MP3 Library Management

[pizza]

foobar is far beyond any other player i've tried. owns

[xy_politics]

5 hours ago, Kennylogg Bubblebath said:

that musicbee seems quite nice, but is it actually any good?

i'm using musicbee, very happy with it

[Uros]

5 hours ago, Kennylogg Bubblebath said:

anyone know of a decent desktop player/library manager that doesn't look complete shit?

i'm sure foobar is great and does everything i require from a media player, but i don't want to use something that looks like i'm about to convert a divx to mpeg2 in 2004

that musicbee seems quite nice, but is it actually any good?

I tried foobar a couple of times but simply couldn't get into it so went to musicbee and have been a fan ever since. It does have everything I need and imo is super flexible (at least to the point I've ever needed it to be). Tagging, converting, artwork, freq, playlists, whatever. Haven't let me down once. There are several skin options (bright and dark ones) although could imagine something like foobar has plenty more. But imo worth to check out. The logo and name are little silly though but, ah well...

Oh, need to give some extra love for its miniplayer option.

[zlemflolia]

i used to like foobar but it barely works on linux with wine so fuck foobar for being windows locked

[auxien]

7 hours ago, Satans Little Helper said:

It will remain in you personal space though. At least, that's my experience. At least for Bandcamp. There's a couple of otherwise deleted tunes in my page. Those are set to private. So people looking at your collection can't even see them. But they are still there.

so, an artist can make a release private. essentially anyone who’s purchased that will still have access to it, afaik to stream and download. it just doesn’t show up publicly to anyone else. but a deleted album is gone forever, even if someone purchased it before.

yall let me know if off on any of that, but i’m p sure that’s how it works

[Scaramouche]

7 minutes ago, auxien said:

so, an artist can make a release private. essentially anyone who’s purchased that will still have access to it, afaik to stream and download. it just doesn’t show up publicly to anyone else. but a deleted album is gone forever, even if someone purchased it before.

yall let me know if off on any of that, but i’m p sure that’s how it works

Aye. I've had a couple releases that have been completely removed from the book of life. In the minority, and most seem to go to Private. 

[dcom]

54 minutes ago, Shimon_Shimon said:

Aye. I've had a couple releases that have been completely removed from the book of life. In the minority, and most seem to go to Private. 

I have a bit over hundred releases not available to me anymore, out of 3400+. Half of them are recoverable, as they've changed details/ids/URLs due to re-releases and such, but the rest are just... gone. It's a concrete reminder to download at least the FLACs immediately on purchase and archive them.

[KovalainenFanBoy]

I love the idea of customizing foobar until it's time to confront the fact i'm absolutely shit at UI design and need it done for me

[zero]

I used to be CD only until 2010. I would listen to mp3's online to sample in order to see if I liked it, but would then go buy the album on CD as opposed to getting it on mp3. reason being is that I wasn't satisfied with the quality of mp3's, until 320kbps became the standard. IIRC, it was around 2009/2010 when 320kbps mp3's started becoming the norm, as before it was restricted to variable bit rate or 256kbps as the top quality mp3's. my ears really can't tell much of a difference between 320 kbps mp3 and WAV, or other higher quality sound file types, and so because of that, stopped buying CD's and switched to acquiring mp3's only around 2010 (still go on the occasional used vinyl hunt though). I started saving them in a folder labeled "2010." then next year in 2011, I put all the mp3's I acquired that year in a "2011" folder. at some point it must have dawned on me that this is going to keep going, and it is going to be an insane memory workout trying to remember what folder a specific album is in. so I changed my method to only put albums released in 2011 in the 2011 folder, 2012 released albums in the 2012 folder, etc. anything released before 2010 goes in a folder labeled "before 2010".

so yeah, I keep my mp3 albums in folders grouped by release year. which is probably not the best way to do it, but somehow works for me. 

 

[zlemflolia]

i think the concept of folder hierarchies is really outdated.  it seems reasonable to not have any folder hierarchy but instead a big blob of filenames with random UUIDs where all that matters is the tags embedded within them, or for some file formats maybe tags mapped from the UUID into a database, where you can immediately conjure up a folder hierarchy based on a tag sequence like {label > artist > album > (tracknum trackname extension} and it appears in the filesystem as if it's an actual folder hierarchy with filenames defined in the (...) that you can copy and paste with those filenames and folder hierarchies elsewhere so the UUID names are kind of hidden from you.  no idea if anything like this exists. 

Edited September 24, 2021 by ilqx hermolia xpli

[auxien]

1 hour ago, ilqx hermolia xpli said:

it seems reasonable to not have any folder hierarchy but instead a big blob of filenames with random UUIDs where all that matters is the tags embedded within them

a pretty communist take on the subject. 

[dcom]

14 hours ago, ilqx hermolia xpli said:

no idea if anything like this exists. 

You're describing faceted search. It's information retrieval 101. I don't think there's any player/management software that can do that for you (by default), but most of them have rudimentary facets like artist and album name views, drilling down on specifics requires simple stacking of facets. I understand you just want to create an arbitrary ordered hierarchy of tags and their values to generate a virtual folder structure on the fly, and not (explicitly) filter (i.e. search), but you're still using facets in a combinatorial context.

Quote

Faceted search is a technique that involves augmenting traditional search techniques with a faceted navigation system, allowing users to narrow down search results by applying multiple filters based on faceted classification of the items. A faceted classification system classifies each information element along multiple explicit dimensions, called facets, enabling the classifications to be accessed and ordered in multiple ways rather than in a single, pre-determined, taxonomic order.

 

Quote

Actually, it might be more correct to say that my record collection has been rearranged for me: I opened the Spotify app on my laptop a few weeks ago and found that everything I had saved was in disarray. The albums weren’t where I thought they were. I couldn’t flip through them with my usual clicks, the kind of subconscious muscle memory that builds up when you use a piece of software every day, like your thumb going directly to the Instagram app button on your phone screen. Spotify had updated its interface and suddenly I was lost. I couldn’t put on the jazz record by Yusef Lateef that I play every morning when I start writing and I couldn’t figure out where to find the songs I had saved by pressing the heart-shaped like button. The sudden lack of spatial logic was like a form of aphasia, as if someone had moved around all the furniture in my living room and I was still trying to navigate it as I always had. Spotify’s new “Your Library” tab, which implied everything I was looking for, opened up a window of automatically generated playlists that I didn’t recognize. The next tab over offered podcasts, which I never listened to on the app. Nothing made sense.

In the digital era, when everything seems to be a single click away, it’s easy to forget that we have long had physical relationships with the pieces of culture we consume. We store books on bookshelves, mount art on our living-room walls, and keep stacks of vinyl records. When we want to experience something, we seek it out, finding a book by its spine, pulling an album from its case, or opening an app. The way we interact with something — where we store it — also changes the way we consume it, as Spotify’s update made me realize. Where we store something can even outweigh the way we consume it.

The digital death of collecting (Kyle Chayka)

Edited September 25, 2021 by dcom

[kuniklo]

I keep all my stuff in flac in a dropbox folder that I don't sync to my machines. It's just for backup. I transcode all these to opus and also keep those in dropbox in a folder I do keep synced to my machines. I also use the FolderSync android app to sync over the opus stuff to my phone and use PowerAmp to play it back. On my Mac I use Swinsian to play stuff:

https://swinsian.com

I wrote a small command line tool to normalize all the folder paths on both the flac & dropbox folders. 

I think we do need simpler solutions than this for people that want to actually buy music but aren't interested in this level of micromanagement. It would be nice if Bandcamp made their app better as a player.

[Bob Dylan]

I would switch to Plex if it had a "play random album" feature.  I still use itunes only for that...   

 

I have a large classical music collection, I cannot switch to streaming since it's the worse, most service have no clue how to have multiple conductors and versions (and even worse, when there are multiple recordings by the same conductor throughout the years).  Worse are the auto-uploading where it finds the correct streaming track from your MP3, they often fuck up and play the simplest most bland version of a classical composition you have...

Edited September 25, 2021 by Bob Dylan

[zlemflolia]

9 hours ago, kuniklo said:

I keep all my stuff in flac in a dropbox folder that I don't sync to my machines. It's just for backup. I transcode all these to opus and also keep those in dropbox in a folder I do keep synced to my machines. I also use the FolderSync android app to sync over the opus stuff to my phone and use PowerAmp to play it back. On my Mac I use Swinsian to play stuff:

https://swinsian.com

I wrote a small command line tool to normalize all the folder paths on both the flac & dropbox folders. 

I think we do need simpler solutions than this for people that want to actually buy music but aren't interested in this level of micromanagement. It would be nice if Bandcamp made their app better as a player.

only vaguely related to your post thru the dropbox mention... but

i suggest people stop using cloud shit entirely.  invest in a secondarybackup hard drive that you store in for instance a safety deposit box that you swap out for your primary backup hard drive once per 6 months or something convenient.  then have a tertiary backup deep in a closet or something.  fuck this cloud shit.  you can even get high capacity flash drives to put on your keychain to store the important stuff, maybe not large media libraries. use freefilesync to sync them across devices with various profiles and filters

[Worlds Most Johnsson]

On 9/24/2021 at 1:53 AM, Boxus said:

I still use folders of mp3s/flacs organized by Artist and Album, played in Winamp. Same setup I've been using since the early 00's lol. Only difference is that I've replaced a lot of those old low-bitrate mp3s I ripped 20 years ago with lossless versions.

I also use folders of mp3s organized by Artist and Album, played in Winamp. Same setup I've been using since the early 00's lol. Only difference is that I've replaced a lot of those old low-bitrate mp3s I ripped 20 years ago with 320 kbps versions.

 

[Cryptowen]

i just keep all my mp3s in a single audacity project file & whenever it gets too big and starts crashing my computer i just cut out the parts i still like & save them to a single mp3. crackin off a piece of the trak as we call it in the music industry

[frankbooth]

All my music is in Google Drive organized by genre>artist>album. From there I just sync to cloudbeats to play on any Bluetooth device.

I don’t play music from my laptop. It’s all phone-based for me. 

[Bob Dylan]

Google Drive... so do you pay for more GB?  Because it's only 15GB per user.  Using 320kbps that's about 150-200 albums.

Even with Google One at 100GB, I'm only at 1/5th of my collection size lol

[kakapo]

I reverse all of my audio files when not in use, otherwise music becomes too disposable.  Do get the odd complaint on soulseek though.

[sidewinder]

Mac/iPhone user

I've been using iTunes to manage my digital music since the early/mid 2000s, and never moved away from it, Started to really digitize everything around 2005 probably, and by 2010 I stopped buying CDs as I realized I was just ripping them and putting them on the shelf, not enjoying the physical product as much as I used to. I used an iPod Mini to listen a lot while walking around and at the gym, but I guess I did still play CDs in the car. It's just that I'd also gotten in the habit of only having CD-Rs in the car, after having real CDs stolen from the car a couple times in the past as well as to keep them in better shape. Sold off my CD collection around 2013 I think. 

Digital collection is around 350GB, 45k tracks. Backed up on external drive every so often, but I like having it all on my laptop. Unfortunately I've run out of space a few times and deleted a fair amount of stuff recently (things I felt I really wasn't into anymore and weren't difficult to come across should I ever want it again). I need a new laptop I guess, it seems really inconvenient having things on an external. Not that I use the laptop for listening anyway...I sync to my iPhone and play that on the go. 

I'm a heavy Spotify user as well. I resisted streaming for a long time, as I liked having the files, until I realized streaming was really convenient and it wasn't a one or the other thing, I can do both. I think the ability to quickly create and manage playlists on Spotify is amazing, and that's really how I got hooked. One annoyance of course is when things are available and then no longer. You start to expect everything to be available at your fingertips so it's frustrating when you can't find certain things. 

When it comes to downloading, I tend to do it for a few reasons:

• It's not on Spotify.
• I absolutely love it and want it as part of my permanent collection.
• Spotify doesn't have it tagged correctly. I'm a last.fm user and can't stand when things scrobble incorrectly. This is most often an issue with hip-hop, due to collaborations and features. 

Oh as far as apps for listening to my own collection, I recently got really frustrated with iTunes on the phone and switched to Marvis Pro, which has been pretty great. Main reasons were bad UX in the Apple Music app and issues with last.fm scrobbling, which required frequent syncing with my laptop. Marvis has much better UX, it's customizable, and can scrobble live.

I wouldn't mind switching my laptop management tool away from iTunes to something better, so I'll have to check out some of the suggestions so far. Seems like a huge pain, but could be worthwhile. One thing I wish about Spotify too is that it was more customizable, but kinda makes sense it's not since it's more of a product than something created to manage your own files.

[YangYing]

print the waveforms, frame the best ones 

[eye]

I recently decided to stop using Spotify (for obvious reasons) and switch to Qobuz, and to stop buying vinyl (mostly) and instead spend the same budget on digitals, so I can give more support to the artists I love and support more artists. Still making up for a lot of soulseeking in the past too, this feels about right.

Roon is great for integrating your own digital library with a Qobuz or Tidal subscription. It's all in one place now. Roon's metadata is pretty good too, makes me spend a lot less time on tagging & renaming music. It's far from perfect, especially for electronic music, but the development team seems really dedicated to improving their product.

All my music is on pCloud now, so there's one version of my library that's always synced & available when needed. I can just drag & drop new purchases straight into pCloud and it'll be in Roon and anywhere else the next minute.

Edited September 27, 2021 by eye

[zlemflolia]

On 9/25/2021 at 4:31 AM, dcom said:

You're describing faceted search. It's information retrieval 101. I don't think there's any player/management software that can do that for you (by default), but most of them have rudimentary facets like artist and album name views, drilling down on specifics requires simple stacking of facets. I understand you just want to create an arbitrary ordered hierarchy of tags and their values to generate a virtual folder structure on the fly, and not (explicitly) filter (i.e. search), but you're still using facets in a combinatorial context.

 

The digital death of collecting (Kyle Chayka)

I think I came up with an idea for a solution to faceted search for some types of files for instance movie video files.  just put tags in the filename like

[title:Apocalypse Now][director:Francis Ford Coppola][year:1979][starring:marlon brando,martin sheen, robert duvall][quality:1080p].mkv

when the "library" is modified it requires running a tool to pre-load all searches using symlinks.  if configured to generate director-level symlinks, it will create a directory at the root called "director" inside of which is a directory called "Francis Ford Coppola" which contains a symlink to the file.  the physical files will be stored in a monolithic DATA folder.  same for any other tag.  multiple directory structures can point to the same underlying file through the symlinks, in this example the "year" folder containing the "1979" folder containing a symlink to the movie

the problem then becomes how to tag files quickly and easily.  maybe it can allow various methods, like discogs for music, imdb for movies.  maybe a file explorer right click command that allows rapidly "add tag" to a file and it goes in the correct order, to avoid manually editing filenames

this being said, maybe symlink generation is useless since you can just search [director:...etc] but this is hard to type on some platforms lacking keyboards like remote-controlled OSMC

for music the physical files will be album-level.  then this can allow record_label, artist, genre-level directory structures etc. all without actually copying the files, it's just alternative views

anyway ill see what i come up with to further this utility

Edited November 16, 2021 by ilqx hermolia xpli

[chronical]

Been sorting my terabyte+ of music into MusicBee ever since I saw it here.. Neat program, especially with the sorting settings. My folder structure goes D:\Music\Braindance\Luke Vibert\Kerrier District\2004 Kerrier District, no need for the artist's name, label, catalogue nr there, just want to see the chronological releases really.