I am in an intense love-hate relationship with Spotify. It makes good mixes for me, I have found a lot of great bands that way. BUT IT KEEPS REGURGITATING THE SAME SONGS IN THERE. I know about Song Radios and Artist Radios, so please don’t recommend those. Smart Shuttle doesn’t cut it, either.
The best thing would be several randomness sliders. One for randomness in bands, the other for randnomness of their songs, one for genres. Please tell me some music service has implemented something like that. I am dying over here.
Is it weird that I don’t use any of these streaming services and just use my own library via FTP (if I’m not at home)?
I’m (slowly) working my way towards that too (it’s hell to classify though) but how do you discover new music?
Last.fm?
Like I’ve always done, through friends or the internet 🤷.
I don’t have a small collection BTW. Things weren’t always discovered through app suggestions 😂.
Cool!
But if I understand you correctly you have a load and loads of stuff? How do you deal with it?
I mean, awhile ago I shazamed songs I liked and I got everything they ever produced and got cluttered up. It’s not the disk space but I don’t have the time to classify it all (in some perfect way) and I don’t even have a way to classify songs, some are good but only in a party setting, but another is both for a party setting, a long car ride and for outdoor business etc etc.
Any help greatly appreciated:-) !
Oh, yeah, classification takes some time. I classify by style (Pop, Rock, Metal, Techno, etc.). And I have 2 different “classification directories”, lol 😂. One is for albums/compilations. They are also sorted by style, but there are whole albums. The other one is with singles (like single tracks, not singles as in releases, lol 😂). Like, let’s say I like just 1 track from a certain artist and I don’t think anything else is worth it from that album (or EP, whatever). I download the whole thing, then delete everything else and just keep that 1 single track. So, let’s say this artist is a pop artist. I have a folder named Pop + Hip-Hop + House + Etc. and I just put it in there 😂. There’s like thousands of tracks there 😂.
So, let’s say I’m in the mood for something specific. I know where it resides, whether it be a whole album or a single track in the “randomness” directories (😂), I find it and I play it. If I’m just in a mood for music, in general, nothing specific, I usually just load the Pop + … directory in the playlist, set random and just hit play. Something I don’t like pops up, I just hit next 🤷.
I hope I helped. Sorting by style is what works for me 🤷. Sure, it’s not perfect, but I really don’t see any other sort style as better than that.
Thanks, that’s a smart way to do it! What kind of soft do you use to classify it, or are you using like disk folders?
I just use directories. Easier if swapping OS, plus it’s easier when I stream via FTP cuz I don’t have to use anything special software wise.
Yeah but I’d forget and end up with dozens of the same song named slightly different in the same folder :-D
But you’re right, if I can’t lay my hands on a soft letting me “tag” music correly I’ll just chuck stuff in the correct bins (folders).
But I think I’ll keep the original albums intact, so I can redo mixes and so.
Ah, that’s why I search before I download anything 🤣. Plus, I got a good memeory (only regarding songs for some reason 🤔 😂), so I rarely end up with dups.
And I do tag them after I download them… well, retag them, they’ve already been tagged by whoever 😂.
radio, asking friends for recommendations, pandora, shazamming songs you hear at the grocer or at restaurants
I installed Navidrome for that
I could google that, but I’m in a chatty mood 😂, could you explain what that is?
It’s a self-hosted music streaming service, based on the subsonic protocol. I set it up with an nginx reverse proxy so I’m able to access it from many compatible apps without a VPN, I use Symfonium on my phone and the integrated web UI on my computer.
Mmm, that is actually really cool 👍, I’ll have to look into that, maybe change the way I stream my media from my NAS. Thanks for the info ☺️.
Where do you get the (new) music from, CDs/albums?
While I primarily use streaming services, I almost always still buy albums on Bandcamp for the day when I need to go back to running my own music. You can save up for a Bandcamp Friday when more goes to the artist. Bandcamp has been the best place for music for awhile. Best to get in before Songtradr continues the destruction Epic started.
I pirate. I buy only what I really really like, and I’d like to have a hard copy (CD, vinyl), not digital download. If there is only digital download available, I pirate it.
I do it too, just with Plexamp.
The recommendations and radios on plexamp are amazing compared to any other service I’ve tried.
Will have to look into this, I haven’t really optimized around the way I stream my media.