How I get and listen to Music

So I realized that I have never made my Music Blog Post, which was Original Planned to come out in Conjunction with the Music Page. So it's now long overdo for me to actually talk about how I manage my Music.

As some may know, as I have talked about it in other places, is that I haven't used a Music Streaming Service for a bit over year now. This is primarily because I fear Music could disappear out of my Playlist on a Streaming Service, but also because Streaming Services pay very little to Artists and I have the money to pay them Proper. Also, I value highly the Idea of owning the things I use and Listen to.

Pros and Cons of Purchasing Music

Now it isn't all Sunshine and Roes, there a few cons when Purchasing Music. And I want to dive into them a bit at the start. Firstly, its isn't cheaper than any Streaming Service. Where I pay for Spotify between 3€ and 13€ a Month, Purchasing music I spend on average 20€ to 30€. But the neat thing of Purchasing Music is that it doesn't apply to everyone like it does for me. Some may only need to spend 30€ a year, or the Spending slows down the more your Library grows, it surly has for me. Or at some point you can put a cut and not spend anything and continue to listen to your Library. But overall I would argue Purchasing does Cost more on average than a Subscription Service.

But this isn't the only Issue with Purchasing. Another one is actually finding the Music to Purchase. Because whenever I find a New Song or Album I want to get, I need to find a Service that Sells them as Files, preferably with the best Audio Quality Possible. And many Artists don't know or advertise that they sell the Music somewhere or just don't do it at all. The best strategy I found, is first some Research into the Label or similar, and writing an Email to the Artist. Tho that has mixed results. And usually in the Interim I cave and download them from YouTube or SoundCloud. But In my Quest of Finding Places to Purchas and to the later segment of Sorting, I discovered MusicBrainz. A Community Maintained Database of Music Releases and Artists. It's in the same way Maintained as Wikipedia and has a partnership with the Internet Archive for Cover Image Archiving. And the cool thing they have are Links to all Places Artist or Song is present. Making it my number one place to check.

But overall I can handle the Issues that arise, and the benefits of having all the Music as Files is just great for me. It makes keeping track of them so much easier. And I also get a sense of Superiority because I support my Artist. /half-jokingly

Sorting and Storage

So now I have all of those Music Files, now what do I do with them? The first thing I do is sort them and Add Metadata to them so Player and Co can nicely play and Display them. For that I use a tool called beets. It's a CLI Python Tool with which I can gather and add Metadata to the files and automatically Sort them in Defined Folder Structure. It also has the ability to be extended with Plugins to add other Data Sources and actions. Here is an overview of the Plugins I use:

1. musicbrainz: Adds Musicbrainz as Metadata source
2. chroma: For Identifying the music based on a Acoustic Fingerprint (something also MusicBrainz store)
3. fromfilename: Makes it check the Name of the File for useful Info
4. mbsync: Adds more Musicbrainz data to the Files
5. fetchart: Fetches Album Art from Cover Art Archive
6. subsonicupdate: Which Update my Subsonic Server (more on that later)
7. embedart: Which embeds the fetched album are into the Audio File

Now that is all sorted, where do I keep them. And that's my Home lab. I have a Server where I store them and keep Backups of it. And have Navidrome (Subsonic) Server hooked in which is able to stream/download the music. Which I do with differing Clients. But this isn't the Only thing I do. I also have an iPod on which synchronize the Music Folder to.

Discovery of New Music

Now one Feature missing from Streaming Services for my Music is discovery. On Spotify for example I enjoyed listening to the Weekly Jam to discover new songs. This option I don't have anymore. Or do I? Well I discovered from the MusicBrainz Family, ListenBrainz. This is Music Scrobbler. I sent it what I listened to, and It makes stats out of it. And what ListenBrainz also does is create me a Weekly Jam and Discovery Playlist, which I listen too to find New Music. This is also the System I use to generate the Music Page. Besides that I also use things like YouTube and Suggestions from Communities I am in.