A comprehensive rundown of my setup in regards to music.
Table of Contents:
All music that I listen to is stored as mp3 files, fully tagged with covers and lyrics, with systems in place for adding new material from various sources, managing, transmitting and backing up existing music.
A comparison to why Spotify would not work for me, draws out what my needs toward a music setup are. As a disclaimer, I haven't used Spotify for any length of time, so my view of what it is might not be wholly accurate (but sufficient to get my point across).
Offline access:
All my other primary modes of media (movies/series/anime, comics/manga, podcasts, youtube even) I have systems for engaging with them offline. Offline access brings with it a host of advantages:
- independent of internet speed (I'm not used to always having a stable connection)
- uses a consistent interface (like mpv for video, YACReader for comics)
- is configurable to the way I use it
- always accessible
Spotify can also download music, but at that point managing whats been downloaded in the app is not really easier that managing my mp3s (especially since mp3s are just file, so you can use all your favorite tools.)
Licensing:
Not all music is on Spotify. And that is just not something I can accept.
And even the stuff that is on Spotify is not guaranteed to stay there (compare with Netflix where stuff regularly disappears because of licensing issues). I want to be in control of my music. And using Spotify I wouldn't be.
Convenience:
I think it compares pretty well to Arch Linux vs. Windows/MacOS. Sure, figuring out Arch Linux and setting up my perfect system took a lot of time. But after having set it up my system is extremely stable. To the point where in the last 1.5 years I only had to put in a minimal amount of time to service the system. Because I have understood my system I can solve what crops up without frustration. All other systems I had before: Windows, MacOS and even Manjaro always had some annoyances wearing me down. They could not fit me, because they were not made to fit me and change within them was limited.
So you either spend the time upfront in building the perfect system for you. Or you use something built for the general population that is designed with the average users needs in mind and then spend even more energy with the quirks of a system not designed for you.
That's how I feel about Spotify as well.
Changing the music:
Most albums I listen to don't stay intact after I've really gotten into them. I delete songs and cut off intros/outros, skits and blank space where it annoys me. I make the music my own. Spotify does not allow me to mess with MY music.
I don't hear the difference. Yeah I know bad hearing, get better headphones, blablabla. That point does not matter to me.
What does is size, tooling and availability.
Differences in disk space is significant if applied to the whole collection. Especially on a 250gb ssd.
Mp3 has all the tooling available, most of it supports flac as well but I would not count on it. It's just gonna be harder.
Good luck searching for everything as flacs. Many projects are available but never all of them (think soundcloud rappers). So now you are maintaining two stacks: flacs as a primary and mp3 as a backup. Complicates everything. Whereas flac can always be downgraded to mp3s. So even if only flacs are available, that is still an advantage for mp3s.
You can almost always get music by paying for it. This section is concerned with acquiring it without the paying-part.
Now follows a elaborating of possible sources. Ordered by my preference.
What is available: independent, minor label stuff
I always use bandcamp if possible. The only place I buy music from.
To download: bandcamp-dl
What is available: popular, major label stuff; whole discographies
Sites to check:
To download:
- transmission-cli (torrent client)
- see aliases
- see scripts
- transmission TUI (alternative frontend)
What is available: wide range; pretty much all major label releases; huge back-catalog
If the album is not behind a paywall you can just download it with youtube-dl.
My alias:
alias ytmp3="youtube-dl --yes-playlist -c -i --retries 4 -x --audio-format 'mp3' --audio-quality '320K' -o '~/Downloads/%(title)s.%(ext)s' --embed-thumbnail"What is available: almost everything; inconsistent quality and sometimes incomplete
I avoid this where ever I can, because these YouTube playlists for albums are mostly uploaded by randoms, so you can't trust that they are complete (you have to double-check with the album on wikipedia) and the quality can be a mixed bag as well. It's just not clear what you are getting, with all other sources, if they have it, then it's smooth sailing. YouTube just involves the most manual labor.
Again to download:
alias ytmp3="youtube-dl --yes-playlist -c -i --retries 4 -x --audio-format 'mp3' --audio-quality '320K' -o '~/Downloads/%(title)s.%(ext)s' --embed-thumbnail"What is available: recent, german stuff
For german releases you can find stuff here that is not available elsewhere. But the time window is pretty short, like up to 2 years after release (not a hard rule).
- forum
- for mass downloads also use real-debrid (there are heavy speed limiters)
- tomp3 - convert non mp3 music to mp3s
The act of correctly assigning artist, album, track numbers and other data to the mp3s.
Ordered in preference.
For for everything released by a label (almost everything). Uses the huge MusicBrainz database.
Tags automatically (user only confirms) including covers & lyrics and moves renames the files and puts the in the correct structure.
- import script: beetim
- beets
- beets config (everything incl. cover & lyrics)
- beets docs
- check apps for beets plugin dependencies
For those instances where what you want to tag is not in the MusicBrainz db, something you just pulled off of Soundcloud, a random Single and the like.
The script read artist and title from the filename. Album artist and album name can be supplemented by the user.
# usage (refer to script --help for more)
single *.mp3 # -> Singles/Mixed
single -A "Black Muffin" *.mp3 # -> -> Black Muffin/Mixed
single -AA "Black Muffin" "Totem" *.mp3 # -> -> Black Muffin/TotemPowerful cli for messing with id3 tags.
GUI for fixing small stuff.
What I use it for: Adding covers is easy. Renaming based on tag values. Just quickly checking tag contents.
- fix-mp3-dates - to me only the release year matters (not the month and date), this script fixes that
- mcut - cut parts off a file
I'm using the gold standard: mpd + ncmpcpp.
mpd is a server and ncmpcpp the corresponding frontend client.
An awesome, scriptable and configurable TUI.
- Video Introduction (Luke Smith)
- arch wiki: mpd, ncmpcpp
- mpd config
- ncmpcpp configs
- scripts
- control mpd via keybindings
Clean player that does everything I need. This is a matter of preference and there are plenty to choose from.
Less important supplemental information.
I split my music between:
- Stuff I'm actively listening to
In the process of being judged.
It's at the top level of the music directory.
- Stuff that I decided to keep
Bad track have been weeded out, annoying passages cut. These are the bangers I want to continue listening to.
To make place for newer stuff with the next backup I'll be removing them from my
local machine, as such the are in the directory music/_tomove.
To mark an album as complete: $ amv
- Stuff that I have not listend to
Contained in music/unheard.
To move an album out of unheard: $ amv -u
- Stuff that has just been tagged
The beets tagging writtes it's results to music/_imported to be checked before
manually being added to unheard.
To get my music on my phones I use ftp.
It's as easy as installing an ftp
server on the phone and logging
in from the command-line using $ sftp -P PORT IP.
- ftp script - remember ip addresses depending on network
Irregularly I backup on a 128gb usb stick and my external drive. This can be done efficiently using rsync:
rsync -avr LOCAL/ REMOTE