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Well that makes the problem pretty clear. People are sticking with Spotify/Apple Music/Youtube Music because those platforms enable algorithmic discovery of new

by bhaney 3y ago

Well that makes the problem pretty clear. People are sticking with Spotify/Apple Music/Youtube Music because those platforms enable algorithmic discovery of new music that they want to listen to. Somewhere on my hard drives, I have hundreds of gigs of flacs comprising my "old" music library that I used to maintain, because that's how I used to interact with music. I haven't accessed or updated that library in 5+ years now because manually maintaining a personal music library completely fucking sucks for the casual music listener, even with perfect interfaces. It's a lot of effort, and the end result is that you get to listen to the same songs over and over again and are completely on your own for finding any new music that you want. Compared to algorithmic discovery services that can cut through the monotony of repeat plays with fresh songs that I've never heard or barely remember but am still very likely to enjoy, it's no surprise that a lot of people are moving away from manually curated libraries. I don't want my music listening to be limited only to songs that I've previously discovered myself - I want something that has awareness of more or less "all" music to pick good songs for me without having to lift a finger, and existing services have gotten pretty good at that. I recognize that for copyright reasons at the very least (not to even get into technical issues), projects like funkwhale can't possibly provide this functionality. That's okay and understandable, but it's also the reason why people aren't switching to it.

PaulHoule 3y ago
Funny I lean on YouTube for music discovery but mostly listen out of my own library. The worst problem I have managing it technically is that M.F. Doom hasn’t recorded two albums under the same name.
- bhaney 3y ago
  What does your process look like for discovering music on youtube and then getting that music into your personal library? If you're not discovering while you're typically listening, then you must be setting aside some separate time for discovery, and then curating those discovered songs, acquiring their files somehow, and integrating them into your library, right?
  - PaulHoule 3y ago
    Basically yes. If I was smart about it I'd get one of those YouTube downloader scripts and attach it to something that puts on metadata and do it all in one step. I do it in bursts and frequently it is motivated by reading something about music, then looking up the music on YouTube and listening to it there for a while before I decide something is worth putting in the library. For what it's worth I am not particularly interested in music that came out in the last year or so, not like I am fundamentally opposed to it, but given that the event horizon for decent music recordings is roughly 1965, I think there is more older music than I haven't heard yet than there is new music. Also my approach is album and discography oriented partially because I really like listening to albums and partially because it's often easy to get a whole discography. So it is not like I am keeping track of tracks I like as much as it is albums and artists that I like.
  - SAI_Peregrinus 3y ago
    I do the same thing with Youtube & Spotify. Use the algorithmic feeds when I feel like listening to new music (or being notified of releases), buy downloadable versions or CDs & rip them if I like something new that showed up in the algorithm. Most of the time I listen to music from my library, but sometimes I feel like a change.
rglullis 3y ago
I don't think I was clear. If you already have the music collection, your "job" will be mostly about uploading it, but after you do that you will be able to enjoy similar features as the ones you are describing. The "radios" are meant exactly to give some "algorithmic generated playlist" that requires very little input from the user.
- bhaney 3y ago
  I think you're being perfectly clear, but I also think you're missing my point. "If you already have the music collection" is the deal breaker. If I want to listen to my own music library, there has always been plenty of solutions for that. Long before any modern music streaming service existed, I was making streamable radio stations of my personal music library available with software like IceCast. But these days I don't want to listen just to music I've already discovered myself, or even just to music that me and a collection of friends have discovered ourselves. I want exposure to essentially all music, whether I or anyone I know has ever heard of it before. I don't seem to be able to get that with services like FunkWhale, and I'm not willing to go back to limiting my music exposure to only songs that me or a select few others have personally discovered and added to our libraries on our own. Mass discovery is the killer feature, while being able to listen to music I own (in whatever presentation) is unimpressive table stakes. And I want that discovery to be happening while I'm listening to music normally, not have to set aside time to discover new music before adding it to my library so my normal "music listening" sessions can pull from it.
  - rglullis 3y ago
    > I don't seem to be able to get that with services like FunkWhale The problem is not with Funkwhale. The problem is with archaic IP laws and our collective unwillingness to fight for copyright reform. If you don't mind straight out piracy, there is a ton of solutions that could give you a virtually infinite music collection and just get the algorithms to select the songs for you.
    - bhaney 3y ago
      > The problem is not with Funkwhale. The problem is with archaic IP laws Yeah, as I mentioned a couple posts up: "I recognize that for copyright reasons at the very least, projects like funkwhale can't possibly provide this functionality." But at the end of the day it doesn't matter what the source of the problem is or whether or not it can be reasonably fixed. The problem exists, and it makes FunkWhale a non-starter for people like me, as unfair as that is. > If you don't mind straight out piracy I don't at all. Pretty much the entirety of those hundreds of gigs of flacs I mentioned earlier are pirated. > there is a ton of solutions that could give you a virtually infinite music collection and just get the algorithms to select the songs for you The thing about getting the algorithms to select the songs for me is that if I'm doing that, the service has already bundled a very convenient way to actually play those songs as well, so I don't have any reason to maintain my own library. I'm paying for the service primarily for its algorithm, and the service just happens to also cover the trivial case of actually listening to the music it recommends, so I don't really need another service to handle that part. Even if I did have a reason for wanting to separate out the discovery from the playback, I don't think it would be possible to do without significant friction, and I've found that any suggestion to the contrary usually just ignores or minimizes any use cases that the suggester doesn't personally value.

by bhaney 3y ago

PaulHoule 3y ago

Funny I lean on YouTube for music discovery but mostly listen out of my own library. The worst problem I have managing it technically is that M.F. Doom hasn’t recorded two albums under the same name.

bhaney 3y ago
What does your process look like for discovering music on youtube and then getting that music into your personal library? If you're not discovering while you're typically listening, then you must be setting aside some separate time for discovery, and then curating those discovered songs, acquiring their files somehow, and integrating them into your library, right?
- PaulHoule 3y ago
  Basically yes. If I was smart about it I'd get one of those YouTube downloader scripts and attach it to something that puts on metadata and do it all in one step. I do it in bursts and frequently it is motivated by reading something about music, then looking up the music on YouTube and listening to it there for a while before I decide something is worth putting in the library. For what it's worth I am not particularly interested in music that came out in the last year or so, not like I am fundamentally opposed to it, but given that the event horizon for decent music recordings is roughly 1965, I think there is more older music than I haven't heard yet than there is new music. Also my approach is album and discography oriented partially because I really like listening to albums and partially because it's often easy to get a whole discography. So it is not like I am keeping track of tracks I like as much as it is albums and artists that I like.
- SAI_Peregrinus 3y ago
  I do the same thing with Youtube & Spotify. Use the algorithmic feeds when I feel like listening to new music (or being notified of releases), buy downloadable versions or CDs & rip them if I like something new that showed up in the algorithm. Most of the time I listen to music from my library, but sometimes I feel like a change.

rglullis 3y ago

I don't think I was clear. If you already have the music collection, your "job" will be mostly about uploading it, but after you do that you will be able to enjoy similar features as the ones you are describing. The "radios" are meant exactly to give some "algorithmic generated playlist" that requires very little input from the user.

bhaney 3y ago
I think you're being perfectly clear, but I also think you're missing my point. "If you already have the music collection" is the deal breaker. If I want to listen to my own music library, there has always been plenty of solutions for that. Long before any modern music streaming service existed, I was making streamable radio stations of my personal music library available with software like IceCast. But these days I don't want to listen just to music I've already discovered myself, or even just to music that me and a collection of friends have discovered ourselves. I want exposure to essentially all music, whether I or anyone I know has ever heard of it before. I don't seem to be able to get that with services like FunkWhale, and I'm not willing to go back to limiting my music exposure to only songs that me or a select few others have personally discovered and added to our libraries on our own. Mass discovery is the killer feature, while being able to listen to music I own (in whatever presentation) is unimpressive table stakes. And I want that discovery to be happening while I'm listening to music normally, not have to set aside time to discover new music before adding it to my library so my normal "music listening" sessions can pull from it.
- rglullis 3y ago
  > I don't seem to be able to get that with services like FunkWhale The problem is not with Funkwhale. The problem is with archaic IP laws and our collective unwillingness to fight for copyright reform. If you don't mind straight out piracy, there is a ton of solutions that could give you a virtually infinite music collection and just get the algorithms to select the songs for you.
  - bhaney 3y ago
    > The problem is not with Funkwhale. The problem is with archaic IP laws Yeah, as I mentioned a couple posts up: "I recognize that for copyright reasons at the very least, projects like funkwhale can't possibly provide this functionality." But at the end of the day it doesn't matter what the source of the problem is or whether or not it can be reasonably fixed. The problem exists, and it makes FunkWhale a non-starter for people like me, as unfair as that is. > If you don't mind straight out piracy I don't at all. Pretty much the entirety of those hundreds of gigs of flacs I mentioned earlier are pirated. > there is a ton of solutions that could give you a virtually infinite music collection and just get the algorithms to select the songs for you The thing about getting the algorithms to select the songs for me is that if I'm doing that, the service has already bundled a very convenient way to actually play those songs as well, so I don't have any reason to maintain my own library. I'm paying for the service primarily for its algorithm, and the service just happens to also cover the trivial case of actually listening to the music it recommends, so I don't really need another service to handle that part. Even if I did have a reason for wanting to separate out the discovery from the playback, I don't think it would be possible to do without significant friction, and I've found that any suggestion to the contrary usually just ignores or minimizes any use cases that the suggester doesn't personally value.