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Where do you get your music from?
What is your preferred source for music? Streaming, CD, vinyl, web dl, something else?
My preferred source is web flac usually from bandcamp but I sometimes buy cds and copy them to my computer. I currently don't have a vinyl player so stuff that was only released on vinyl I have to find someone else who has copied it.
I tried streaming for a while but didn't like it. There was a bunch of older stuff missing and I kept getting told things were not available in my country as well as some songs only having a shitty remaster available.
I tried soulseek but I just couldn't work it out. I couldn't find any way to search and all the stuff I saw was in mp3. I have been downloading some stuff from RED but I have been struggling to maintain ratio.
As you can see in the following image, I searched for "hoobastank".
https://my.mixtape.moe/vfbsiz.png
At the bottom of the page, I added a filter for ".flac" and made it the default filter:
https://my.mixtape.moe/psnhfn.png
This ensures that ONLY flac files will be shown in any search.
If you need any more help, I can be messaged on the handle tn5421 on soulseek.
Not sure about other streaming services, but Spotify lets you download your playlists to your device so you can listen to music without being connected to the Internet.
I feel I suddenly entered an early 2000s forum. After streaming I could never go back to FLACs and MP3s.
I used to spend hours finding specific high bit rate files and organising and renaming them but these days it's pretty pointless.
I use Spotify and there have been 4 songs ever that I want that are not on Spotify. That's an okay sacrifice.
Spotify, almost exclusively. I had a large collection of OGG files I mostly downloaded from Youtube, using a couple scripts that renamed and tagged them appropriately using an Emacs Lisp input file. But I nuked it one day and went on to use streaming, and never looked back.
There are downsides, e.g. the Spotify app is not really good, but the one major, great upside is discovery with no friction. I listen to a way more diverse set of music than I did when I had around 1200 odd files on my computer, of which I only listened to a set minority anyways. I love the playlists too. Also, my backups are quicker and digital footprint smaller (less than 20 Gb in its entirety which is something I like; I'd be proud if I could pull it back to around 10Gb, but I have a few mailing list archives that are kind of useful, occasionally).
I used Deezer in the distant past, it was good too. I left it to start curating my music files, before I went back to streaming and picked Spotify this time.
I am an Apple Music user. This has 99% of the music I want, short of obscure game soundtracks. I'm okay with the monthly fee.
With regard to music discovery: I really like talking about music with friends. I have a few friends where, over IRC or iMessage or something, we'll hit play on an album at the same time, and then just stream of consciousness chat through the album to experience it together.
I generally know what music I like, but my music taste is all over the place, and I like being introduced to new music—my favorite discovery last year is ska-jazz, by way of The Cat Empire.
The core of my music listening is through a digital collection made up of 320kbps mp3s, FLAC files, and some lower bitrate mp3s for some rare things that might as well not exist in another form. I much prefer the freedom of player, organization, tags, etc. that I get from this over anything provided by streaming, and I also like the convenience of having everything already downloaded over streaming. I used to have a flow where I streamed things I hadn't heard before and downloaded things which I knew I wanted to keep, but honestly that was much more of a hassle than downloading everything and just deleting things when I don't care to keep them.
I also started a record collection recently. I don't necessarily buy into the idea that analogue is inherently better than digital, but I do tend to prefer the listening experience as well as attaching my feelings on albums to large, beautiful artwork. This is the main area of my collection that I'd like to expand.
...and while I don't have much in the way of a collection of other formats (some CDs and tapes here and there), I'd like to expand more and get more of each as well integrate them into my main listening setup. In general, I want to have more of a physical collection regardless of format.
I have lots of interest in house, electronic dance music, indie pop, and indie rock. I find that the easiest way to find upcoming artists and good mixes is from SoundCloud, so that's what I primarily use.
I used to use Spotify, then I tried Google Play Music, I prefer SoundCloud for my genre taste.
Mixcloud and hearthis.at are good for mixes.
https://hearthis.at/
https://www.mixcloud.com/
Mixcloud especially. There's a huge variety of stuff available.
Thanks, looked briefly at Mixcloud and a lot of familiar names there uploading!
Most of my music used to be pirated MP3s. It wasn't because I was too cheap to buy them, but because the music I liked simply wasn't available to buy in my country. A lot of the music I listen to are video game soundtracks. Thankfully, most publishers seem to understand that there is a US market for them and more soundtracks are being released in this market. Square Enix in particular is great about it.
Of course, when something I have been pirated becomes available to purchase, I buy it.
For the other music I listen to, my preferred format is CD. Though in reality, I don't ever listen to them directly; I listen to the FLAC copies I make (carefully tagged and catalogued with help from Musicbrainz). For the more obscure musicians I listen to, I generally buy the Bandcamp releases and download the FLAC version.
Absolutely this. Most of my music collection consists of independent Japanese works (aka doujin music). Some sell their merchandise on online shops that ships internationally and/or digitally at Bandcamp or Apple Store, but most labels have yet to make this move, so their works can be hard to acquire unless you actually go to music conventions in Japan. That's one reason why there's an active community of listeners who pirate doujin music.
I prefer web dl, and almost never buy physical copies because I can't seem to handle them with care. It's really nice that all local artists I follow release their works at Bandcamp.
Since the majority of stuff I listen to is around 90's to recently, a lot of what I like to listen to is readily available on Spotify. Boring, but it works!
I prefer streaming for the same reason. I've always felt the chance of something going awry is a lot higher with files. What if my hard drive gets corrupted for example? I suppose I could store my songs in the cloud, but what if my cloud storage provider shuts down? I suppose I could set up a home server with file syncing, but what if my house burns down?
The only thing that happens if my streaming service provider shuts down is that I have to find a new one (and lose my playlists, but that's no big deal for me).
I use Spotify for most of my music listening needs, but if something isn't on there (usually soundtracks for games or something like that) or I'd like to actually own a piece of music, I buy it from the creator on bandcamp. When I do that, I download in FLAC, even though I know the difference is most likely inaudible compared to a good 320kbps mp3 file.
YouTube, because of all the niche weirdness I listen to. Might try Spotify, except I already have the Google Family music plan and everyone in my "family" is in love with Ad free YouTube and background play, and if I cancel, I'm not sure I can get it back.
I use Apple Music. If there is something specific that isn’t on that service, I can generally find it to buy somewhere and upload it to iTunes in the Cloud.
I gave up on owning all of the music I wanted to listen to a long time ago. If I really like a band, I’ll buy their merch at a show or directly from their website.
Most of the bands I’ve talked to after shows have said they’d much rather you do that. They make almost nothing when you buy their music from somewhere like Amazon (physically or digitally) and that most of their money comes from selling shirts, hats and records at their shows.
I'd assume bandcamp is much better at getting profits to the artist.
Yeah, AFAIK Apple still generally takes a 30% cut of all sales through iTunes, whereas Bandcamp only takes a 15% cut of digital sales (which drops to 10% after first $5k/yr). Which is why I try to buy from Bandcamp instead of other sources whenever I can.
CDs, which I usually rip and listen to on my phone. I find that if I can't look at a shelf and pick out something to listen to, I don't end up listening at all.
I've got some records too, but CDs are usually cheaper so I go with those. Bandcamp's not bad either.
CD (as close to label as possible, Warp and Rhymesayers, for example, are cool about that), Bandcamp (CD, if possible), CDBaby if they're still there.