5 ms·

The problem is music streaming is so overwhelming better than managing music files that there’s no way 99.9% of the population is going back. I used to be a mus

by extr 2y ago

The problem is music streaming is so overwhelming better than managing music files that there’s no way 99.9% of the population is going back. I used to be a music library guy, those files have been gathering dust on an old HDD for years now.

cholantesh 2y ago
You could have the best of both worlds with a Jellyfin server?
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
  JellyFin is also inaccessible to the normal user.
- oaththrowaway 2y ago
  Have your cake and eat it too https://github.com/m0ngr31/jellypod https://github.com/m0ngr31/jellypod
  - cholantesh 2y ago
    I don't own an Ipod, but damn that is cool.
    - oaththrowaway 2y ago
      Sadly I don't either. Just saw it on the Jellyfin forum a while back.
- decafninja 2y ago
  Browsing the Jellyfin site, I don't understand. Seems like you still have to collect and manage your music. I was a latecomer to Spotify and now I can't go back. I've discovered more great music via it than I would ever have imagined. No it's not perfect, but still beats the old way of doing it manually.
  - teeray 2y ago
    > you still have to collect and manage your music This is where the *arrs come in. Specifically Lidarr [0]. EDIT: it's not the exact same experience, but it's better than manual management. [0] https://wiki.servarr.com/lidarr/quick-start-guide https://wiki.servarr.com/lidarr/quick-start-guide
    - crtasm 2y ago
      I've never felt need to try those - just put albums I've bought from e.g. Bandcamp into my Jellyfin music directory, they're automatically scanned and available in seconds.
  - cholantesh 2y ago
    The discovery is great, but when I add music to my library, I'd like it to just be there, and I'm not able to guarantee that with Spotify. On any given day, for any arbitrary reason (okay mainly licensing and geography), music may disappear from my library, so I end up having to listen to it on Youtube or Bandcamp or pirate it. As others mentioned, Lidarr helps with this.
    - decafninja 2y ago
      Understandable. I do have some songs I'd like to ensure perpetual availability, but they're few in number enough that I may go buy them separately, but still use Spotify as my main consumption medium. I've also found that I'm able to both discover and listen to songs in some genres via Spotify that I've historically found difficult to acquire anywhere else.
Zambyte 2y ago
I think it overwhelmingly feeds into FOMO, but otherwise most people would be much better off with personal music collections. I pretty much grew up streaming music on YouTube, Pandora, and Spotify. About 4 years ago I decided to drop Spotify cold turkey, and have been building a music collection since. I have already spent less on music than I would have in the same period on a Spotify subscription on a collection of music I love enough to have specifically purchased. I will also never have this music taken away from me, unlike music on Spotify which may be removed against my will.
- extr 2y ago
  By the sound of it you’re a little younger than me. I grew up managing my music collection and growing it as you describe. It was a lot of fun. But it took time in my day that I no longer have between kids and work and whatnot. Finding and listening to good music is still something I enjoy but I don’t have all day to be preoccupied with it, manage metadata, set up a home server to stream it, etc. Spotify is a rounding error in terms of cost for me. So the decision for me is not between “stream” or “have a personal collection”, it’s “stream” or “don’t have as much music in my life”. I suspect this calculation is similar for most
  - ASalazarMX 2y ago
    "Stream, but download your songs if you want" would be the ideal world, but alas, a LOT would need to change for it to happen. Meanwhile we can be happy with "Pay us rent to hear the songs on our library, but only what the labels allow us to show in your country, which can and will change frequently. Also don't look for anything slightly exotic because it isn't there. Oh, don't be sad... here, have tons of covers by unknown and mediocre artists we used to pad out collection with."
throw_pm23 2y ago
But you don't need to solve the problems of 99.9% of the population, it is enough if you make one person happy :)
RiverCrochet 2y ago
My niece and I were talking about this. She's older and has heard all songs she grew up with countless times, even to the point where any nostalgic value has been worn out. Many of those songs are in commercials, TikTok videos, etc. So easy access to the discography she grew up with is bland and uninteresting to her. But weird, bizarre, interesting and novel stuff is all over YouTube, stuff with less than 50 views, stuff that isn't on Spotify. The same is true of SoundCloud and Bandcamp, and you even have the occasional mp3 shared on Discord by musicmakers that didn't bother to put it on any type of service. So she's all about the music library, because there is no way to know when that truly unique and meaningful stuff will disappear. I'm desperately trying to get her to understand what she is doing is wrong, and I hope to succeed in setting her on the right path someday. Because there are plenty of legal avenues now, and an artist or company pulling their tracks from a service without warning is simply something we should all live with.
- navjack27 2y ago
  Don't moralize your niece.
- pests 2y ago
  How is what she is doing wrong?
exitb 2y ago
It’s easier, but is it better? At what, exactly? For the past few decades people enjoyed collecting music, but it turns out that once you remove all friction of acquiring music, it no longer feels like collecting anything. My physical music library is neatly organized and carefully picked. Meanwhile my streaming “library” is a mess. It’s made up from random bits and pieces of music that I liked at some point and absentmindedly clicked to add. It feels like we’ve optimized this problem to a point where it’s no longer really fun.
- conductr 2y ago
  This is precisely why vinyl has seen and resurgence. Some folks like tangible collectibles. I did this once too, I called it hoarding because I refused to ever get rid of anything. It was a history of my past in a way. It took me longer than most, but nowadays streaming solves everything I need it too. I’m solidly in that majority that will never go back. It’s entirely subjective as to whether you prefer it or not as an individual but I think it’s pretty objective that’s now going to be the way most people interact with music going forward. I actually dont think people enjoyed it a bunch back then. We just had more time to fill (without constant distractions of computers in our pockets) and we grew up conditioned to consume that way. Even though I stream now, I can’t stand shuffle modes. I like to listen to albums. It’s just how I was raised I guess. I don’t think it’s as prevalent amongst younger people theses days and I am only in my 40s! But I’m also at a point in life where my physical hoarding stopped 20 years ago my digital hoarding about 7-8 years ago.
- nullindividual 2y ago
  Easier and better. I find new music I enjoy more readily than I ever did with radio + CDs, including obscure artists. As a bonus, it’s cheaper than buying albums where I may only like one or two songs, no ads, no physical storage space required, no CD swapping in the car, easy to create playlists at any time, including playlists defined based on metadata. The list goes on. I’m using Apple Music, in my case.
navjack27 2y ago
But managing music isn't hard. If you still know how to use folder structures and foobar2000 then it's absolutely not hard. I don't bother with listening to music on my phone because it doesn't have a 4.4mm headphone jack on it and it doesn't have a headphone jack on it and while it does support my USB DAC it's kind of cumbersome... Plus I set up a old laptop from 2008 that runs Windows XP and unofficial service pack 4 and a lightweight shell replacement with foobar. It's got my DAC amp hooked up to it and it can play DSD Or FLAC (I tested up too 192khz 24bit) straight over ASIO. I can't stand streaming services for music it doesn't make any sense. I tried to make it work so many times. I got a really nice expensive Bluetooth headset that supports all the lossless crap and it's still doesn't feel right. Sitting down knowing that my music is all there in two different places locally on that not network connected laptop and locally on my network attached storage so any computer on my network can get to it including my phone using a file browser app over SMB to transfer to the drive of my phone if I really need to play it on the go. The only thing that makes some of my music gather dust is that it's so hard to justify in modern times being okay with sitting down in a room doing nothing except for indulging yourself with wonderful music. That might just be me and I might need to work on that but... "Managing" The library isn't the issue at least for me. I'll also add that I guess for me music listening is about intentionality. I'm not a big fan of just having ambient music on with no intention behind it, no focus towards it. If I'm working on something and I want music on then yeah I load up my dedicated music machine and pipe that into my headphones while I'm working. But most of the time I like a focused approach to listening to an album. I'm going to sit down I want to hear this album right now and I'm not going to do anything else at the same time.
- seba_dos1 2y ago
  > I'll also add that I guess for me music listening is about intentionality. I'm not a big fan of just having ambient music on with no intention behind it, no focus towards it. Yeah, I never understood the appeal of streaming services like Spotify. Usually when I want background music playing for working, I want to play things I already know very well so they don't distract me. For this, Spotify isn't great and has big gaps in its library - it doesn't even have all studio albums available of my favorite bands (with live catalog being hopelessly incomplete), and I'm talking about "huge superstar 80s rock bands" rather than "some unknown indie stuff". Also, I can't really put it on where network connection is spotty, like on a train. And when it comes to listening to new stuff, I still have physical CDs waiting to be unpacked, ripped and properly listened to. Of course, some of them you won't find on Spotify either. Maybe if you had a habit of listening to music on actual radio stations then Spotify may seem appealing. I never did, I started with portable MP3 players when I was a child. These days, when having hundreds of gigabytes of lossless music on my phone is just a matter of putting a cheap SD card into it and synchronizing between devices is a matter of single rsync call, I don't see why would I attach myself to some network service when all my music is literally here with me in my pocket.

by extr 2y ago

cholantesh 2y ago

You could have the best of both worlds with a Jellyfin server?

0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
JellyFin is also inaccessible to the normal user.
oaththrowaway 2y ago
Have your cake and eat it too https://github.com/m0ngr31/jellypod https://github.com/m0ngr31/jellypod
- cholantesh 2y ago
  I don't own an Ipod, but damn that is cool.
  - oaththrowaway 2y ago
    Sadly I don't either. Just saw it on the Jellyfin forum a while back.
decafninja 2y ago
Browsing the Jellyfin site, I don't understand. Seems like you still have to collect and manage your music. I was a latecomer to Spotify and now I can't go back. I've discovered more great music via it than I would ever have imagined. No it's not perfect, but still beats the old way of doing it manually.
- teeray 2y ago
  > you still have to collect and manage your music This is where the *arrs come in. Specifically Lidarr [0]. EDIT: it's not the exact same experience, but it's better than manual management. [0] https://wiki.servarr.com/lidarr/quick-start-guide https://wiki.servarr.com/lidarr/quick-start-guide
  - crtasm 2y ago
    I've never felt need to try those - just put albums I've bought from e.g. Bandcamp into my Jellyfin music directory, they're automatically scanned and available in seconds.
- cholantesh 2y ago
  The discovery is great, but when I add music to my library, I'd like it to just be there, and I'm not able to guarantee that with Spotify. On any given day, for any arbitrary reason (okay mainly licensing and geography), music may disappear from my library, so I end up having to listen to it on Youtube or Bandcamp or pirate it. As others mentioned, Lidarr helps with this.
  - decafninja 2y ago
    Understandable. I do have some songs I'd like to ensure perpetual availability, but they're few in number enough that I may go buy them separately, but still use Spotify as my main consumption medium. I've also found that I'm able to both discover and listen to songs in some genres via Spotify that I've historically found difficult to acquire anywhere else.

Zambyte 2y ago

I think it overwhelmingly feeds into FOMO, but otherwise most people would be much better off with personal music collections. I pretty much grew up streaming music on YouTube, Pandora, and Spotify. About 4 years ago I decided to drop Spotify cold turkey, and have been building a music collection since. I have already spent less on music than I would have in the same period on a Spotify subscription on a collection of music I love enough to have specifically purchased. I will also never have this music taken away from me, unlike music on Spotify which may be removed against my will.

extr 2y ago
By the sound of it you’re a little younger than me. I grew up managing my music collection and growing it as you describe. It was a lot of fun. But it took time in my day that I no longer have between kids and work and whatnot. Finding and listening to good music is still something I enjoy but I don’t have all day to be preoccupied with it, manage metadata, set up a home server to stream it, etc. Spotify is a rounding error in terms of cost for me. So the decision for me is not between “stream” or “have a personal collection”, it’s “stream” or “don’t have as much music in my life”. I suspect this calculation is similar for most
- ASalazarMX 2y ago
  "Stream, but download your songs if you want" would be the ideal world, but alas, a LOT would need to change for it to happen. Meanwhile we can be happy with "Pay us rent to hear the songs on our library, but only what the labels allow us to show in your country, which can and will change frequently. Also don't look for anything slightly exotic because it isn't there. Oh, don't be sad... here, have tons of covers by unknown and mediocre artists we used to pad out collection with."

throw_pm23 2y ago

But you don't need to solve the problems of 99.9% of the population, it is enough if you make one person happy :)

RiverCrochet 2y ago

My niece and I were talking about this. She's older and has heard all songs she grew up with countless times, even to the point where any nostalgic value has been worn out. Many of those songs are in commercials, TikTok videos, etc. So easy access to the discography she grew up with is bland and uninteresting to her. But weird, bizarre, interesting and novel stuff is all over YouTube, stuff with less than 50 views, stuff that isn't on Spotify. The same is true of SoundCloud and Bandcamp, and you even have the occasional mp3 shared on Discord by musicmakers that didn't bother to put it on any type of service. So she's all about the music library, because there is no way to know when that truly unique and meaningful stuff will disappear. I'm desperately trying to get her to understand what she is doing is wrong, and I hope to succeed in setting her on the right path someday. Because there are plenty of legal avenues now, and an artist or company pulling their tracks from a service without warning is simply something we should all live with.

navjack27 2y ago
Don't moralize your niece.
pests 2y ago
How is what she is doing wrong?

exitb 2y ago

It’s easier, but is it better? At what, exactly? For the past few decades people enjoyed collecting music, but it turns out that once you remove all friction of acquiring music, it no longer feels like collecting anything. My physical music library is neatly organized and carefully picked. Meanwhile my streaming “library” is a mess. It’s made up from random bits and pieces of music that I liked at some point and absentmindedly clicked to add. It feels like we’ve optimized this problem to a point where it’s no longer really fun.

conductr 2y ago
This is precisely why vinyl has seen and resurgence. Some folks like tangible collectibles. I did this once too, I called it hoarding because I refused to ever get rid of anything. It was a history of my past in a way. It took me longer than most, but nowadays streaming solves everything I need it too. I’m solidly in that majority that will never go back. It’s entirely subjective as to whether you prefer it or not as an individual but I think it’s pretty objective that’s now going to be the way most people interact with music going forward. I actually dont think people enjoyed it a bunch back then. We just had more time to fill (without constant distractions of computers in our pockets) and we grew up conditioned to consume that way. Even though I stream now, I can’t stand shuffle modes. I like to listen to albums. It’s just how I was raised I guess. I don’t think it’s as prevalent amongst younger people theses days and I am only in my 40s! But I’m also at a point in life where my physical hoarding stopped 20 years ago my digital hoarding about 7-8 years ago.
nullindividual 2y ago
Easier and better. I find new music I enjoy more readily than I ever did with radio + CDs, including obscure artists. As a bonus, it’s cheaper than buying albums where I may only like one or two songs, no ads, no physical storage space required, no CD swapping in the car, easy to create playlists at any time, including playlists defined based on metadata. The list goes on. I’m using Apple Music, in my case.

navjack27 2y ago

But managing music isn't hard. If you still know how to use folder structures and foobar2000 then it's absolutely not hard. I don't bother with listening to music on my phone because it doesn't have a 4.4mm headphone jack on it and it doesn't have a headphone jack on it and while it does support my USB DAC it's kind of cumbersome... Plus I set up a old laptop from 2008 that runs Windows XP and unofficial service pack 4 and a lightweight shell replacement with foobar. It's got my DAC amp hooked up to it and it can play DSD Or FLAC (I tested up too 192khz 24bit) straight over ASIO. I can't stand streaming services for music it doesn't make any sense. I tried to make it work so many times. I got a really nice expensive Bluetooth headset that supports all the lossless crap and it's still doesn't feel right. Sitting down knowing that my music is all there in two different places locally on that not network connected laptop and locally on my network attached storage so any computer on my network can get to it including my phone using a file browser app over SMB to transfer to the drive of my phone if I really need to play it on the go. The only thing that makes some of my music gather dust is that it's so hard to justify in modern times being okay with sitting down in a room doing nothing except for indulging yourself with wonderful music. That might just be me and I might need to work on that but... "Managing" The library isn't the issue at least for me. I'll also add that I guess for me music listening is about intentionality. I'm not a big fan of just having ambient music on with no intention behind it, no focus towards it. If I'm working on something and I want music on then yeah I load up my dedicated music machine and pipe that into my headphones while I'm working. But most of the time I like a focused approach to listening to an album. I'm going to sit down I want to hear this album right now and I'm not going to do anything else at the same time.

seba_dos1 2y ago
> I'll also add that I guess for me music listening is about intentionality. I'm not a big fan of just having ambient music on with no intention behind it, no focus towards it. Yeah, I never understood the appeal of streaming services like Spotify. Usually when I want background music playing for working, I want to play things I already know very well so they don't distract me. For this, Spotify isn't great and has big gaps in its library - it doesn't even have all studio albums available of my favorite bands (with live catalog being hopelessly incomplete), and I'm talking about "huge superstar 80s rock bands" rather than "some unknown indie stuff". Also, I can't really put it on where network connection is spotty, like on a train. And when it comes to listening to new stuff, I still have physical CDs waiting to be unpacked, ripped and properly listened to. Of course, some of them you won't find on Spotify either. Maybe if you had a habit of listening to music on actual radio stations then Spotify may seem appealing. I never did, I started with portable MP3 players when I was a child. These days, when having hundreds of gigabytes of lossless music on my phone is just a matter of putting a cheap SD card into it and synchronizing between devices is a matter of single rsync call, I don't see why would I attach myself to some network service when all my music is literally here with me in my pocket.