I personally love my collection (records, CD, digital) and enjoy sharing the experience with friends. I don’t use streaming unless you count soma fm at work. Sure, I’ll use YouTube to listen to some albums I don’t own, but if I truly like it I’ll buy or download it, usually on bandcamp or direct from artist if I can.
For me, I don’t believe the human brain was ever made for this level of stimulation (we shouldn’t really have 24/7 access to social media either. Go back to the “family PC” model). People have very little connection to music anymore becuase there’s too much and its too easy to access. I can barely remember all the members names in my favorite bands or all their albums. There’s little chance anyone even knows the artists of the millions of songs they’re streaming, or the story behind them.
I don’t believe the human brain was ever made for this level of stimulation
Before recorded audio, every song was unique. Every play of every song was unique. Non-Variable stimuli is actually the weird situation.
I mainly listen to my music collection from my Plex server, but I’ll also pop in a CD on occasion and listen from start to finish. It can honestly be so refreshing to have the music experience be so physical without a screen in the way. I agree with your feelings on mainstream streaming services. You have access to a lot of music but it really discourages you from traveling deeper.
Local > Streaming, but I’d prefer to have a large, eclectic library: My musical preferences are all over the place.
Oh me as well. I just dont like the aspect of unlimited. Unlimited anything is not really a good thing and it cheapens art, IMO.
Plus, how many people now listen to albums multiple times (yes, I’m an unc, I realize no one has listened to albums since the 90s)? I’m willing to bet 98% of them are a 1 and done. They never get the experience of hearing it again and listening for things the artist may have subtly placed there, or really understanding the lyrics the 3rd time around etc.
Aren’t albums still called albums even when they’re electronic? Has that changed? Am I that old?
Nah they are. But I don’t know anyone who listens to albums that isnt a musician.
Now you do! Hi.
I have some instruments I fuck around with casually once in a while, but I am most definitely not a musician.
No that hasn’t changed lol Artists making cohesive albums has changed though. I don’t mind a compilation project but I never hear any newer artists doing concept albums other than Tyler the Creator.
Hmm, you should probably check out Deltron 3030’s 2 albums: If you like hip-hop, compilations, and concept albums, this one is pretty great IMO (not new though). It’s Del tha Funkee Homosapien, Dan the Automator, and Kid Koala (a turntable genius) along with a bunch of guests.
I’ll give it a go. I’ve listened to Del the Funkee Homosapien before so there’s some familiar ground there.
One of the primary appeals of early streaming platforms (first via MySpace and then later through services like Napster and Pandora) was the opportunity to explore outside your normie musical tastes. For folks who weren’t living in some major metroplex with an active indie music scene, this was a reliable way to find new music and get outside whatever your parents had on repeat in the car on the way to school.
The modern scene has exploited a desire for “newness” in the abstract and stuffed everyone’s feeds with AI slop. But there is still a demand for media broadcasts outside the ClearChannel “Top 3 Pop Songs on a Loop” and Oldie “Mandatory Metallica” stations that go beyond what you have already listened to.
How do you fill your local collection if you aren’t listening to stuff outside your local collection?
I’m always finding new music. I just dont do it using “recommended playlists”.
I got tired of hearing the same stuff from the 80s 90s and early 2000s so I just subscribed to spotify for a few months to explore some new music without ads.
I’ve tried to get back into cds but it’s the old there’s two tracks I like on this one, so switch. I believe in listening to albums in their entirety unless you absolutely can’t stand a song. Streaming is just to convenient and the old way is to limited. Plus it’s far cheaper.
I havent found much modern new music I’ve loved, there’s a few here and there. But I have rediscovered bands I completely forgotten about on streaming or was unaware of from way back then that I now enjoy.
Also some bands who I never cared for their radio single so I just dismissed them and didn’t give them a chance like sum41 and Volbeat. Recently listened to all of princes albums in full for the first time.
stuffed everyone’s feeds with AI slop.
Before there was AI slop there was auto-tuned slop.
There’s a certain authenticity that comes from learning to actually play an instrument (including vocals) uniquely - imperfectly, rather than digitally perfect synthesis of perfectly timed notes from a composition score.
Before there was AI slop there was auto-tuned slop.
And it ultimately flopped. The market became saturated with a product that people associated with flat, tinny, overly-electronic music. People scrambled to get away from it, and we got a mini-folk revival with lots of acoustics and more traditional instrumentals as a result.
In the same way, we’re seeing a scramble to get away from AI music saturation. I don’t think it’ll ever go away (any more than auto-tune did). But it creates a demand for something distinctively not-AI as a result.
In the before times you would buy a new album and listen to it from start to finish, several times. It was Tuesday.
I still enjoy listening to music in album form. I can think of many songs that are not discrete pieces of art without the track(s) before and after.
A local radio station once played “Golden Slumbers” without also playing “carry that weight” and they apologized for it the next day.
Metallica’s ride the lightning cassette got played in my car from beginning to end so many times
In the before before times, teenagers didn’t buy albums, they bought singles…
One of my coworkers told me he doesn’t like hearing the same song twice after I was talking about alternatives to Spotify. I was just baffled.
Ever?
I don’t agree with the op necessarily, I’ve found value in having virtually unlimited access to music, but i listen to the same music all the time.
I mean shit, if i find a new song I like i start with it for the next several times I listen to music with the rest shuffled from my “liked” songs. If a song doesn’t hit the right way I’ll start it over. If it hits too well it gets played again right away.
On thing I miss is listening to full albums, i.e. you put on an album, listen to all the tracks from beginning to end in the order the artist intended. I know you still can listen to full albums now, but most software is designed these days around individual tracks and it loses something. Sometimes a well put together album can be better than the sum of its parts.
Never subscribed to a streaming service myself, I don’t see the appeal of listening to (and potentially becoming emotionally attached to) music I don’t actually own and could lose some day.
most software is designed these days around individual tracks and it loses something.
I use Apple Music and that is very album centric. You can add entire albums to your library and browse you library using an album view.
A lot of software will do that if all your music is correctly (and consistently) tagged. Depending on where you get it though it often isn’t, and it’s a lot of manual work getting all your music files tagged in a standard way.
I pretty much only listen to albums. I enjoy the cohesiveness. Jumping around in shuffle is fine for like parties I guess. Not for me.
I stream plenty but that is one of the reasons I like vinyl. Pretty much forced to listen to the album.
Some albums were meant to be listened to beginning to end, particularly starting around the Alan Parsons Abbey Road / Darkside era.
Some albums were meant to be listened to with a few songs removed.
Some albums should never have been published - the world would be much happier with a single and a B-side living the illusion that the artist can someday produce more of the same brilliance - rather than hearing proof that they didn’t.
When Pandora was $30 per year, I subscribed - when they started going to monthly only I dropped.
I don’t need, or want, an unlimited streaming service with instant access to all the world’s music. I do want access to probably 100,000+ songs of my choosing, and I do not want anything shoving stuff at me on heavy rotation because somebody paid it to.
Is there some music database that lets me put in an artist I like, and why I like them, to get recommendations?
I ask because often what I like about a band is specific and different from the norm in their genre. I like Pink Floyd in large part because of Waters and Gilmour’s vocal styles, whereas I don’t listen to Rush because I can’t stand Geddy Lee’s vocals. But if I put in “I like Pink Floyd” I get offered Rush because they are adjacent, genre-wise.
Being able to say “I like Band A for their recording production and bass guitar” and get recommendations for other artists with similar (or even opposite if I could invert the search!), that would be a dream! “Artists like Rush but with vocals not like Rush” 😅
(Rush is a great band and I have lots of respect for them and Geddy’s talent as well, I wish I could like it. This is purely a me problem)
Last.fm is what you’re looking for. It makes suggestions based on what you listen to.
There’s definitely truth to that and I’m currently building up a local library of music to put on my dedicated music player.
On the other hand, I do like the ease of discovery with streaming. I didn’t listen to a lot of music in the pre-streaming days, because the only easy way to discover artists was by listening to the radio, which was mostly music I didn’t love. I have to admit that I only found much of the music I now like thanks to streaming.
Understandable. I prefer the more human ways of discovering a lot of the time…buying random albums to see what they are, talking to friends about what they’ve liked recently , reading liner notes to see who produced or mixed and album and seeking out more things theyve produced (streaming ruined this, because you get zero liner notes now and no one gets any credits), going to shows to hear new music etc. Thats all part of what makes it so fun vs the al gore rhythm telling me what to like.
I like my collection - so I don’t mind having my collection randomly played back to me - some songs more often than others, sure, but it’s really nice to have some song you haven’t heard in months just start playing without having thought about it. I also like having the option to “turn down” the frequency with which certain songs in my collection play.
Being able to add music to my collection easily - ambiently out of life, when experienced here or there in whatever contexts - is something that’s still lacking in today’s tools. They’re still too profit focused, trying to build mega-hit monsters through brainwashing of the general public. No thanks.
For probably >50% of artists I listen to, I never could have discovered them in record stores, either because they never had widely available physical releases at all, or only in their home countries. And my friends have pretty different musical tastes from myself.
Recently went through my parents’ old vinyl record collection though, after fixing up their record player from the 70s. There’s definitely something special about discovering music through physical media, looking at the album art, reading the booklets etc.
I found a small band from Canada that I remember seeing live in Nebraska back in the 90s or early 2000s And then completely forgot about them until two weeks ago. Artificial Joy Club - sick and beautiful.
I just have a radio channel I like and I let them decide. Does that make me a boomer?
Navidrome + Scrobble to ListenBrainz + RSS notifications for Fresh Releases feed = Perfection
My lifetime collection of music tracks is currently at 821 tracks in total. My music taste is somehow stupidly specific. Theres no formula. I like rock, metal, death metal, Goth metal, dance music, video game theme tracks, electro, instrumental covers, some classical, some Mongolian throat singing, etc etc. But I will only like specific tracks and I’ve got no tolerance to have things I don’t love in my library.
When I see that most people just throw on whatever on Spotify and just let any ol’ genre playlist play out, I find it amazing. People don’t have to be as restricted as me, but how is everyone now so very non-intentional with what they consume.
But this isn’t just for music. People let algorithms decode what content they see online, what YouTube videos to watch, what movie to stream… I would strongly advocate being at least a bit more intentional. Pick what you want to be exposed to. Pay attention to it. Stop being so passive and try to intentionally consume art and you’ll get a lot more put of it.
Since streaming became a thing, I could probably only name a handful of artists I’ve discovered. I just pick a genre and let the algorithm decide.
About 6 months ago, I started self-hosting my music, and it’s a game changer. It feels like much more intentional consumption of media.
Hats off to you using your own brain!! Wish i could say the same for others…
Yeah, its really become “put on “rock mix” playlist (that Spotify made for you, probably using stolen ai music) and listen to that for hours with 0 thought” which is fine for some stuff I guess. I don’t believe thats healthy for humans or music.
I think some people enjoy the thrill of discovery more than the depth of experience. Which is fine. No judgment.
Personally I’d rather have 10 albums that mean a lot than 100,000 albums I listen to once.
I’d rather have 3,000 albums (30,000 songs, 120,000 minutes -> 2000 hours) of music that I listen to anywhere from once a week to once every couple of years.
I’ve grown content with not having to store my music for listening. And I hate to admit it but I have gotten bad at finding new and Spotify us all like " you like this, check this out. That said my listening is done at work and while driving. If I want music at home I pick an instrument and play some. But saying there’s too much access to music is horseshit. Everyone gets something different out of music, and it’s nobody’s business but theirs what that is. Even if it is just background noise. You want to know why a song exists, I’m picking apart the chord structure and lyrical devices. Or giving my day theme music. Or maybe just knowing that today was a good day.
Yep and thats fine. I also just like to own my music and not have it solely controlled by billionaires.
Nothing wrong with some zone out stuff during work. Soma FM or bandcamp ambient artists are great for that. I can’t listen to really engaging music while working usually.
Oh, I sing out loud to every song I know the words of. I work in a factory. Most of my work takes more back than brain. I will also genre flop several times over a day. Sometimes I listen to whole records, but other times I enjoy themed playlists. I don’t own enough hard drive to contain my listening, my phone sure couldn’t hold it all. And say I get a suggestion from a coworker or if I have to unload a delivery and the truck driver mentions a band I never heard of, I look it up on Spotify, and I have only managed to stump it once. I can’t argue with that.
saying there’s too much access to music is horseshit.
Ever since the mp3.com forum conversations back in the 90s: more access drives more consumption. More consumption drives more demand. People who get used to listening to more music, want more music to listen to.
Yes, and?
