CDs Curated by Steve Jobs and the iPod Team (2016) | Hacker News Reader

CDs Curated by Steve Jobs and the iPod Team (2016)

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111 pointsTomte65 comments

Spotify playlist of all 20 CDs https://open.spotify.com/user/1168552961/playlist/7D4SVuRHKn...

Beat me to it. I was creating one just now.

Something to listen to on the commute home, thanks.

Thank you

A pretty good collection in fact. Of course the stuff here is popular, but mostly for good reason, and varied, naturally. Thinking about music and Apple always makes me think of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer

Playlist with all 20 albums on Apple music: https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/20-cds/pl.u-4JomX69uaZa1...

I thought I was going to roll my eyes at the selection, but there's something for everyone here given the year and they allow listeners to dip into genre's they may never actively listen to.

Quite nice to see Miles Davis' "Kinda Blue" and the Dave Brubeck Quartet's "Take Five". Those were the two albums (along with Coltrane's "Blue Train" and Thelonius Monk - [don't remember the record]) that gave me an entry door into jazz back in the mid-90's and ever since jazz has been such a joy in my life. Davis' "So What" still stands up the hairs on the back of my neck even after 25 years each time I play it.

That said I have a fairly wide taste in music ranging from Napalm Death to Philip Glass, from 60's psychadelic to 21st century analogue electronica.

The omission of Hip Hop is rather startling from today's perspective (and even for the time). Having only a single rock album, on the other hand (and no Metal), might look prescient today.

> The omission of Hip Hop is rather startling from today's perspective (and even for the time).

That's a really good point, and well spotted. I'm amazed I hadn't noticed that being a fan of NWA et-al from that era.

[edit]

Upon further thought, I'm also wondering if there may have been objections from certain artists and/or they couldn't get contractual releases for this purpose - up until then I guess the rights were for CD/Tape/Vinyl/SACD etc, digital music may have been viewed with suspicion by some bands - e.g. Metallica. Just a thought.

As the article says, Apple bought 1 physical copy of these CDs for each iPod they pre-loaded to be on somewhat more solid legal footing. Digital rights would have had to be negotiated on a case by case basis, and at least for the Beatles records, Apple had a bad relationship with the copyright holder at the time.

Or maybe rap/hiphop just wasn't Job's bag.

But it's not beyond the possibility that given the new format (yeah I know), there were possibly contracts explicitly for certain mediums (CD/vinyl) and some artists either didn't respond to contractual updates, or just plain said "no way".

How many big caliber trend setting high society "journalists" invited to this shindig would be hiphop/rap connoisseurs you think?

   Fuck the police! Comin' straight from the underground
   A young nigga got it bad ‘cause I'm brown

might not go down well with NYTimes, publishers of "N.W.A.is deliberately provocative, and the songs on ''Straight Outta Compton'' are vicious, sexist and stupid;"

That was written in 1989, but fair point; I don't think they'd started propitiating Jay-Z just yet.

While those journalists surely would be delighted to hear their profession depicted on the Dylan CD:

   You try so hard
   But you don’t understand
   Just what you’ll say
   When you get home
 
   Because something is happening here
   But you don’t know what it is
   Do you, Mister Jones?

https://www.bobdylan.com/songs/ballad-thin-man/

Difficult to find hip-hop devoid of profanity, violence, lewdness, misogyny, or drug use (primarily marijuana, which was actively prosecuted back then).

(a) Not THAT difficult; there were always alternatives and (b) what exactly do you think "Mr. Tambourine Man" on the Dylan CD was about?

> Today, you can watch that historical event on YouTube

> Video unavailable

sigh.

archive.org to the rescue. They are a charity. Give them money.

https://archive.org/details/Apple_iPod_Introduction_2001

Here it is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAU5lY4oxeU

On a related note, Macs came with the following music before iTunes gained its music store.

It includes a song by Snake River Conspiracy about polyamory! Bet you no one expected that from Apple back in 2000.

https://open.spotify.com/user/rezmason/playlist/0mWEVPaZDH2Y...

It's a pity they couldn't continue to pack those into production iPods (I'm sure it would've been too costly). There's a handful of albums within that group I already own, and a good number that I wouldn't necessarily buy, but would definitely listen to if it were freely included.

Apple Computer was continuously in legal battles with Apple Corps (the record label owned by the Beatles) over staying out of each other’s business (easy for the Beatles, hard for Steve Jobs)

Shipping iPod with Beatles content would have been a really nasty legal knot. Or it would have made the universe implode. One or the other.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer

I remember that. Seems like a simple idea, but at the time seemed about as doable as cold fusion.

A funny tidbit from this saga:

> When new sounds for System 7 were created, the sounds were reviewed by Apple's Legal Department who objected that the new sound alert "chime" had a name that was "too musical," under the recent settlement. The creator of the new sound alerts for System 7, Jim Reekes, had grown frustrated with the legal scrutiny and first quipped it should be named "Let It Beep", a pun on The Beatles' "Let It Be". When someone remarked that that would not pass Legal's approval, he remarked, "so sue me". After a brief reflection, he resubmitted the sound's name as sosumi (a homophone of "so sue me"), telling the Legal Department that the name was Japanese and had nothing to do with music.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sosumi

When Apple and Apple settled their differences and you could finally get the Beatles on iTunes, Apple Stores played only Beetles music over their sound systems for months. I can only imagine what it was like working there at that point.

> I can only imagine what it was like working there at that point.

Amazing?

Working in any environment where you listen to the same 2-hour loop of music for months at a time is rough, when it is the same loop of the same artist?

People would complain (remember the pre-loaded U2 album?)

I've never had an iPod (even as a kid, I had to be "that guy" being different, with my Creative ZEN mp3 player), but my understanding is that the U2 album was something that was pushed out to everyone, not pre-loaded, correct? Maybe I'm misremembering.

FWIW, I'm also a Kobo user, and I've never heard of anyone complaining about the 100 public domain eBooks that were preloaded onto early Kobo devices.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobo_eReader#Kobo_eReader

I don't think people would complain if it came with the product, just like no one complained about the few tracks that came with Windows 7 (see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninja_Tuna).

The problem with the U2 tracks is that 1) they were delivered automatically by surprise and 2) you couldn't refuse them. They were just dropped onto your phone without warning. This is especially egregious when you consider the fact that Apple has been charging an arm and a leg for storage space on phones, so people were left without storage as this album auto downloaded. (see https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2794347/oops...)

Preloads are fine, especially when done tastefully or unobtrusively. Apple didn't do that with the U2 tracks.

It was also a reminder that your phone is backdoored by Apple and they can do whatever they please with it and your files. But they never would. But they can.

There is a pretty big difference between something that autodownloads a list retrieved from a database-backed web service and remote code execution (a “backdoor”).

OS updates are remote code execution. We trust them because it's in the best financial interest of the company not to abuse them.

You would think, but that doesn't correlate with the behavior of Microsoft.

OS updates, if not automatic, do not remotely execute code.

Too bad I cannot manage to find Crash by Dave Matthews Band in Apple Music.

All the other are available (at least in France).

You don't know how lucky you are.

Just because someone is at the top of their field (consumer electronics) doesn't mean that they know anything about other, non-related fields (music). I was actually at this event and I remember rolling my eyes so hard they almost fell out of their sockets as this was the most trite, baby boomer-centric music selection I'd ever seen.

Not to mention the cringe worthy Bono/Jobs relationship:

https://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2011/10/07/bono-calls-steve-...

I thought the same thing when I saw the title of this, but rolling your eyes at Glenn Gould playing Bach, Bob Marley, Nirvana or the Beatles? Come on! This is some of the most influential and culturally important music there is. This isn't just popular it's good. Of course it'd be more interesting if they chose Gamelan, late John Coltrane, Jordi Savall, Karlheinz Stockhausen or Merzbow, but seriously what else would you expect?

> Glenn Gould playing Bach, Bob Marley, Nirvana or the Beatles

One of these things is not like the others :) Yes, there's some great music included but it's a very cliche and unsurprising collection. Certainly not "think different" style.

That's a feature, not a bug - they could more easily compare the sound quality of the iPod to other devices.

> Not to mention the cringe worthy Bono/Jobs relationship:

The more interesting relationship, IMO, was the Joan Baez/Jobs relationship.

A lot of music on that list is not specific for baby boomers. Even those baby boomer era artists like Bob Dylan and The Beatles are regarded as very important and influential figures in popular music. Not to mention that Mozart, Nirvana, Faith Hill and Bach are definitely not baby boomers era artists

> Bob Dylan and The Beatles are regarded as very important and influential figures in popular music

This was the assumption through the later half of the 20th century, but I don't think it's the case at this point. I haven't even heard The Beatles in a commercial context in about a decade (something unthinkable as early as 2000). Hip hop clearly had a large influence on the pop culture of today and (totally unrepresented in this collection). Plus there's really no excuse for including The Dave Matthews Band :P

In late 90s early 2000s hip hop was still regarded are something new and a bit controversial. I think, sort of, like mumble rap this days. Of course hip hop started in 20th century but it's biggest influence we was on the beginning of 21st century.

I think it was fairly well established at this point (Jay Z, Outkast...). My somewhat snarky point though was that the iPod was obviously a very forward thinking and revolutionary device that was the direct predecessor the iPhone. Jobs had great vision and could practically "see the future" of consumer electronics, yet this music collection is like the most generic suburban backyard bbq playlist for middle age people. If Jobs had the same insight into music as he had into tech, we'd see way more hip hop, electronic. Hell, even yacht rock has comeback in a way that The Dave Matthews Band or Faith Hill never will.

This is to be expected of course, I just think it's humorous.

>If Jobs had the same insight into music as he had into tech, we'd see way more hip hop, electronic.

You can be on the cutting edge of music without liking hip hop or electronic music. The problems wasn't the genres he picked, but the incredibly generic band choices within those genres.

I do like hip hop (and electronic is slowly growing on me), but that doesn't mean that everyone that doesn't is out of touch. There's interesting music coming out of nearly every genre in 2019. That's the way it always is.

Totally. The choices were bland within the genres they represented. Still, as a music player with, at the time, incredible storage it seems like having a bunch of genres represented would have showcased the iPod's capabilities better.

I can’t think of any good hip hop that came out before 2001 that wouldn’t have been too controversial for the sensibilities of corporate America.

That's true. I remember that there was a shitstorm of controversy over Kriss Kross' Jump when it first came out. Not saying its good, just an example of something incredibly mild that was almost too much for America's sensibilities at the time.

I can’t find a non Wikipedia reference, but it did say that hip hop was the best selling genre by 1999.

Just for reference, these are the top 100 songs of 2000. The year before the iPod was introduced.

None of the hip hop songs that were popular were groundbreaking - mostly just bubble gum rap. I doubt very seriously that Apple would have been willing to put any socially conscious rap on iPods.

> In late 90s early 2000s hip hop was still regarded are something new and a bit controversial.

Not really, hip hop / rap was fairly mainstream by the late 1980s / early 1990s.

Yeah in my group age almost everybody was listening to hip hop, but we wasn't the people that could afford new and shiny iPod

Sure, but if you had to winnow all of the world's (or just US's) best music down to only 20 CDs, do you really need to include two Beatles albums and Simon and Garfunkel ones? Is Faith Hill really the best you can do for country?

I would ditch those three and consider replacing them with:

* Johnny Cash - At Folsom Prison

* Michael Jackson - Thriller

* Wu Tang Clan - Enter The Wu Tang

Some punk and metal representation would be good too. And, honestly, Play hasn't held up well over the years. If you want something more representative or influential, maybe Orbital's brown album or Underworld's dubnobywithmyheadman.

Who said that this was a list o the best 20 CDs? Those was the best CDs for demographic they was targeting. That list was both good music and a marketing tool. That’s why there is no number one pop stars of that time on this list.

Giving everyone a copy of 36 Chambers would be a very un-Jobs thing to do. Imagine, you put your product in the hands of a journalist, they put the earbuds in, and the first thing they hear is a 2 minute description of torture and testicular mutiliation

The first thing they'd hear is a contextless monologue about rival kung-fu schools.

The scroll wheel demonstration took them down to track 9

No Sarcofago, no entry.

If we're going for a "best" list (rather than "most important") a cheap way to slightly improve it would be to swap Nevermind for In Utero.

Though I thought it was actually a pretty well-curated set of albums. "Best" isn't always the... well, best, thing to aim for in a collection.

I'm not a huge Nirvana fan, but I agree. The band ended before it realized its full potential and I think In Utero was a small taste of where they were headed. Heart Shaped Box is so much better than their earlier hits (which are by no means bad)that I never even bother to listen to their older music anymore.

>Just because someone is at the top of their field (consumer electronics) doesn't mean that they know anything about other, non-related fields (music)

Apple was not exactly at the top of their field before betting on the iPod. The curated collection was not only personal, it was also as iconic as the device it was meant to show off. You would probably balk at the idea of Karlheinz Brandenburg's choice of Tom's Diner too.

>Just because someone is at the top of their field (consumer electronics) doesn't mean that they know anything about other, non-related fields (music).

So?

I think the article is just a geewiz kinda article that looks back and lists the CDs. It's interesting, I don't think it is declaring Jobs or anyone else some sort of status as defining music in anyway. Most of that music is highly thought of by lots of people anyway.

The rest of your post I think says more about your preferences than anything else.

You're not the target market.

As a matter of fact, that's how just about everything apple works. They are "for the rest of us" and they don't pander to professionals (no matter if they name their products "pro")

Just because someone is at the top of their field (consumer electronics) doesn't mean that they know anything about other, non-related fields (music).

Ed Colligan former CEO of Palm in 2006 on rumors that Apple was releasing a phone.

“We've learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone, PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They're not going to just walk in.“

Reply on news.ycombinator.com