It’s super easy for me to maintain a library of offline music because I just listen to the same synthwave tunes and 90s dad rock over and over. Saves me $120+ a year. If I want a new song or album, I use a YT downloader extension.
After I got rid of Spotify Premium subscription, I tried this app called InnerTune. It’s basically the same as Spotify, with synced lyrics, music searching and download (not mp3 though)
But things got messy when I was flying long haul using a LCC, where at first I can play a song from a downloaded playlist but cannot manually play next/previous/another songs from the same/different playlists and not long after the app crashed
I guess mp3 is still the best choice, I currently use older version of Spotify desktop (old UI and no ads) and spotdl. 128 kbps mp3s are good enough for me
I used to. But in the later years I found it very difficult to carry this much weight. In addition to that, I’ve realized the transient nature of my music tastes and my over-reliance on music. Also my priorities have changed a lot. Music is far from essential for survival, and when the times get rough (when you move a lot, and all you can take with you is your laptop), it’s much easier to access an online library than your own physical one. I’ve decided to keep the mp3s (m4as, wavs, flacs, etc.) of the songs that aren’t on Spotify and remove everything else.
Yeah them removing music I listen to cause of licensing bullshit was why I quit Spotify a couple of years ago and went back to buying and pirating music again just like before. Plus I get better audio quality, have like 1 tb of mostly 24-bit Flacs on my NAS with Plex. I do also not have to keep paying more and more for the same content cause they find out they cant keep infinite growth so they squeeze the existing subs for more money instead. Fuck I hate subscriptions in general. The only thing I miss are the mixes and radio cause it made me discover so much new music.
Almost 300GB of MP3s, and I keep everything organised. All 320kbps, all tags correct, artwork done, etc… I started this years ago and simply kept on doing it. I have a separate hard drive for music, and another to back it all up. I even use a Fiio X1 MP3 player that I purchased around 2013. MP3 players were getting hard to buy as it was back then. If this breaks, not sure what I am doing? It’s all quite retro and old school, I guess?
I bet there are some open source projects to make your own, could even be fun to mess around and have an e-ink screen or a beefy battery to not need to charge for quite a while
I wonder if I still have my Creative Nomad Jukebox somewhere… came out in 2000. Was the size and shape of a portable CD player so it fit in the same kind of cases. Took normal AA batteries. Had a 6 GB capacity, which was insane in 2000. I had a huge number of MP3s on it. Many radio dramas. I wish I still had them elsewhere.
I wanted mine to be pocketable, but i could not yet afford a real iPod. So i spent 150 euro on a 256 flash stick from MSI. 1 or 2 albums plus some spares… Later I had an iPod and many headaches dealing with iTunes. The device was so great but iTunes already felt bloated to me back then.
The Jukebox predated the iPod by a couple of years. I didn’t mind the size and I had a backpack with a built-in case for a CD player with a little portal for the headphone wire, so I could put it right in there while I was walking to class (I was in college at the time).
I also got a second gen iPod for free as part of a pyramid scheme that went totally wrong. You had to sign up for a service to get a code and if you got enough codes, you got a free iPod. But you could cancel the service right away. More importantly, the codes could be used by multiple people and the system would accept it due to whatever crappy coding they did. So people would share their codes and I was one of the people near the top of the pyramid that got enough codes to do it before they figured it out.
I also had the trendy mp3 player pre-iPod, the Diamond Rio.
Well, the players were often dirt cheap. I got at least four for free on trade shows. Including an Ultra-Rare “Sun Microsystems” MP3 player, handed over to me by the founder of Star-Office which later became Open Office and Libre Office. Back when Sun was not totally uncool.
It’s harder to find (legal) downloadable music anymore too. 7Digital has been pretty alright for me, but I just stopped bothering with Spotify and Pandora and such. Youtube used to be great for discovery until they started mega cracking down on adblock again.
How often people are just getting rug-pulled left and right by streaming services is ridiculous.
Mind giving some insights on what rug is being pulled by Spotify? You pay them money to access their library and software. When you stop paying, you stop having access. If they raise their prices or remove features, you have the option of stopping your subscription and using an alternative method to listen to music.
Imo raising the prices and reducing the quality of the service you get is a rug pull. You get on board with a certain expectation and then slowly but steadily you get less for your money - rarely a big jump, so you usually just stay on board because, since the last time, your expectations have shifted.
I know I’m just explaining 2020s capitalism to you but the point is, the days of a real, swift rug pull are over; it’s death by a thousand cuts now - and whichever one feels to you like a rug pull may as well be The One, because it’s only going to get worse, if this one didn’t piss you off enough to leave, the next one might.
I say this as a person with 200gb of mp3 & flac. I’ve never had a sub to any of these “services” - though I do have a huge crush on the people who run ibroadcast.
I’m just a little confused by this one because I’ve been a heavy user of Spotify since around 2011. I haven’t had any loved features pulled out from under me recently so I was trying to figure out what the circle jerk in here was all about.
I had tens of thousands of MP3s before I got into Spotify. The user experience of Spotify is so good that I haven’t even considered messing around with managing my own library in more than a decade. I even watched the private communities that were dedicated to sharing MP3 and FLAC disappear as most users just found it easier to use a music streaming service. 🤷♂️
Like I said, I’ve never actually used Spotify - I was just taking about subscription models generally. That person said how was it a rug pull off you saw it coming and while I can’t speak to Spotify specially I can speak to the current state of rug pulls.
That’s great that they worked for you, but there are a few songs I always used to search for when music services popped up - a few obscure things I like - and they didn’t have them. I have broad tastes but they’re almost all obscure.
That’s fair. I wasn’t particularly calling out Spotify but streaming services in general: They start super awesome to get users, with a vast library, reasonable prices…then it gets harder to find download media you can own because streaming is dominating…the prices go up…then the ads get more intrusive…then they start dropping large portions of their library because they don’t feel like licensing it anymore, but prices still go up, the ads get longer, and so on.
That’s what I consider the “rug pull”. Provide an awesome service at a loss, get high stonk values, “Ok sorry guys we’re public now, how is this gonna be profitable? :( Feel like watching ten minute ads? Ok cool. That’s business, chump.”
I mean, I use them my prime 4 dj system because i’m not always gonna be sure about internet availability at the next venue. I don’t want to DJ for other humans while using my phone as a 5g accespoint.
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