Submitted 2 weeks ago by Cevilia@lemmy.blahaj.zone to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
I have a folder of MP3s, some of which date back to 1999, just a few years after the format was popularised. Most of them have utterly terrible names (think RIDEONAM.MP3). I think at this point they might even survive the heat death of the universe.
We’ve evolved towards a software-managed autotagged library of lossless audio now, but yeah, pretty much.
I just had a chat with my friends about how the family plan price went up 30% while the basic functionality doesnt fucking work half the time
Amen. Glad to hear I’m not the only one baffled that Spotify’s app development is total garbage. It is one app that doesn’t get updated ever - once I have a working version. If it were up to me, I’d happily never use it again
I find music on YouTube and autoconvert it to MP3 with yt-dlp and ffmpeg. It embeds the metadata, cover art and tries to parse the artist and title as best as possible.
yt-dlp -x -f bestaudio --audio-quality 0 --audio-format mp3 --embed-thumbnail --add-metadata --metadata-from-title “%(artist)s - %(title)s” --playlist-start 1 --playlist-end 999 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=123abc -o “./files/%(artist)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s” --cookies-from-browser
Needs minimal adjustment sometimes if the title format is weird, but works 95% automatic. What I like most about this is the fact that music vanishes all the time from YouTube. No one deletes the files from my harddrive but me.
I want to marry you.
Pro tip, make sure the browser you’re copying the cookies of isn’t logged in. Otherwise they may ban you sooner or later.
Is there a good guide to passing cookies to yt-dlp? Its one of those things I’ve been meaning to learn but never quite got around to yet…
I’ve been doing something similar but but very basic. I didn’t know you could also add thumbnails and metadata! Mind = blown…
I will change my old ways ASAP. A new era begins!
Doing God’s work
TYVM
I have just been downloading as it is with yt-dlp -x (created an alias so I just type dl) and then rename and sort the files manually as I find stuff is so often in different naming formats
That can be fixed easily* with programs like beets
* = the program itself is easy to use, but installing and configuring it, requires a PhD in Linux-Arch-ology___
No I’m sure there will be an obscure shell script that someone wrote to do all of the install for you that will suddenly fail on a broken python dependency (because why not) and then leave your system in semi-altered state that doesnt really work wrong but its never quite right again
I 100% learnt to use docker specifically to avoid the exact situation you described.
Musicbrainz Picard is a lot easier than beets, although it does require some introductory concepts to make sense (e.g. terminology like “release”, “release group”). And it makes it too easy to accidentally poison datasets in an attempt to be helpful. Harder to automate than beets, too.
Both of them also benefit from a decent knowledge of where your files came from, not as good for a random pile of mp3s.
Picard is very manual, I fucking love it though
I use MusicBrainz Picard when I stopped paying for Spotify. Went over my old library, audio tag matched all my songs, added all metadata, sorted everything. I moved it to Nextcloud and using the Music Player plugin, I have my own Spotify using any supersonic/ampache client. Life is good.
What client do you recommend on Android
I fucking love beets
left spotify and started downloading all my music from [COMPLETELY LEGAL AVENUES] and bandcamp. It’s good to have music that Spotify cannot take away from me.
I download music from YouTube. Are the “completely legal avenues” better than that? In that case can you provide links in DM so I make sure to block these domains and to promptly inform the authorities? Thank you.
Slskd is something that you should never consider using
I have a happy middle ground:
I pay for Tidal’s student subscription. I leverage the fact Tidal streams FLAC files that can be decrypted by your account to build my local collection.
So I never actually stream or use their app, but technically am paying for the downloads.
I tried buying FLACs from companies that actually wanted to sell FLACs but they have ridiculously bad catalogues.
The files downloaded this way are usable offline? Is there some utility you are using to do this? I am very interested.
hey now, they’re flac files and painstakingly sorted with the help of musicbrainz picard
I have that too! I also have that one folder of random shit that I’ve avoided sorting for the last 20 years.
I also have that one folder of random shit that I’ve avoided sorting for the last 20 years.
pff I have so many folders like that that I have folders for those kinds of folders. I should probably put those folders all into a single folder…
Why, what does it do better than picard?
Nah, it has very much been replaced with properly sorted .flac files. What ever is left is stuff I don’t listen to anymore.
I really want to go this route. Had Spotify, tempted to get Tidal but I don’t want to deal with content coming and going anymore. I have about 300 gigs of random MP3s, and Flac files. I want to obtain more and move over fully to flac. Any recommendations on making the transition back to locally stored music.
I’m currently making the move myself and I’ve had a really easy time with soundiiz.com and YouTube-dl with a Linux GUI. Basically soundiiz takes your playlist from one service and makes an identical one on another service. You move all your jams to YouTube and rip the audio out of them with youtube-dl. Here’s a wikihow with the deets
I gave up on trying to sort my initial batch and just started replacing.
First I try to find a full discography of an artist by a solid release group (for example "PEMEDIA or “88”). With those you can just copy the entire folder into the artist directory and plex/jellyfin etc will perfectly detect it. Then just add new albums as they are released.
You can probably find a converter that will rip those files from Youtube for you. I did mine a year and a half ago. If I open Spotify it’s just to see the playlists they made for me, because those are actually pretty good, but I rip those files and store them too.
File format has nothing to do with proper sorting. I’ve got 350k songs properly organized by artist, album, etc, but mp3. I’ve no need for flac.
File format has nothing to do with proper sorting.
Correct, it doesn’t.
Main difference to mp3 is that flac is “lossless” so the audio quality is a bit better, but it requires considerably more space (though still a pretty insignificant compared to video).
And a long list of WIERDA~1.MP3 that could contain anything.
Did you know that if you have more than nine, it truncates to the first two characters, then an undocumented four-character hash, then ~1?
Just Microsoft things.
I thought they removed 8.3 file names a while back though?
My library is better organized than Spotify’s database at this point.
You’re missing the new albums from dead singers generated by the slop machine though.
And in my library I actually know what version I have not some 2018 “remix”.
Same with my movie library. I can have theatrical and directors or unrated extended version.
I still use mp3s because:
no fucking commercials or streaming bullshit. ZERO FUCKING DOLLARS GOES TO JOE FUCKHEAD ROGAN.
that’s enough justification for mp3 imho
Yeah forgot to mention the lack of ads and the reliable access anywhere part
Remember you can always check out CDs from the library and rip them to your collection.
I can’t possibly calculate how many hours I spent curating my music library. I don’t use it anymore but you better bet that I still have it saved to the cloud and locally and it’s there in case I need it.
I’m amazed you still have the old files. I was late for Napster but I downloaded loads of individual files from kazaa/limewire/frostwire and used them to burn CDs.
Only a few years later though I would get into torrenting and replace pretty much all those shitty old low bitrate files with 320kbps mp3 discographies.
Many years later after college when I finally had a little extra money I started buying all my favorite CDs I discovered from the previous meana and ripped them myself to ~1000 kbps FLAC and meticulously tagged and organized them into my current music collection.
CDs are unfortunately getting harder and harder to find and I’ve only very recently started torrenting a little again, and I prefer everything be FLAC but if it’s not available I still do have some 320kbps mp3 left in the collection.
Everything I could find that was of higher quality, I downloaded over time. I have some bootlegs though along with some music I’ve found from no other sources. I’ll never replace some of it, but that’s fine.
Spotify or the last subscription I have. I'm otherwise completely free of big tech.
The reason I can't let it go is because I actually would never find new music I like without it's algorithm. I've found such got music based off it's recommendations. I know I could still find these bands without a premium subscription. But, music is a big part of my life and I just don't want to faff around when trying to find some music I like. For the same reason I think I'd struggle to self host my music because it's totally fail to work at the worst times no doubt
The reason I can’t let it go is because I actually would never find new music I like without it’s algorithm.
Have you tried just surfing bandcamp? I love discovering new shit there and my friends are like howd you find this!
I’m a bit old fashioned, when I want new music I listen to the radio, I get that doesn’t work for everyone though :)
The radio? But there's so many commercials!
You just too used to agorithms. I have zero issue finding new music without them to th point whwre i has to stop exporing new artists because i already listen to over 2000 artists without algos
It's not the quantity, it's the quality. Sure I can search for similar artists with other means, but the Spotify algo is just on point. Probably so after many years of feeding it my listening habits.
I'll eventually drop it for a self hosted service with machine learning that I can train.
I find it funny how we’ve resorted to streaming services in an age where you can put 256 gigabytes ono a pinky nail sized storage solution. Ereaders are even better, an old kindle with 4gb of storage can hold an entire library.
Try Mp3tag
A wild Mp3tag mentioned!!
Not unless you keep up with migrating your files. Drives fail over time.
Gotta have a good backup strategy for sure. I would’ve lost my collection a few times if I didn’t have one.
My man, I’ve been putting off sorting that shit for twenty years now. In the meantime I’ve circled back to CDs !
Well surely you can just use a program to rename the files based on their properly maintained ID3 info?
True. Mine’s already over 25 years old. Just keeps hopping from hard drive to hard drive.
MusicBrainz Picard picard.musicbrainz.org
I’ve used this to fix all my fucked up MP3 mess and it really helped a lot. Just make sure you change the input and output folders and let er rip!
I’m old enough to be one of Napster’s early adopters. Unfortunately most of my collection has been lost to either malfunction or negligence but due to most of the major streamers being fucking evil I’m back sailing the musical seven seas. And plus my internet is about 100x faster now so yohoho mehearties.
So will all my records. And probably tapes. And probably my stack of hdds that I have 3 backups of.
Bite me, corpo streaming leeches
How to protect against bitrot?
This, except the same also applies to those with OCD tendencies who spent like 2,000 hours meticulously renaming and organizing file and folders. At times the archive has felt pointless but you’re correct – I should never get rid of it. Even besides the sunk cost fallacy aspect, it might actually turn out to be very valuable in the future. I don’t listen to a ton of music anymore but I recently axed Spotify and started using Plexamp for when I do listen. I like Plexamp – just needs a bit more polish to feel like a AAA app.
I’ll sort it next year. Or next computer. Or…
I just wish people would name their shit well enough that I don’t accidentally download live albums anymore.
I don’t really do the folder of MP3s thing any more.
I am much more into the Jellyfin full of FLACs thing these days!
I bet up in the attic next to one of my sweet old Abit motherboards I have a dusty old hard drive with a folder full of music from the 90s and early 2000s.
immaculately sorted. IMMACULATELY!
Yeah I’ve been in that same boat. My music collection is made up of stuff I stole off Limewire, ripped compilation CDs, soundtracks, stuff I recorded off the radio…most are mp3, I’ve only started using FLAC last year, ID3 or other metadata stuff is completely inconsistent or missing.
There are services that will identify the track based on examining the audio and provide data for it. I used a piece of Linux software called EasyTag for that purpose.
I’ve got a directory like that on my computer, nested under a couple of /old_computer directories. At some point in the early 2000’s I switched to a system of (still not so well named) full albums as hard drive sizes increased and internet connections got faster, leaving the old original directory of one-offs from the dialup days to wither.
My favorite part is the New Music directory where I’d stick new stuff I had obtained until I gave it a listen to it make sure that 1) it’s something I actually wanted to keep and 2) whether there was any quality issues with the encoding. There’s stuff in there with timestamps from like 2002. Yeah, I’m still planning to check that out…someday…
Quazatron@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
You’ll find that MusicBrainz Picard is a heaven sent tool to properly tag your files, with optional proper renaming.
It takes some getting used to, and I find it works best in whole albums, but produces a much more professional library.
darkreader2636@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Picard sometimes falls short on cover arts and track names of some niche or non-english albums because of that mp3tag with discogs is sometimes needed
d15d@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
For Linux there’s puddletag, which is very similar to mp3tag
ggtdbz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Oh I’ve been looking for something like this for a long time. I wonder how this integrates into something like Jellyfin if I want to host my own personal music streaming for myself.
AnExerciseInFalling@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
In addition to autorenaming Picard can also auto organize into folders. So any time I buy new music, I run it through Picard to ensure metadata is correct, grab lyrics, and put it in the right folder that is then picked up by my self hosted navidrome
Quazatron@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I use Jellyfin also.
My workflow is like this: buy CDs from Discogs, rip them to FLAC, adjust filenames, covers and metadata with Picard, push the files to Jellyfin that promptly detects the new files.
I also use Soundconverter in Linux to generate MP3s files for devices that don’t support FLAC.
I’m very happy with this setup and my collection has never been so organized.