Years ago I discovered a workflow, that worked out pretty good so far: 1.) Store your whole existing MP3s to another place (external HDD) and put it AWAY (remo

Years ago I discovered a workflow, that worked out pretty good so far: 1.) Store your whole existing MP3s to another place (external HDD) and put it AWAY (remove it from your harddrive) 2.) Get familiar with beets[1] and its configuration 3.) Think of 1 to 10 "albums" you like to listen to at the moment 4.) Copy these from your external HDD or if you down't own it get the CD and rip it with EAC[5], then import them into the fresh beets library 5.) Everytime you want to hear a track or a song, that does not exist in your beets library, repeat step 4 (this might sound like much work and pain, but it will pay off later, trust me) 6.) If you would like to have self hosted "cloud access" to you music, use navidrome [2] or alternatives supporting subsonic protocols together with according apps (I use substreamer[3]) 7.) If you would like to go offline, get an iPod classic 160GB with an iflash quad[4] or a good old iPod Nano 7th Gen (if you need bluetooth) Notes: - IMPORTANT: Do not import music, you do not want to listen to, this keeps the library small - Import full albums, not single tracks - much better support for metadata, most albums are found on musicbrainz.org - If you have an album, that is not on musicbrainz.org, create an account and add it there instead of tagging it manually (the community rulez!) - Try to find "Best Of" albums of your favorite bands to prevent importing to many albums for 1 single track - Use beets[1] to convert your audio files into 192kbps mp3s for compatibility reasons, but keep the original CDs or use FLAC to store them to your external drive - you might as well use a "better" codec that is supported by all your devices Result: A small (but everytime growing), well organized, self syncing, non restricted music library that can be listened to mobile, but also supporting Podcasts and audio books... Fits well in my pocket ;) [1] https://beets.io/ https://beets.io/ [2] https://www.navidrome.org/ https://www.navidrome.org/ [3] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ghenry22.substream2 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ghenry22.s... (android), https://apps.apple.com/us/app/substreamer/id1012991665 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/substreamer/id1012991665 (ios) [4] https://www.iflash.xyz/store/iflash-quad/ https://www.iflash.xyz/store/iflash-quad/ [5] https://www.exactaudiocopy.de/ https://www.exactaudiocopy.de/