Where should I store the music? I haven't any clue about self-hosting. I'm running GrapheneOS, is it enough to save the songs in Files and play in an app like Auxio? Maybe sync with SyncThing?

What's the best way to compress mp3 files but still retain the quality (even possible)?

Could really use some help as I'm very inexperienced. :)

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[–] gramgan@lemmy.ml 10 points 6 months ago

As far as where you get the music from, you’ll have to determine for yourself what audio quality you require.

To test this, use something like Soulseek to get a high quality version of a song you are very familiar with, and then get the same song off of YouTube with yt-dlp (better yet—do this for a few songs). Then, open both songs in separate media player windows, randomize the layout of said windows so you don’t remember which is which, plug in your favorite headphones and see if you can guess which is which.

For me, I found the difference between a lossless or 320kbps download from Soulseek and a 128-196kbps download from YouTube to be negligible (or outright nonexistent) in most cases, so I mostly download off of YouTube, which is very simple to do.

Depending on where you get the files, you may need to add metadata yourself. For this, I recommend MusicBrainz Picard.

[–] Algernon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 6 months ago (6 children)

I’m always curious why people do this. Music is the one item where it’s easier to just sub to something like Apple Music… literally $110/yr for all the music that exists. They gave us the solution we asked for and it’s super-cheap.

I pirate the shit out of movies and tv since those guys are gouging me, but musicians barely get by in the streaming era.

Hopefully this triggers nobody. I’m making no judgements.

[–] Deceptichum@quokk.au 15 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I’ve used Spotify for like 20 years now, and I’m finally going back to pirating.

They started “innovating” and adding shit I didn’t want last year to justify fee increases.

I can’t trust businesses to not enshittify, so might as well continue on with where I left my library all those years ago.

Plus: So much music isn’t available on there. I have a huge collection of Japanese Rock, Pop, Visual Kei from the 90s and 00s that you just can’t find easily.

[–] anothermember@lemmy.zip 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Can you save it DRM-free? That's all I ask for.

[–] madeindjs@programming.dev 6 points 6 months ago

my two cents,

I personally buy some music from Bandcamp, and I'm pretty sure those songs don't exist on the Apple Music catalog. So I don't want to handle multiple apps to listen what I want.

Also, streaming platforms have the internet constraints. Sometimes, like when I'm driving, I don't have a stable internet connection

[–] ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

My good faith response to your good faith question: because having a DRM-free copy on your own server or hard drive is the only way to be sure you will be able to play it tomorrow.

Streaming services are a complex collection of licensing deals that are by design temporary. You may not hear beforehand when your favorite artist's label's parent company's conglomerate's CEO decides to pull their content because they're going to start their own streaming service, or another service gave them a lucrative exclusive deal.

And while you're never going to have a hard time finding Taylor Swift, that one 70s esoteric album may become instantly impossible to find once it drops off a streamer.

In the end there are no promises with a streaming service. On the other hand, you put in a small amount of work to grab MP3s or FLACs, set up your own Plex server (or Emby, etc), and you're good for pretty much forever.

Similarly, support artists by buying their direct merch, going to shows, and so on, but they are barely seeing any Spotify money. Between Spotify and the labels, they are cleaning the plate and artists are getting whatever crumbs fall off the table (unless you're Taylor Swift or another global artist).

[–] Algernon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 months ago

If the streaming service I use (Apple Music) doesn’t have something, I buy it and add it. Spotify goes out of their way to make that difficult, so I don’t use Spotify. I actually think Spotify is terrible in every way.

I’m not worried about owning all the music since streaming is not going to disappear in my lifetime. If it did, I’d drop the cash on bands that need my money and pirate the ones who don’t.

[–] jerb@lemmy.croc.pw 4 points 6 months ago

Many artists I like were signed with a now defunct record label called Tympanik Audio. Whoever got the rights to the name after the label went under stopped paying their Spotify license fees, and a large chunk of my Spotify library vanished overnight. While the albums still exist on Bandcamp, the money probably gets thrown into the void now.

Never again. The only way I can ensure my music is accessible tomorrow is to have my own copy. I buy on Bandcamp where I can, or will buy physical and rip it if I really like the album. Everything else gets ripped from Deezer automatically because there's no guarantee anything on those platforms will always be there.

[–] sillyhatsonly@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

it’s easier to just sub to something like Apple Music… literally $110/yr for all the music that exists.

As others have stated, not all music exists on every streaming platform. That alone is enough of a reason for me. I recently canceled my longtime Spotify subscription because the price kept increasing while my library kept decreasing. I actually don’t pirate music when I can help it because I’d rather support artists on Bandcamp or purchasing physical media directly. If I can’t do that then I head to Soulseek!

[–] Algernon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Spotify is terrible, but you seem to be saying that since none of these have every single album, you’ve chosen to pirate it all? Not sure if that was the reason.

I shouldn’t have said “all the music that exists,” more like “an overwhelming majority of existing music.”

[–] sillyhatsonly@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

As stated, my reason is that I was paying Spotify more money for less music and I was unhappy with that. You pointed out yourself that musicians barely get by in the streaming era so I would rather support them on Bandcamp (I know it has it’s own issues) or buying physical media whenever possible rather than pirating. Streaming platforms may make music you want to listen to seemingly affordable and accessible but that’s not the case for everyone. This is my personal experience.

[–] Algernon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 months ago

Hush now, sweet summer child. I don’t mind that you’re putting musicians out onto the street.

[–] BlastboomStrice@mander.xyz 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

This guide I wrote about downloading and tagging might help you :) https://mander.xyz/post/13720820

[–] clark@midwest.social 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

This seems really complicated for a beginner like me (': is there no online tool that can download my playlists in bulk with relatively accurate metadata? It seems deemix and soulseek require accounts which I'm not too keen about, but I really don't know anything about this so I might just be spouting silly speculations.

[–] BlastboomStrice@mander.xyz 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Aw, I understand ~50.000words can be overwhelming.😅

Hm, I dont know if there's anything better than the tools I talk about. This guide is a bit too compicated and long, so I'll try to re-word it, hoping you can now follow it:

Soulseek: You just use a username and a password. No emails or anything. Search and download.
Deemix: You dont need to have a personal deemix account. You can find on some doubious sites "arls" for accounts. Arl is like the user token. They are long alphanumeric strings which essentially are used instead of username+password. You can simply find one online and put it in deezer. (You can try arls found here: https://www.arldeemix.com/2024/05/arl-deemix.html?m=1 )

To use it with spotify (like downloading a spotify playlist in deemix), its kinda more complex. You can see the steps from this post on reddit here:

https://developer.spotify.com/dashboard/ log in, create an app, go into app, click show client secret under apps title, paste it into deemix along with clientid

I suggest deemix because you can get very high quality music (in batches too) and it's open source.

Lastly, if you simply want to get stuff from youtube without account and such:

ytDownloader acts as a gui for yt-dpl (open source, PC).
Seal acts as a gui for yt-dpl (open source, Android).

Almost certainly there are websites that may use yt-dlp and can download playlists though.

[–] clark@midwest.social 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

So I did the deemix thing and the Spotify app thing. Unfortunately I can't find my own playlists in Favourites, only somebody else's. Know the issue?

[–] BlastboomStrice@mander.xyz 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Oh nice, you're very close. What you see, are the Deezer playlists of the account the arl corresponds to. For your spotify playlists, go to spotify, press the share button on your playlist, get the link to your playlist (the url), paste it in the search bar in deemix and press enter. It will automatically fetch and download the whole playlist.

(The next "level" would be to go back to my big guide, in the deemix settings section and customize it to your liking.)

[–] clark@midwest.social 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I went back to your guide and adjusted some deemix settings. Is there something I should adjust in "folders/track titles" sections, since you didn't mention them, or is it fine to leave them be? Also, why download in flac and not mp3?

[–] BlastboomStrice@mander.xyz 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

If I dont mention them, it probably means I left them at their default settings, but each one has their own system so feel free to change them if it suits you better.

I download in flac because I want to have them at ~the highest possible quality (ripping CDs or finding each song infividually in various sources and comparing them might provide a better quality, but thats too much of a hassle) and I compress them to .opus format at 128kbit to copy them on my phone. Thus, I keep one flac collection and a cloned, compressed version of it in opus.

Near the ⅘ of my guide I think I describe how to compress files with fre:ac and which app (symphony on fdroid) handles well opus files. I had some frustration with how hard it is for apps to recognise song tags, especially multiple song tags (like 2 artists in a song). If you encounter such an issue, use a different separator other than \\, like ;.

The rabbit hole can get a bit deep quickly.

Have fun :)

[–] clark@midwest.social 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Thanks for your help! Will definitely continue following your guide.

However, I've already stumbled upon a few issues. First, my computer can't seem to locate the deemix music folder that I supposedly created when I installed the application. Nowhere to be seen. Not sure what to do about it, maybe I installed the wrong version?

Furthermore, the playlists I have downloaded state the following errors: "cannot read properties of undefined" and "no such file or directory"...

[–] BlastboomStrice@mander.xyz 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

First, my computer can't seem to locate the deemix music folder that I supposedly created when I installed the application. Nowhere to be seen. Not sure what to do about it, maybe I installed the wrong version?

Hm, I suppose you talk about the folder where your music is downloaded. Thats a bit weird, mine saves it in C:\...\user\Music\deemix Music\

I also suppose you downloaded deemix from the link I provided in my guide, which I think is where I downloaded it too (plus deemix doesnt get updated anymore), so I dont think you got the wrong version. For the record, mine is 2022.12.14-r222.5d447b6035.

Furthermore, the playlists I have downloaded state the following errors: "cannot read properties of undefined" and "no such file or directory"...

I dont think I've encountered that issue either, maybe it's because it cant locate the files in the lost folder you talked about before.

I'd suggest you create another folder woth your file explorer, set deemix to download there and retry. I'd also suggest to first test it by downloading a single song (just type anything in the search bar) before downloadig a whole playlist to not waste time

[–] clark@midwest.social 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It worked now! Super thanks. <3

[–] BlastboomStrice@mander.xyz 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Ayy, arrr, glad you made it:)

[–] clark@midwest.social 1 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Oops, too early to cheer... looks like I can only download individual songs seamlessly, but when I try the playlists the "cannot read properties of undefined" error keeps popping up. Ugh, I'm so close to the finish line, why's there always a hinder. (':

[–] BlastboomStrice@mander.xyz 2 points 6 months ago

Hang on, I have some ideas

(Maybe either theres a mistake in the way you connected spotify or some issue with the links. I'll do some tests and report back.)

[–] BlastboomStrice@mander.xyz 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

So, I did some tests. Apparently you can download individual songs with spotify links, but it can no longer download spotify playlists. I think spotify possibly changed their api recently, breaking deemix... I had used it in the past to batch download ~3k songs..

I used this reddit post to create the spotify app, but there's probably an issue with the api.

Ugh... thats an issue.. I might create a post about that on the community tomorrow or today (its getting late)..

I feel like I wasted your time too🫤

If I get any updates I'll try to let you know.

[–] clark@midwest.social 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Hey again! Just a random question.

Is it okay to skip the tagging steps in your guide? My school computer won't allow me to download the mp3tag application, and I wonder if these tagging steps are necessary or will mess anything up if skipped? I downloaded some songs to my phone and most metadata and lyrics are there, and that's fine with me. Does not completing the guide make me miss out on anything important (such as metadata or syncing the files)?

[–] BlastboomStrice@mander.xyz 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Deemix fetches a lot of metadata and they are kinda accurate. If the tags appear properly on your devices you probably dont have to care much more. Besides, you can do it in the future if your needs change. Thus, I think you can skip it.

As to why I do it:

Deezer and any platform may have lacking info, so what I try to do is kinda merge tags from various sources in a way that I get ~the most and best info. Unfortunately (or fortunately) there is no standard way of tagging or at least ~noone uses it (I think flac and opus have some general tagging guidances, but many times they are ignored), so I tried to make my way of organizing the mess.

Another reason is that if you have proper tags, you (almost) no longer need to create playlists (which are hard to move across devices). I also came up with the idea of adding a custom genre to the genre tags of songs. For example, I add the [F@vourites] genre tag to my favourite songs and I can simply select to play all songs under the [F@vourites] genre, bypassing the need of playlists.

I just find it neat (but probably breaks the standard even more), lol. (And it's a good way to unconsciously distract myself from my responsibilities.)

[–] clark@midwest.social 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Do you think it would be fine for me to download all songs and then wait until I'm able to download the tagging applications, or does everything need to happen in one go for everything to sync? I'm thinking waiting about a year (when I buy a new computer) and then use the apps to tag my songs, or will I still need the data from deemix?

[–] BlastboomStrice@mander.xyz 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Do you think it would be fine for me to download all songs and then wait until I'm able to download the tagging applications

Yes, I think that's what I would do. Downloading from deemix and tagging in other programs are separate processes, so you can do them separately at different times.

I'd probably even encourage to download them now, because as you can see, deemix doesnt get updated anymore and things start to break.

It also gives you time to revise your methods of downloading and tagging. (For example, I started downloading my songs from a website, one by one, until I found deemix (that website got shut down soon after, rip).)

So, no need to do them simultaneously. Download them now and tag them next year or whenever you can. You can afterwards simply sync the ("properly") tagged files to your other devices and have the metadata everywhere.

[–] clark@midwest.social 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Thank you so much for your help! So excited to finally begin the journey of owning my music.

[–] BlastboomStrice@mander.xyz 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

owning my music

Thats the spirit! Lets goo

[–] clark@midwest.social 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Just to be clear, because some metadata is missing such as year released, tagging and such can all be solved in the other applications? Deemix is solely used for download?

[–] BlastboomStrice@mander.xyz 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

In the tags section in settings you can tell deemix to download tags along with the songs. It does a rather good job as it fetches data from deezer. Is the year missing from every song? On my setup, it automatically downloads the date (or only the year) of almost all the songs I download with deemix (some obscure songs may not have a proper date). Deemix should do a good job and download around 70% (this is an abstract percentage) of the tags you may need.

Once you download the songs from deemix, you should probably not need to use deemix again.

Tagging afterwards should fix many of the missing or incorrect metadata (obsucre songs may have lower success rates). In my guide, I even have the code for a python script I made, which I use to download the dates of songs from genius (the site with the lyrics). (I think it was my first time coding in python, lol.)

PS. It's getting late, so I'll probably be off for some time.

[–] clark@midwest.social 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Hm, unfortunately all songs are listed as Unknown Year, and the genres are very scattered and inaccurate. I've ticked all the tag boxes already. So long as I can solve this with the tagging applications, I shouldn't have to redownload everything, or?

[–] BlastboomStrice@mander.xyz 1 points 6 months ago (4 children)

So long as I can solve this with the tagging applications, I shouldn't have to redownload everything, or?

Yes. As long as the title and the artists tags (not the filename) of the song are correct (in many cases not even these have to be correct, because there's an option to auto-scan songs with Shazam in my process), my process should be able to work without redownloading anything.

songs are listed as Unknown Year

Thats a bit weird, may I ask:

How do you view the metadata? Some apps may have trouble reading metadata.
Do you download them in flac or mp3?
Could you share a song so that I try to download it myself to check if this only happens to you?

I just downloaded a random song and I can see the date under the YEAR tag. Also if I right-click it on file explorer and go to details, I can see under the "date released" the date of the song.

(Btw, the genious script I use, as I have told you somewhere, fixes the dates, high very high accuracy. Im pulling the dates from genius, because deezer, spotify etc. for some reason seem to use the date they were added to the platform as the date of release and it bothered me a lot.)

genres are very scattered and inaccurate

Yeah.. Genres is probably the hardest to get it right, even after all the automation in my process, there have been times I manually edited the genres. Bandcamp is a good source of genres, so I try to draw genres from there, but still the automation fails some times and have to manually edit them with mp3tag (genious is a good source too).

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[–] clark@midwest.social 2 points 6 months ago

You didn't waste my time. This experiment kick-started my process of finally downloading my music, even if it didn't work out completely. Not yours or anybody else's fault anyway. (: Do feel free to update me!

[–] foremanguy92_@lemmy.ml 3 points 6 months ago

Don't know how much storage you have on your phone but you should just try these steps : If you are downloading from YouTube Music you won't get the best quality but for me that's okay. So I just recommend you to download an android client for yt-dl and then download what you want. If you are downloading only 1 or 2 gigs of music it should be okay, but if you are downloading more or wanna take care, you should use a VPN 😁

[–] communism@lemmy.ml 3 points 6 months ago

What I do personally is get any music I want from soulseek and then sync my music directory across devices with syncthing. Although I'm planning on renting a vps to put my music on at some point as it's taking up quite a lot of my phone storage now.

On desktop I like to use mpd with ncmpcpp. On Android(/GrapheneOS) I'm using Metro as my music player.

[–] halvar@lemm.ee 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I personally look up torrent files for either FLACs (lossless quality, with very large files) or 320kbps MP3s (smaller files with no noticable difference in sound quality imo) and then after making sure they have the right metadata (Title, Album, Artist) (using a tool like Tagger) I upload them onto my Navidrome server, which I connect to using Ultrasonic. If I didn't selfhost I'd probably just put the tagged files on my phone and play them with basically any music player.

[–] HelixDab2@lemm.ee 2 points 6 months ago

I've personally found that I can hear a sound difference in 320kpbs .mp3s, depending on whether or not it was encoded with a constant bit rate, or a variable bit rate.

[–] Frozyre@kbin.melroy.org 1 points 6 months ago

For the longest time, I've relied on DDL sites, blogspot sites with lots of links and Uloz. Since many of them have become rather tedious to use or just outright suck, I now use MP3Caprice. Yeah I know, some money is involved so you're paying people to pirate for you. But on the flipside, everything is relatively dirt cheap (except soundtracks and compilations, they like those enough to charge more).

[–] petrescatraian@libranet.de 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

@clark@midwest.social wrote:

Where should I store the music?

I just store it in the music folder of every device I own. I have a 1 TB hard drive on my PC and my phone has 128 GB of internal storage, with an SD card slot.

I haven't any clue about self-hosting. I'm running GrapheneOS, is it enough to save the songs in Files and play in an app like Auxio? Maybe sync with SyncThing?

Yes. Any music player will generally prompt you to scan for your files upon first opening.

Edit: didn't notice your first question. Well, I just get them from everywhere, lol. If you have a tracker that you use for anything, be sure that there will be some music there. If you cannot find it, then just refer to the FMHY's list of various tools to download music from just about anywhere: Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud you name it. I also buy music from Bandcamp as it supports downloading it directly for an unlimited amount of times and in any of the most popular formats, or just go to the band's concert and buy their album directly. This way you're also supporting the artists directly with your money (if you care about it).

[–] clark@midwest.social 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It's really too bad Pixel phones don't have an SD slot.

[–] petrescatraian@libranet.de 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

@clark Ugh. You could probably get away with multiple cloud storage services then, and mapping their folders to the music player of your choice. Also, use file types that are generally smaller in size for storing music (like opus or ogg). For cloud services, use the ones whose apps support Storage Access Framework so they can appear in the default Android File Manager / File Picker thing (you can also use something like Round Sync to access them all, and it does all the job for you). If you're willing to pay for cloud storage, then one single provider with 100-200 GB can also be more than enough for your music needs if you own more than just a few songs.

Then you can add the folders in your music player settings.

Edit: Don't forget to also backup your music somewhere in case something happens with your phone or your cloud provider(s)

[–] 6FingerJoe@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 months ago

Spowlo and soundbound are essentially the same app that you just paste links to Spotify lists, artists, albums, playlists, whatever, then it'll find matches on YouTube to download as mp3.

Desktop zotify, you can downloaded the "high" quality level with premium account credentials.

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