Collecting Music

gardencreative

Spotify isn’t punk. Streaming is lame / evil.

Collecting Files

Discovery

But how do you find out about new music? I go to a lot of shows, collect vinyl, listen to KALX]], buy tons of random stuff on Bandcamp, and I know what a torrent ratio is. LastFM’s recommendations are excellent, worth paying for even.

Tools

  • Plex & Plexamp - by far the best software to stream your own library
  • beets - automated music & metadata management for geeks
  • RoPieee - turn a #raspberrypi into a streaming target for Plexamp (or anything else)

File & Metadata Management

beets is the greatest thing to ever happen to obsessive audio hoarders - set it up once and never think about this chore again. An alternative with an actual user interface would be MusicBrainz Picard but it’s not nearly as powerful.

Whatever the source, I put the FLAC files in a Processing folder on my NAS and beets imports it automatically into my Plexamp library.

brad@beets:~$ beet stats
Tracks: 56085
Total time: 26.4 weeks
Approximate total size: 1.8 TiB
Artists: 5053
Albums: 5344
Album artists: 2153

CD Ripping

Every once in a while I get a stack of CDs from the thrift store or record shop. I have a Automatic Ripping Machine set up that sends ripped audio to Processing as well.

Personal Charts

What I’m Listening to Now. All the fun of Spotify Wrapped but without the surveillance or having to wait until the end of the year. As part of the build process for this site I generate some nice charts and statistics from my LastFM history.

Collecting Vinyl

Records

Gear

DIY%20Speakers-2