventually embraced their "free" streaming with Amazon Prime. I could add available music to my collection for free, and then stream it along with the stuff I bought, so it’s nice and blended. This allowed me to easily toss a new album or artist into rotation, and if I really want, I might purchase it to keep.
The Prime streaming service had some limitations with some music I wanted to sample being unavailable, and sometimes, I’d notice some of the free music disappeared from my collection. I decided to pay the little bit for the Unlimited Music plan, and that made almost everything available. I notice very few cases of music becoming unavailable, so now I don’t bother buying downloadable MP3s except in rare cases where I want to be able to use a song on another device outside the Amazon Music client.
I don’t really use the stations at all on Amazon Music. I don’t feel the need to hear large numbers of new songs all the time, so I have a smaller curated list of podcasts and DJs where I discover new music to add to my collection at Amazon:
All Songs Considered at NPR Podcasts
Echoes Interview Podcast for chill ambient electronic music
Song Exploder Podcast for extended discussion on the anatomy of a song
Shadowland the monthly Goth/Industrial party
DJ Neidermeyer for 80s and 90s Music I may have never known or had forgotten
I had uploaded all my music to Google Play Music years ago, but there had always been news of the service’s eventual demise. It’s finally migrated recently over to YouTube Music, and they seem to have reintroduced the ability to upload my own music. I’ve paid for YouTube Premium, so I have YouTube Music as well, and this could be a nice alternative. I have a few albums uploaded there which I can’t find on Amazon. I don’t think I can buy music there, though, and I’ve already purchased a good bit of (DRM-free) music on Amazon.
28 June 2016
Ben’s birthday is approaching, so I picked up the inexpensive Amazon Fire Tablet from 2015. It’s running FireOS 5.1.x.
He played with it running stock for a week or so, using it to mostly read library books, and of course, to play some games from the Amazon Appstore.
Reading was the main purpose to have the tablet, but I also wanted it for communication and organization. That means getting the Google Apps installed on it. The only things available in the Amazon Appstore were these shell apps that were nothing more than a wrapper aronud a web pane, so I needed to proceed to install the Google Play framework and app store.
Before even buying the tablet, I had found some links, so I was pretty sure it could be done. I started with a post on XDA which got me the link to an all-in-one ZIP of everything I’d need.
It came with the APK files and directions to run a Windows BAT file, which obviously isn’t going to happen on any machine I have, so I cracked open the BAT, and followed the script running the important bits by hand:
Login to the tablet as the original login — Ben’s secondary login didn’t work.
Enable Developer Options — Settings → Device Options → tap serial number serveral times, and the Developer Options will appear.
Enable USB Debugging — Settings → Device Options → Developer Options → Enable ADB to Enabled
Enable Side Loading — Settings → Device Options → Developer Options → Enable Untrusted Sources
I was on a Mac, so the USB drivers were already good, and I had Android Developer Tools already installed.
Unpack the all-in-one ZIP.
Run the commands at the shell:
# see that tablet device is listed adb devices adb install com.google.android.gms-6.6.03_\(1681564-036\)-6603036-minAPI9.apk adb install GoogleLoginService.apk adb install GoogleServicesFramework.apk adb shell pm grant com.google.android.gms android.permission.INTERACT_ACROSS_USERS adb install com.android.vending-5.9.12-80391200-minAPI9.apk # disable ads on cheap tablet, though I already paid to have it disabled. adb shell pm hide com.amazon.kindle.kso
After those couple commands, I found I had the Play Store icon, and fired it up, did the Play Services upgrade, and started installing the Gmail, Calendar, Hangouts, and Keep. I did find Inbox would crash after setup, but Gmail was fine.