To all the friends I never met:
I am running a homeserver with all my music, videos, books, articles, source, etc. here is how you do it↓
- get a old desktop computer
- install gnu/linux on it
- connect it to your router through ethernet
- install nextcloud
- install samba, create a smb partition on your new server
- mount the drive into your regular computer, phone, laptop, tv. smart-stereo.
- enjoy all your music from anywhere without cluttering your devices with music, movies or books, or articles, or , or, or
- I usually just use vlc to access any media on my smb share :D just works
- get the nextcloud-client for phone and your other devices and access your smb share that way if you like and upload fotos, video or music there. :D
Thank me later (also if you use ALL linux devices you can skip the smb part and just use netdriv
I recently started ripping all my Spotify playlists using spotdl to put them on my Plex. Spotdl doesn't actually download from Spotify but uses it as a source for the metadata to tag the files but it gets the audio by matching to YouTube music and downloading from there. From there I import to lidarr for renaming / organization.
It's been more than 25 years of accumulating mp3, editing and cleaning my libraries, upgrading to flac, etc. Now going strong at around 600gb of music.
"managing" isn't exactly the right word for whatever the fuck I'm doing
Opus is the best. Anyone still using mp3s in 2023 is living in the past. Some users can still hear a difference between 256kbit/s mp3 audio and uncompressed audio while Opus reaches transparency at about 120kbit/s.
In the realm of compression transparency is when the compressed medium is indistinguishable from the source audio by a human
My journey to mp3s was weird. Phones were already becoming common in high school but I wanted a music player after using the in-game ipod in Metal Gear Solid 4. But iPod classics were expensive and weren't drag and drop. Being on flights and in areas with spotty reception really made me see the value of portable offline music. No ads, no buffering, and no drain on my phone battery.
Yup I still use a standalone player. I got a Sony Walkman NWZ-385 first which was 8GB. It has the best ui I've seen on a player and I still have it. But now I moved on to a Sandisc with a 256GB micro sd card. Before I had to pick and choose but now I can have hours long files just dropped in no prob. And I have it a copy of everything on my pc hard drive.
I collect flac wherever i can on my Computer and sync it to my phone with transcode to lossy. I agree tho, a good lossy encode cannot be distinguished from their lossless version. Even less when you dont have the immediate comparison.
Three reasons:
- collectors appeal -> music on the internet comes and goes. Chances are that your file that you downloaded randomly becomes the only one available. having it in best available quality is the icing on the cake.
- generational loss -> the ability to transfer your music to any future media you like without/with minimal loss. Also if you remix/cut/edit stuff it keeps quality high
- killer samples -> given more agressive music, codecs might fail. There are some examples on hydrogenaudio.
“Pathetic.”
Still keep a mostly FLAC/some MP3 library that I manage with Musicbee. Never felt the need to pay for Spotify.
Subscribed to Google Music when it was still a thing for about a year. Found it largely horrible for music discovery, which was surprising to me because prior to it I had discovered music mostly manually (browsing websites, etc.).
I wound up going back to running my own streaming software from my own MP3 catalog and haven't really looked back since.
The radio is on all the time at my house.
Locally we have 24/7 classical, 24/7 Jazz/Blues, 24/7 bizarre college, 24/7 FUCKYEAHROCK, 24/7 FUCKYEAHOLDERROCK, 24/7 Talk radio, 24/7 HipHop/R&B both old and new school, shortwave, and whats your 20.
And I don't need internet for any of that. that said I do use mp3 (hallelujah and Amen break for that) and youtube for finding this and that.
But all of those stations have shows that I tune in for specific content.
A weekly show about movie soundtracks
A weekly show about young jazz and classical musicians
and all i have to do is mute or change station to escape commercials or pledge drives.
cost to my bandwidth: zero
radio is where it is at still to this day.
I switched to Qobuz from Spotify. Never going back. Better sound quality, good UX, and they pay artists more than 10x what Spotify pays per stream.
Spotify has been promising better audio quality for years and I just don't think they will deliver.
YES MY PEOPLE
been doing it since 2011 never ever stopped. why would i stop? i never even got the point of spotify, oh cool only the official releases if the contract is currently valid, fun, i love paying so i need internet access anytime i want to listen as well.
in the last few months i've been buying vinyl actually which is even more antiquated and quaint and even more fun, really detailed immersive listening, feeling like you own a piece of the band
Flac rule
buy cheap 16G thumbs, load them with mp3s and gift them. ~$5/ea
https://www.f-droid.org/packages/com.zionhuang.music/
Just gonna throw that in here completely unrelated 👀
Even though I got files of many differing audio types, the feeling is still mutual. No dealing with ads or paywalled/removed features on Auxio on my phone or Strawberry Music Player on my desktop.
The amount of song has only been going up since I got my first smartphone in highschool and it feels good having them stored on my phone/desktop for local playback.
I used to flex on the gigabytes my collection required. Now it seems like bragging about the length of your buggy whip. Kinda wish I'd stuck to it though... Now I'm just the curator of a big pre-millennium library.
Used to be heavy in the business, still have ~32,000 songs left of my collection it used to be a few thousand more.
Got into it back when I had no regular internet access, where you'd have to grow your music on your own and seasons make all the difference in going outside to find a wifi hotspot and then download a list of albums that you prepared for beforehand by doing hours of research in your free time at 1 MB/s, during good hours, sitting in the freezing cold watching LibreTorrent or Freezer 24/7 on your old phone because it didn't have enough RAM to actually store an app and let it work in the background. And at the same time hoping the years-old battery would hold enough power left to last the 2 hours it took you to go home. For multiple years in succession, downloading at least 20 albums at each opportunity.
Yeah, I did some work for my collection. It's why I also can't delete it, had I deleted it within a month it would be different, but after multiple years it would feel too much of a waste. It's a monument of the same time frame in which an incredulously important person to me partook in. The first few months of this year were my second deepest spot ever, and thus I got incredibly bored of everything and, because of that, couldn't get into an artist at a time anymore, if at all. I came to the conclusion that ignoring the problem is the only thing I could realistically do, so my mood never improved or decreased, it was just a plateau that's depressing to look back at. Beginning of September I found the band Waterparks for myself and recently started expressing myself more how I want it (:3). The switch-up really fueled me to question if I could actually had a chance at being passively moderately happy, after almost two decades of having felt pretty much nothing. Music represents me, I couldn't.
Wow, I'm rambling high again, sorry not sorry >:3
To this day I do my own personal MP3 mixes 😏
Qobuz masterrace unite
It's harder to find (legal) downloadable music anymore too. 7Digital has been pretty alright for me, but I just stopped bothering with Spotify and Pandora and such. Youtube used to be great for discovery until they started mega cracking down on adblock again.
How often people are just getting rug-pulled left and right by streaming services is ridiculous.
It's super easy for me to maintain a library of offline music because I just listen to the same synthwave tunes and 90s dad rock over and over. Saves me $120+ a year. If I want a new song or album, I use a YT downloader extension.
I still play physical CDs every day. Still buying them, although that is getting to be more difficult, sadly.
I have a nice Rotel CD player at home and a CD player in my vehicle. I got a great CD/DVD duplicator for $50 used so all those CDs in my truck are easily disposable copies of my originals that stay at home.
I should rip them all but that is a lot of work. I did rip many of them to 192 khz mp3s a while ago so that has been enough so far.
Streaming is nice but the fuckery will continue and they can miss me with that shit.
me but opus instead of mp3 and ViMusic instead of Spotify
I only use Spotify for a couple of exclusive podcasts I like and maybe some comedy. I certainly wouldn't pay for a subscription since I don't listen to much music and I hate the user interface especially through Android Auto.
The only time I really listen to music is late at night in front of the PC and I have a music collection for that. It's amazing how cheap you can pick up old CDs these days second hand in car boot sales and similar. It's just cheaper to buy CDs and rip them rather than fork out 11 euros every month.
geometry dash asset music ._.
I wonder if I still have my Creative Nomad Jukebox somewhere... came out in 2000. Was the size and shape of a portable CD player so it fit in the same kind of cases. Took normal AA batteries. Had a 6 GB capacity, which was insane in 2000. I had a huge number of MP3s on it. Many radio dramas. I wish I still had them elsewhere.
Managing a library now is easier than ever. Managing mp3s specifically is a very odd choice though
I share mp3s via google Drive links. browsers know how to play them
they're looking down on them while having no features other than play and pause lol
Mainly a spotify user but I always keep an mp3 library
It's pretty easy to get high amounts of mp3s
MP3 isn't dead but smells funny. Today I manage a ton of OGM, AAC, FLAC and other formats.
Almost 300GB of MP3s, and I keep everything organised. All 320kbps, all tags correct, artwork done, etc... I started this years ago and simply kept on doing it. I have a separate hard drive for music, and another to back it all up. I even use a Fiio X1 MP3 player that I purchased around 2013. MP3 players were getting hard to buy as it was back then. If this breaks, not sure what I am doing? It's all quite retro and old school, I guess?
I used to. But in the later years I found it very difficult to carry this much weight. In addition to that, I've realized the transient nature of my music tastes and my over-reliance on music. Also my priorities have changed a lot. Music is far from essential for survival, and when the times get rough (when you move a lot, and all you can take with you is your laptop), it's much easier to access an online library than your own physical one. I've decided to keep the mp3s (m4as, wavs, flacs, etc.) of the songs that aren't on Spotify and remove everything else.
After I got rid of Spotify Premium subscription, I tried this app called InnerTune. It's basically the same as Spotify, with synced lyrics, music searching and download (not mp3 though)
But things got messy when I was flying long haul using a LCC, where at first I can play a song from a downloaded playlist but cannot manually play next/previous/another songs from the same/different playlists and not long after the app crashed
I guess mp3 is still the best choice, I currently use older version of Spotify desktop (old UI and no ads) and spotdl. 128 kbps mp3s are good enough for me
I mean, I use them my prime 4 dj system because i'm not always gonna be sure about internet availability at the next venue. I don't want to DJ for other humans while using my phone as a 5g accespoint.
Bandcamp, Supraph Online, Ototoy, Uta 573, Steam and GOG's OSTs and Apple's iTunes store have been my to-go options. No DRM, no worries. Just avoid Apple's music subscription, as it is DRM'd.
MP3 user eh?
Yeah them removing music I listen to cause of licensing bullshit was why I quit Spotify a couple of years ago and went back to buying and pirating music again just like before. Plus I get better audio quality, have like 1 tb of mostly 24-bit Flacs on my NAS with Plex. I do also not have to keep paying more and more for the same content cause they find out they cant keep infinite growth so they squeeze the existing subs for more money instead. Fuck I hate subscriptions in general. The only thing I miss are the mixes and radio cause it made me discover so much new music.
THATS ME!
