</html>

</html>

[widgets.set-title]

[widgets.page-title]

  selector = ["h1", "h2"]

  selector = "h1"

  append = " — bbence.me blog"
  force = true
  keep = true

  active_link_class = "active"

  active_link_class = "active"

            <p class="center">Contact me on <a href="https://matrix.to/#/@bodi.bence:grin.hu">Matrix</a> to add your own.</p>

            <p class="center">Contact me on <a href="https://matrix.to/#/@bodi.bence:grin.hu">Matrix</a> to add your
                own.</p>

            <a href="https://thel3tterm.neocities.org/"><img src="/assets/media/buttons/thel3tterm.png"
                    alt="thel3tterm.neocities.org"></a>

                    client.

                client.

                    href="https://divestos.org/">DivestOS</a> on it.

                    href="https://divestos.org/">DivestOS</a> on it. For music, I'm using a Xiaomi Redmi Note 6A
                running music apps from F-Droid, but with a stock ROM.

            <small>Please note that some of these may contain JavaScript and CSS frameworks (mainly <a target="blank" href="https://alpinejs.dev">AlpineJs</a> for now, which I host locally, so no CDNs are used). You can always check the source code in my <a target="blank" href="https://nest.pijul.com/BeanieBarrow/homepage">Pijul repo</a>.</small>

            <small>Please note that some of these may contain JavaScript and CSS frameworks (mainly <a target="blank"
                    href="https://alpinejs.dev">AlpineJs</a> for now, which I host locally, so no CDNs are used). You
                can always check the source code in my <a target="blank"
                    href="https://nest.pijul.com/BeanieBarrow/homepage">Pijul repo</a>.</small>

            <ul>
                <li><a href="/playground/8ball/">Magic 8 Ball</a></li>
            </ul>

            <p class="center"><a href="/playground/8ball/">Magic 8 Ball</a></p>

</html>

</html>

        <a target="blank" href="https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/floss-and-foss.en.html">FLOSS</a>

        <a target="blank" href="https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/">FLOSS</a>

        <a href="https://neovim.io/" target="blank"><img alt="Made with Neovim"
            src="/assets/media/buttons/neovim.gif"></a>

      <p class="center">
        Color scheme: <a target="blank" href="https://draculatheme.com/">Dracula Theme</a>
      </p>

</html>

</html>

                These are my blog posts about electronic music, libre software and anything else that interests me at the time of writing them. Have fun reading!

                These are my blog posts about electronic music, libre software and anything else that interests me at
                the time of writing them. Have fun reading!

            <div class="gifbuttons">
                <a href="https://vscodium.com/" target="blank"><img alt="Made with VSCodium"
                        src="/assets/media/buttons/vscodium.gif"></a>
                <a href="https://neovim.io/" target="blank"><img alt="Made with Neovim"
                        src="/assets/media/buttons/neovim.gif"></a>
                <a href="https://soupault.app" target="blank"><img alt="Powered by Soupault"
                        src="/assets/media/buttons/soupault.png"></a>
            </div>

</html>

</html>

<h1 id="post-title">
  How I listen to music
</h1>
<p>
  Last update: <time>2023. 03. 09.</time>
</p>
<p>
  Time to read: <span id="reading-time"></span>.
</p>
<p id="post-excerpt">
  Take a look at how I use several music-related software tools to maintain my ever-growing offline collection of music and read my opinion about streaming services.
</p>
## How I find new music
I sometimes get recommendations from friends, but about ~10% of my music is actually from them.
I mainly do my own "research" on artists' subreddits, YouTube and Soulseek.
Right now, <a target="blank" href="https://www.youtube.com/@deepcuts/videos">Deep Cuts</a> and <a target="blank" href="https://www.youtube.com/@TheWonkyAngle/videos">The Wonky Angle</a> are in my subscriptions list.
One tip I can give is to follow people who have roughly the same kind of taste in music as you do and see what they listen to.
Read or watch albums reviews, not because you give a damn about some stranger's opinion, but because you want to find new artists' works to dive into.
As to subreddits, I usually visit the thematic ones that limit themselves to one artist or genre.
Eventually, a post asking for recommendations in that genre or similar artists will pop up, that's when I take note of the comments and remember to check them out whenever I'm next to my computer.
## Okay, got my recommendations. Where do I download?
When I have time, I look at my notes and type each artist's or album's name into YouTube's search bar.
(It's actually way less robotic than it sounds. Whenever I get the urge to be on a music-searching binge, I jump right in.)
If I generally like what I hear from the first two or three songs, I search them up on <a href="http://www.slsknet.org/news/" target="blank">Soulseek</a>, a peer-to-peer file sharing service mainly used for music (kinda like Napster or LimeWire, except it's still active).
I recommend using the <a href="https://nicotine-plus.org/" target="blank">Nicotine+</a> client, just because it's free software, even if the protocol itself isn't (yeah, bummer, but I can't give this up if the alternatives are worse).
If I'm online on Soulseek, you can find and download my ~400 GB (and growing) collection by searching for the user <i>Wheelbarrow</i>.
Yes, what I do is piracy.
I have my own means of supporting artists I like, but when it comes to consuming music semi-instantly, I don't have any other choice that resonate with my beliefs.
I have a vinyl record collection (<a href="https://www.discogs.com/user/plan_beanie/collection" target="blank">You can find my collection on Discogs here</a>), I sometimes buy merch and albums on artists' official Bandcamp sites (but only if it's a small artist that is not found anywhere else, not even on Soulseek), so supporting musicians is not an unknown practice for me.
I just do it differently.
Usually, downloading single songs is unsatisfying.
I prefer listening to albums instead.
They provide more insight into the artist's work than if I just listen to the most popular tracks from them, not to mention the discussions that albums can spawn (looking at other people's tierlists or hearing different opinions on the best/worst/mediocre songs on an album are entertaining for example).
After downloading what I want to listen to comes the next step.
## Tagging
Sometimes, the stuff I get from Soulseek or wherever are not tagged correctly (they don't have their artists or titles set correctly or have no album art attached), they need fixing.
For this, I use <a href="https://picard.musicbrainz.org/" target="blank">MusicBrainz Picard</a> and <a href="https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/EasyTAG" target="blank">EasyTAG</a>.
Picard does the tagging automatically thanks to a user-sourced music database (to which you can contribute too).
Then, I look and slightly correct the tags if they are still not quite right in EasyTAG.
For embedded lyrics, I used <a href="https://www.mediahuman.com/lyrics-finder/" target="blank">MediaHuman Lyrics Finder</a>, but I can't recommend it anymore.
It's buggy, doesn't support some of my preferred formats and also closed-source. Don't use it.
Sadly though, I don't have any more programs that can embed lyrics to files automatically.
If you know one, please contact me so I can update this post.
## Storing and compressing
I store the albums that I download on my laptop for a brief period until the files are tagged correctly, then they get transferred to my hard drive at home where they are archived for eternity.
Before I'd transfer the files to my phone's SD card though, some compressing needs to be done on high-quality files (it's <i>.flac</i> the majority of the time).
My preferred format is <a href="https://opus-codec.org/" target="blank">opus</a>, a free (as in freedom) codec for compressing audio files.
It provides higher sound quality while keeping the bitrate low (see image below taken from <a href="https://opus-codec.org/comparison/" target="blank">opus' comparison page</a>).
<img class="large-img" src="/assets/media/blog/listening_to_music/opus.png"
  alt="Comparison of the opus codec next to other compressed audio formats">
I used mp3 before I found out about opus.
The format is not that widely known among devices (my phone only plays opus files when the format is <i>.oga</i> instead of <i>.opus</i>), but I still prefer to use it for its efficiency.
For conversion, my recommendation is <a href="https://www.freac.org/" target="blank">fre:ac</a>, a versatile free software audio converter that supports a wide variety of formats including opus.
## What I use on my phone
I use two phones. One is for everyday use and the other is strictly for music listening.
I transfer the files to an external SD card through USB and use <a href="https://github.com/MuntashirAkon/Metro" target="blank">Metro</a> to enjoy the stuff I downloaded.
To get notified of new releases of favorite artists, <a href="https://github.com/schnatterer/nusic" target="blank">nusic</a> is my go-to.
It uses the aforementioned MusicBrainz project to fetch new albums and notify you of new materials to listen to.
I'm sometimes envious of Spotify users getting their listening statistics handed to them each December in a nicely presented manner.
For something close to that, I chose <a href="https://listenbrainz.org/" target="blank">ListenBrainz</a> made by the same people that run the MusicBrainz project.
It collects your listening statistics and allows you to browse them anytime you want (you can also check out my own statistics <a href="https://listenbrainz.org/user/plan_beanie/" target="blank">here</a>) through reports, graphs and lists.
At the end of each year, you get a personalised link that lists your favorite albums, tracks, artists and much more.
It's also a nice way to get new music recommendations by checking out other users' statistics.
You can connect your Spotify account or use a so-called <i>scrobbler</i> (I use <a href="https://github.com/simple-last-fm-scrobbler/sls" target="blank">Simple Scrobbler</a>) to collect data and upload them to ListenBrainz.
## _"Y u no stream da muziks instead?"_
As you can see above, this kind of workflow just to get hold of new music is not really efficient when all I need to do otherwise is use a streaming service.
I have to be honest, I don't really like using streaming services for a variety of reasons.
Please note that this is solely my opinion and I can't tell you what you can and can not use.
I wrote this post just to share my thoughts and provide you with some practices which are generally not better but also not worse than any other method of obtaining and listening music.
### 1. There are just not enough materials on them.
Whenever I get into a new artist, I happen to dive into the deep cuts of their discography right after I finish listening to their studio albums.
Stuff like EPs, unreleased tracks, demos, all that kind of stuff.
It depends on the artist, but more often than not, those materials are not present on any streaming site, so they can't be heard for those who only use those kinds of apps.
And it's not only for the obscure stuff; it sometimes happens with mainline studio albums too.
I've had a few situations where I want to discuss an album with friends only to be greeted by <i>Oh, I didn't know that existed! It's not on Spotify</i>.
I don't really want to miss out on stuff I would be interested in, and I especially don't want to have <a target="blank" href="https://element.io/blog/what-is-app-fog-how-do-i-solve-it/">app fog</a>.
Installing more than one or two apps or subscribing to multiple services just for _one_ type of media in order to access everything you want seems so unnecessary for me.
I have to add that this phenomenon is more prevalent in the field on-demand video services like Netflix and HBO Max, but this point can still be applied to music-related sites (think about using Spotify for the mainstream stuff and Soundcloud for the lesser-known hobbyist projects).
We don't really have a universal streaming site yet and wel'll probably never will, but that's fine (see the 3rd point for more).
### 2. They make me feel restricted and manipulated
The fact that I can't do anything to the files themselves makes me uneasy.
- What if I want to listen tracks in higher quality?
  - (I don't ever say that because I don't have any good audiophile gear yet. :P)
- What if the album has multiple album arts that differ between releases and I want my app to show the exact one I want?
- I want to sample a part of some song to use it in my music projects. What if I need to edit the song itself? I can't access the track that way in any streaming app.
As you'll see in a few paragraphs below, <i>this is not about convenience for me</i>.
It's about the _freedom_ to do anything I want with what I access and download on the Internet.
Streaming services take that right away from me.
You don't download anything in the traditional sense while using them, the files are not yours to keep.
By subscribing to a service like music streaming, I restrict myself to an ecosystem of features I can't expand on.
I can't distribute or share music to those who don't use the same service and also can't use whatever software I want to enjoy an artist's work.
I'm also strictly limited to the clients that use the service's API (<a target="blank" href="https://nuclear.js.org/">Nuclear</a> is a popular third-party Spotify client for example).
I can't use VLC or any other music playing software to access the service.
Not to mention the manipulative nature of the algorithms they use to <a target="blank" href="https://www.howtogeek.com/847793/why-spotify-shuffle-is-not-truly-random/">shuffle music</a> (when I click _shuffle_, I want my music to be truly random instead of whatever this is) for example.
In Spotify's case, <a target="blank" href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/16/spotify-can-tell-if-youre-sad-heres-why-that-should-scare-you">the service can tell if you're happy or sad</a> and it can use that data to manipulate you.
That is an unnecessary layer of surveilance I don't want to subject myself to.
When I briefly used Spotify for a few hours, I got this weird feeling that can be roughly summarized as <i>I'm not in control, I don't own this piece of media</i> and I itch and scratch and say: <i>This isn't right</i>.
Me no likey.
### 3. They lack <span class="rainbow">nuance</span>
I'll probably use this word a lot in my posts about anything tech-related.
When I say <span class="rainbow">nuance</span>, I mean the slight differences in each of our experiences with a service/app/site.
Everyone has their habits when it comes to media consumption.
Some like ebooks more than traditional books, for some, it's the other way around.
There's also the ongoing flamewar between _PC Masterrace elitists_ and _console plebs_.
It's all about choice and the preferences you have.
I like talking with people about how they use technology.
Which programs they use, what tips they have or even just how they customize their homescreen or desktops.
With these services, these discussions are nonexistent.
Same themes, same general look and feel for everyone.
There are hundreds upon hundreds of audio apps available on Android (or wherever you want to listen to music) that let you style the app to your liking, or choose another app if you don't like one's set of features.
Again, _freedom to do anything you want_, let it be choosing the device you want to listen to music on or the free and unlimited sharing of files between your peers.
If you want to read more about the reasons to ditch streaming sites, <a href="https://stallman.org/spotify.html" target="blank">check out Richard Stallman's blog post about Spotify</a> or <a target="blank" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDfNRWsMRsU">Benn Jordan's "Why Spotify Will Ultimately Fail"</a> video on YouTube (I don't have an Invidous instance yet, but I'll use that in the future if I want to link YouTube vids here).
I might have bashed Spotify a lot in these few paragraphs, but that's because it's the most widely used one in my circles.
I'm also sure that basically every kind of streaming service uses the same — if not more — amounts of shady or downright restrictive practices.
It's your choice whether you want to use them and if they are worth the convenience of just searching for a song, tapping <i>play</i> and enjoying music that's readily available at any time.
The steps above are _my_ workflow. There's sure things to improve or tools to use that could make this easier.
If you know any or have tips for me, feel free to contact me. I can even update this post to include your recommendations.
It was nice sharing all this with you. Thanks for reading! I'll see you later.

See you later! Stay tuned for more!

See you later! Stay tuned for more!