The other day, my friend Wes said that instead of wasting my free Pepsi song, I could have just listened to 18 seconds worth of silence from the band Sigur Ros for free. When you preview a track on the iTunes music store, you can listen to a 30 second snippet of it. But if the song is less than 30 seconds, you can listen to the full track for free.
Okay, so they’re really short songs. Who says songs have to be four minutes, anyway? So I set out to prove that you can actually make a compelling, fun playlist using tracks that are under 30 seconds in length (this is an iTunes Music Store link that will launch iTunes).
There is still one small problem: iTunes refuses to play through an entire playlist made solely of unpurchased iTunes Music Store songs. Instead, iTunes will only play one track at a time, then stop -- forcing you to double-click the next song in the list to continue listening. This is kind of not good.
To solve this playback problem, I planned to write an AppleScript application so that I could automate iTunes. So… I got out my Mac Nerd Checklist: Apple’s XCode… got it. AppleScript Studio… got that, too. Applescript programming experience… LOUD BUZZER NOISE HERE. Okay, I don’t know AppleScript.
After searching hours looking for a script to borrow code from, I stumbled upon an application called the iTunes Music Store Player. It was exactly what I was looking for, except for the fact that it only works on Macs running OS X. Good for me, but not so good for the other 94 percent of PC users who run Windows.
PC users might have a tough time listening to the 30 second songs from my $55 Playlist because iTunes won’t play songs from iTunes iMix playlists in succession. You’d normally have to hit PLAY after each 30 second song is done playing. But one solution is the iTMS-4-ALL (written by Jason Rohrer), a web-based app that allows users who don’t run Macs or PCs to search the iTunes Music Store.
Not only can you search the iTunes Music Store with iTMS-4-ALL, but you can download the song previews too. iTMS-4-ALL offers links to the downloadable previews next to your search results. You can play the songs and make playlists with them using either iTunes or the cross-platform VLC media player. (Note: For direct iTMS-4-ALL links to all of the $55 playlist songs, head to Scott's plasticbugs.com.)
I hope you enjoy listening to this free $55 playlist as much as I enjoyed making it. Make sure you listen to the songs in order or you’ll miss some of the jokes.
To use the player, load up my playlist into iTunes. Then run the iTMSP. iTunes will play the $55 Playlist all the way through without stopping. A fast internet connection is also recommended. (There are two ‘F’ words in the $55 Playlist but I think you’ll be able to handle it.)
The $55 Playlist features:
The Beastie Boys
Modest Mouse
Elton John
Public Enemy
Monty Python
They Might Be Giants
Trans Am
The Circle Jerks
Hilary Duff
The Ataris
NOFX
Violent Femmes
No Doubt
Yo La Tengo
(and more!)
