4 ms·

I have tried every music playing option under the sun for the last 15 years and am now happily back to creating playlists on my computer and periodically draggi

by paxys 2y ago

I have tried every music playing option under the sun for the last 15 years and am now happily back to creating playlists on my computer and periodically dragging them to my phone's local storage. There is still no better overall experience.

TomK32 2y ago
Even more niche with headphones that have storage. Why would anyone not handpick music for those headphone with other than a 170bpm?
raheelrjunaid 2y ago
Same! I use syncthing-fork to automate the process: https://github.com/Catfriend1/syncthing-android https://github.com/Catfriend1/syncthing-android
- jerf 2y ago
  Storage costs being what they are now, I'm just syncthing'ing my entire mp3 collection to my phone now. According to syncthing it's 27.9GB, and while I'm sure there are people out there with another factor of magnitude more, a 512GB SD micro card, where the value sweet spot appears to currently reside, is ~$38 now. You can stick a lot of music on your phone now. At 256kb/s or so that's roughly half-a-year straight of music [1]; if you really just can't cut your collection down to that, well, I mean, you can nearly get the full year straight for $90 or so now, and I'm sure 2TB will be along shortly. We're not that many exponential doublings away from you being able to store enough music to last your entire life on your phone. Assuming your phone still takes an SD card, of course. I get the whole "push into the cloud" thing but SD card prices have been consistently running ahead of cloud storage options and bandwidth plans for a while now; it's kind of amusing that it's the high end phones that lack this option. It's nice to be able to slam music, movies, entire seasons of TV on to my phone without it interfering with the main OS space. [1]: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=512GB+%2F+256kilobits%2Fs https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=512GB+%2F+256kilobits%2...
  - paxys 2y ago
    In hindsight it is crazy that tiny iPods from the early-mid 00s had 120-160 GB storage, more than what a flagship $1000 iPhone starts with twenty years later. Yes they used HDDs, but for media consumption it didn't really matter. And then when Apple switched to flash storage we took a massive step back to 1/2/4 GB with outrageous premiums for extra capacity.
    - r3trohack3r 2y ago
      I remember reading articles at the time running the numbers on what it would cost to legally fill an OG iPod with mp3s at $0.99 a song or $9.99 an album. My memory is fuzzy but I remember it being something like $15,000 to fill an iPod legally with music from iTunes. Many articles concluded that the device was speced for piracy. I don’t think the storage size was reduced for technical reasons. I suspect a lot of back and forth with the music industry happened to constrain the device to a “practical” size for legally licensed music.
      - TheKarateKid 2y ago
        The music industry is 100% invested in streaming music services, so they don't care if Apple offered high-capacity iPhones cheaply. Rather, it's Apple who has intentionally been keeping storage capacity low for 2 reasons: 1.) Push users to use iCloud storage, which isn't cheap and purposely doesn't even offer storage tiers that match their phone capacities. 2.) It provides incentive for users to upgrade, especially in an era where keeping an iPhone for 3-5 years has become common and new models offer very little from older ones.
      - Ntrails 2y ago
        I think my parents owned order magnitude 500 cds. Something like 150mb per album in mp3 format gets you to, what, ~75gig? I doubt they were outliers? Nobody I know filled their players with itunes bought music, almost everyone was importing from physical back catalogues. I will concede that we did subsequently share our collections somewhat though...
- lazylizard 2y ago
  isn't syncthing on android dead? https://forum.syncthing.net/t/discontinuing-syncthing-android/23002 https://forum.syncthing.net/t/discontinuing-syncthing-androi...
  - raheelrjunaid 2y ago
    Yes, but not syncthing-fork (the UI on the fork is outdated but the functionality is the same)
jesterson 2y ago
Sam here. I used to have huge library of MP3 tracks to listen while driving, but as car multimedia systems evolve, now I pull music videos from youtube and enjoy "selfhosted" VH1 (for those who know). Too sad modern VH1 is a shadow of it's past, broadcasting stupid shows instead of great music (please allow me to be a grumpy uncle here). This approach requires way lot more space (even if I pull videos in 1024x768, which is my car multimedia system resolution). For now it's just a plenty of SD cards, will see how it is going to change.
- Tallain 2y ago
  So I understand correctly, you're watching music videos in your car while you drive?
  - jesterson 2y ago
    > So I understand correctly, you're watching music videos in your car while you drive? Yes, that's correct. Love doing it.

by paxys 2y ago

TomK32 2y ago

Even more niche with headphones that have storage. Why would anyone not handpick music for those headphone with other than a 170bpm?

raheelrjunaid 2y ago

Same! I use syncthing-fork to automate the process: https://github.com/Catfriend1/syncthing-android https://github.com/Catfriend1/syncthing-android

jerf 2y ago
Storage costs being what they are now, I'm just syncthing'ing my entire mp3 collection to my phone now. According to syncthing it's 27.9GB, and while I'm sure there are people out there with another factor of magnitude more, a 512GB SD micro card, where the value sweet spot appears to currently reside, is ~$38 now. You can stick a lot of music on your phone now. At 256kb/s or so that's roughly half-a-year straight of music [1]; if you really just can't cut your collection down to that, well, I mean, you can nearly get the full year straight for $90 or so now, and I'm sure 2TB will be along shortly. We're not that many exponential doublings away from you being able to store enough music to last your entire life on your phone. Assuming your phone still takes an SD card, of course. I get the whole "push into the cloud" thing but SD card prices have been consistently running ahead of cloud storage options and bandwidth plans for a while now; it's kind of amusing that it's the high end phones that lack this option. It's nice to be able to slam music, movies, entire seasons of TV on to my phone without it interfering with the main OS space. [1]: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=512GB+%2F+256kilobits%2Fs https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=512GB+%2F+256kilobits%2...
- paxys 2y ago
  In hindsight it is crazy that tiny iPods from the early-mid 00s had 120-160 GB storage, more than what a flagship $1000 iPhone starts with twenty years later. Yes they used HDDs, but for media consumption it didn't really matter. And then when Apple switched to flash storage we took a massive step back to 1/2/4 GB with outrageous premiums for extra capacity.
  - r3trohack3r 2y ago
    I remember reading articles at the time running the numbers on what it would cost to legally fill an OG iPod with mp3s at $0.99 a song or $9.99 an album. My memory is fuzzy but I remember it being something like $15,000 to fill an iPod legally with music from iTunes. Many articles concluded that the device was speced for piracy. I don’t think the storage size was reduced for technical reasons. I suspect a lot of back and forth with the music industry happened to constrain the device to a “practical” size for legally licensed music.
    - TheKarateKid 2y ago
      The music industry is 100% invested in streaming music services, so they don't care if Apple offered high-capacity iPhones cheaply. Rather, it's Apple who has intentionally been keeping storage capacity low for 2 reasons: 1.) Push users to use iCloud storage, which isn't cheap and purposely doesn't even offer storage tiers that match their phone capacities. 2.) It provides incentive for users to upgrade, especially in an era where keeping an iPhone for 3-5 years has become common and new models offer very little from older ones.
    - Ntrails 2y ago
      I think my parents owned order magnitude 500 cds. Something like 150mb per album in mp3 format gets you to, what, ~75gig? I doubt they were outliers? Nobody I know filled their players with itunes bought music, almost everyone was importing from physical back catalogues. I will concede that we did subsequently share our collections somewhat though...
lazylizard 2y ago
isn't syncthing on android dead? https://forum.syncthing.net/t/discontinuing-syncthing-android/23002 https://forum.syncthing.net/t/discontinuing-syncthing-androi...
- raheelrjunaid 2y ago
  Yes, but not syncthing-fork (the UI on the fork is outdated but the functionality is the same)

jesterson 2y ago

Sam here. I used to have huge library of MP3 tracks to listen while driving, but as car multimedia systems evolve, now I pull music videos from youtube and enjoy "selfhosted" VH1 (for those who know). Too sad modern VH1 is a shadow of it's past, broadcasting stupid shows instead of great music (please allow me to be a grumpy uncle here). This approach requires way lot more space (even if I pull videos in 1024x768, which is my car multimedia system resolution). For now it's just a plenty of SD cards, will see how it is going to change.

Tallain 2y ago
So I understand correctly, you're watching music videos in your car while you drive?
- jesterson 2y ago
  > So I understand correctly, you're watching music videos in your car while you drive? Yes, that's correct. Love doing it.