It's a treasure. I understand why most people don't do this, but I will probably forever.
A really significant amount of it isn't otherwise available on streaming services. While I'm an Apple Music subscriber, I still acquire my own mp3s for most of the new music I listen to.
iCloud Music Library is an immense value here as well. Rarely it will sync the wrong version of something in my library, but usually it's on the money. The fact that it doesn't cost anything extra on top of an Apple Music subscription is a huge boon, and it doesn't count against my iCloud data either.
Many of those CDs, which I started buying in 1986, are not available on streaming services. Over the years I have accumulated a lot of other nonstreamed music, including radio programs I’ve recorded, live music downloaded from the Internet Archive, purchased music from Bandcamp and elsewhere, and music I composed and performed myself for my own enjoyment.
It’s a bit obsessive, I admit, and the chances that my heirs will find the files and want to preserve them after I’m gone are slim. But I am happy I have them now.
Music is something you can easily live without if the internet or cloud vanishes on you but my music will still stream from my FLAACs at home that I made from CDs and DVDs years ago. I also have it converted to .mp3 at bit rates that make sense for a phone and ear plugs used by a middle ages bloke with tinnitus! The whole lot fits on a modern phone easily.
I bought records and tapes at first, then CDROMs. I also accidentally bought the same CD/tapes twice or a well meaning prezzie duplicated one I already owned. Also you have "summary" or "collection" efforts etc eg Led Zep "Remasters". I have already paid the music industry a couple of times over.
Now that is my personal collection - some of it is unavailable elsewhere, sometimes without being illegal. I can augment my stuff with pay per play just as you do but the Deep Purple CD rip with a digitally smoothed over scratch part way through "Smoke on the water" is personal because I know what caused that scratch.
You are a few years older than me but we both know the joy of buying a new single, stacking LPs for an extended hands off session, the horror of scratches and a cheap D60 tape turning into a weird concertina. Remember those blocks for removing dust from a record when it was playing and accidentally nudging the needle.
Spotify and co are all a bit ersatz by comparison. I think music is way more than simply the medium, so context is important too. Unlike, say the progression from steam to petrol, which is simply a convenience.
Since then I've bought music digitally (Bleep, Bandcamp, etc), saved off copies of live sets (thanks, yt-dlp), or when needed bought CDs and ripped them.
It's just so nice having the library. Yes, tagging was a big pain. And yes, I need to have a backup strategy for it. But, I've ended up with a pretty substantial and well-curated library of stuff that requires no streaming services. I currently use Plexamp (via Plex) to listen to it because the system works well, but also because it's a directory of files I can eventually move to something else.
There's just so many hassles with streaming systems that, outside of discovering new music (which you can do other ways) I don't find them worth it. From dead spots while traveling to stuff that's been pulled to weird versions (or not being able to find weird versions) it's just nice to have My Collection when I want it.
I'm also really liking this Triode app [1] from the article. Sometimes I just want to listen to different things but without using some station-specific app... Here we go.
Old writeup on my CD ripping workflow, excuse the broken images: https://nuxx.net/blog/2016/01/17/full-cd-collection-ripping-...
https://support.apple.com/en-us/118287, "Do you have an active subscription to Apple Music?"
"If you canceled your subscription to Apple Music or iTunes Match, your music library is removed on all of your devices except for the original computer where your music library is downloaded. Your iTunes purchases will remain in your Library on all devices. All music that you added or downloaded from the Apple Music catalog is removed. Any playlists added from the Apple Music catalog, created using music from the Apple Music catalog, or synced to a device using Sync Library are also removed."
So you cancel iTunes Match, your "cloud library" disappears. Meaning: Apple stops hosting your uploads and matches, but none of your local files are deleted.
If you ever want to turn it off, just make sure you've downloaded every song that shows as Matched or Uploaded so you’re not relying on Apple's copies. Then back them up somewhere outside your Apple Music or iTunes library folder to wherever you keep your full, DRM-free music collection.
It's still available on Youtube if I want to listen to it, but the point is that it's not in the same place, if you're a Spotify user, as all the other music you listen to.
Yes, there's a whole thing with Justin Roiland that's controversial (putting it lightly, maybe he should be in jail, but that's not for me to decide), and that song has obvious elements that relate to the controversy, but, dammit, I like the song for the song.
The point this article is making, and the reason for the author's decision ten years ago, is still relevant and I can't ever see it being irrelevant.
If anyone has any tips on how to "back up" a Spotify account (and systematically detect yanked content) I would love to hear them.
The whole process has made me more excited about music again. Part of that is listening to entire albums, another part is the feeling you get from directly supporting an artist when you purchase from Bandcamp.
I think for most people this is overkill, but for music nerds like me where the collecting and curation is a big part of the enjoyment, maintaining your own library makes sense.
It's a maintained Qt6 fork of Clementine, which was a port of the amazing Amarok 1.4 to Qt4, which is all that Amarok 2 should have been in the first place.
For MacOS, you can use Vox, https://vox.rocks/mac-music-player
I personally use MPD (or something like moodeAudio), and then use clients to listen on various platforms.
WACUP — originally Win Amp Community Update Project, although they have distanced themselves from any mention of the original for legal reasons. It's literally Winamp, and it rules: https://getwacup.com/
Get the 32-bit version for now if you want to use the “Modern” (Winamp 3 & 5) skinning engine that has not yet been ported to the 64-bit ver. Worth it because I really really love the “Classic Modern” theme it includes: https://www.deviantart.com/victhor/art/Winamp-Classic-Modern...
Here it is on Windows 11 on my Framework 12 :D https://i.imgur.com/teYadOi.jpeg
> modern equivalent of the classic WinAmp that runs on Linux
Probably Audacious. Its modern defaults don't look very Winamp-ish, but it's a descendant of XMMS (a straight-up WinAmp clone from back in the '90s) by way of Beep-Media-Player: https://audacious-media-player.org/
> modern equivalent of the classic WinAmp that runs on macOS
No idea :)
> Buy music on Bandcamp or download it from Soundcloud, stick it in the Music app, and you're off!
If something isn't available there, usually my next choice is Qobuz. At least both of those sites let you download files and listen to them however you want.
Which is why my wife and I still buy albums and CDs, to support the artists. For us, music is a type of therapy, live concerts are being in the same room with people who perform real-time sound paintings. In today's political landscape, arts are denigrated, just look at how funds have been slashed at all levels of education. By building up a decent music library we can, in a small way, support the arts.
Not even just policy changes per se. Spotify stopped supporting certain hardware. They changed their API so other DJ apps I used no longer had access to the library. It’s just annoying when you’re trying to establish workflows and things change for no good reason.
In the house: NFS read-only for desktops and laptops; Owntone to send music to Wiim Mini or stereo receivers (Yamaha, Denon, Marantz, Onkyo -- all of them are compatible).
Outside the house, JellyAmp on phones.
It had all the benefits of streaming and the properties that one would expect from library ownership. When I compare the 'features' offered by all the streaming services (I've encountered thus far), things have regressed drastically.
A few of the benefits I recall (from memory) that Rdio had:
- when setting a radio station and when you 'downvoted' an artist or a song, it only effected that particular station. So, if you wanted a 70's metal radio station, downvoting Metallica wouldn't affect your general 'metal' radio station or your 80s Metal Radio station.
- You could search by numerous parameters, including Label. So if you were looking for classical albums by Deutsche Grammophon, you could actually find those albums or songs.
These are just a couple of things I can recall from memory. I think it's also important to point out (this is based on memory and vibes), that the Rdio algorithm actually respected the user's wishes and didn't try to force things you might not want. Said algorithm was bought by Pandora (IIRC) and based on my experience with Pandora (and past experience with Rdio)...Pandora seems to have thrown it in the trash.
Compare all of these awesome UX experiences vs YouTube Music...where you can't even filter out AI trash from New Releases.
Suffice to say, Rdio was the crest of the wave for music streaming / discovery and everything since has been a regression. But you do get a bit more control if you go down the path of owning your library.
I rip CDs I own, if you buy on Amazon you often get "autorip" when you purchase. Amazon's MP3 store is fine, I used to buy on Microsoft's back when it existed.
I probably should use navidrome or a similar technology to serve the files. I already do this for audiobooks and podcasts and use Tailscale to access it when I'm not on my local network.
JKCalhoun•6h ago
I'm old enough (61) that owning music is what I've known most of my life. I have to say I've never not owned my own music. I went from vinyl to CDs—and then ripped the CDs digitally. The ripped tracks I have kept on hard drives, in the cloud. (I am continually adding music as I discover it so that it grows.)
Even though I eschew CDs these days for new music, I buy the digital tracks of the highest quality from Band Camp and add them to my storage locations.
For really top-notch albums, I still buy vinyl as a way of supporting the artist, I guess. I do infrequently put on vinyl (although I still think it is better than CD—it took The Muffs to convince me of that).