Thread

Why media fans want to escape algorithms with CDs, DVDs and vinyl

70 points · 109 comments · beardyw

pkthunder · 1790939090 · focus · HN ↗
I’ve been going through my own personal revival of physical media - mostly audio. I don’t miss streaming at all.
Every CD I buy gets ripped to a NAS that hosts the music behind Navidrone where I can stream to my vehicle using Play:Sub (thanks to Tailscale for enabling all of this to work for me!).
I am just so enamored with being able to get the best of both worlds - my own music, anywhere.
I do wish I could figure out some sort of recommendation system to find new magic, though. Obviously not to steam new/unowned songs, just to point me in a direction next time I go to the store.
1. Hoodedcrow · 1790939394 · focus · HN ↗
  Seems like CDs are redundant here though, given that they get digitized anyway.
  1. pkthunder · 1790939698 · focus · HN ↗
    I have a home audio setup to play them on, don’t worry :).
    Also, buying directly from artists (when you can) is a good way to support them.
  2. pmontra · 1790941962 · focus · HN ↗
    They are the backup. A music CD can last for a long time. Proof: my father CDs from about 35 years ago still work.
    pkthunder · 1790942055 · focus · HN ↗
    Also just fun to be a plain-old jockey when you have company over, rather than just let “Appotifydal Top 3”
    l72 · 1790945677 · focus · HN ↗
    Even though I've ripped my 1000+ CDs, I tend to not let company dig through them, as I consider them my pristine backups!
    I also buy a lot of digital music on bandcamp.com, and like OP, host using navidrome.
    But you are right, when company comes over letting people DJ is fun. Instead of using my actual CDs, I set up a system with RFID cards. You can buy hundreds of RFID cards for super cheap. I print out the cover art of each of them, and the RFID ID corresponds to an album. A simple RFID reader hooked up to a pi, which reads the ID and plays the corresponding album with mpd on my stereo, makes for a cheap, fun way to allow people to physically explore your collection.
    pkthunder · 1790951006 · focus · HN ↗
    Really like the idea of RFID cards - I was brainstorming something like that years ago for the kid, but never chased it down.
    (Un??)fortunately, I am usually the one slinging CDs for people to listen to, people just like being able to offload that and listen to curated music, vs. "throw on spotify whatever" and having it just _play_.
    swozey · 1790943531 · focus · HN ↗
    People say this and when I look it up it's supposedly true, but I grew up in the heyday of cds and cdrws and have probably burnt thousands of them including specifically expensive plextors or whatever brand wasn't bulk trash back in the day and constantly had issues with scratches, sunlight, whatever damaging them to uselessness. I was the kid selling mp3 discs and pc games when nobody could afford a cdrw burner.
    There is a reason people can tell you how exactly how many times they've bought greenday dookie, offspring smash, 2pac all eyez on me and other 90s gold. I think this is some collective brainrot or everyone is talking about hiding their discs in the canticle of leibowitz and not their corolla.
    edit: 35 year old cds is 1995, that your dad comment made it sound even older. I guess you're not the prime cd burner in the house, your dad was, ask him how many times he's bought those working discs albums. Or he was the guy with the giant bookcase envelope of CDs he treated like gold. I could always burn a new one.
    techdmn · 1790944145 · focus · HN ↗
    Similar to the OP, I buy discs, rip them, then store the physical copy for recovery purposes. I keep them in a box in the basement, the vast majority are still in working order. (Including discs purchased or burned 35 years ago.)
    Like any other media, frequent use and handling will degrade discs, and sunlight is the natural enemy of anything plastic. The interior of a car will also get ridiculously hot on a sunny day, I have seen vinyl literally melt. (And crayons!) Actually I've lost more discs to theft than anything else, by a large margin.
    1718627440 · 1790944159 · focus · HN ↗
    I think commercially sold disks are not burned, but stamped from a master copy or something.
    theandrewbailey · 1790945168 · focus · HN ↗
    > edit: 35 year old cds is 1995
    35 years ago is 1991. Don't try to age me faster than I'm already going!
    pmontra · 1790970071 · focus · HN ↗
    CDRW is a totally different technology that happens (by design) to be compatible with the same reader. CDs are moulded, much like the box that holds them. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_disc_manufacturing" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_disc_manufacturing
    TFNA · 1790945059 · focus · HN ↗
    Not only are CDs the backup, but in some genres like classical music, the liner notes have some exclusive information that never made it to the web. I rarely take a CD down from the shelves where they now serve as mere room decor, but when I do, I often learn something new.
    Hoodedcrow · 1791132391 · focus · HN ↗
    For backup, I'd rather do a 3-2-1 together with my other important data, it's not like CDs are the best for general backup anyway.
2. Dreami · 1790939420 · focus · HN ↗
  I have a huge collection (100-200) of CDs from a relative that I would like to store the same way. Can you explain your setup?
  1. pkthunder · 1790940236 · focus · HN ↗
    I’d love to. I’m working off memory right now, but it’s nothing fancy.
    I’ve got abcde[0] set up to handle the digitizing, navidrome[1] is set up to serve the content from a home lab server/NAS over Subsonic[2].
    Play:Sub[3] is an iOS application that works with Subsonic. Just an audio receiver at this point, the app lets me “just play something” which is quite nice. Can “play a random album” for example.
    Tailscale just enables this off-LAN.
    Happy to give more info if you need!
    [0] <a href="https://linux.die.net/man/1/abcde" rel="nofollow">https://linux.die.net/man/1/abcde
    [1] <a href="https://www.navidrome.org/" rel="nofollow">https://www.navidrome.org/
    [2] <a href="https://www.subsonic.org/" rel="nofollow">https://www.subsonic.org/
    [3] <a href="https://michaelsapps.dk/playsubapp/" rel="nofollow">https://michaelsapps.dk/playsubapp/
    Dreami · 1790950793 · focus · HN ↗
    Thanks a lot! Did you do this sequentially with each CD, or did you have any concurrency with multiple drives?
    pkthunder · 1790950896 · focus · HN ↗
    Definitely did it sequentially with a single CD drive. I'm sitting on maybe 100 albums, max. It takes ~15min per album to process, which pulls in song metadata, lyrics (synced, if possible), album art, etc.
3. frameset · 1790939862 · focus · HN ↗
  Last.fm is still around. Some Navidrome clients work with it, and it can point you to artists you might like.
  1. pkthunder · 1790940279 · focus · HN ↗
    Love it, but honestly I’m trying to decouple from services like this.
    Although, it’s not a critical-path item..
    anticorporate · 1790940583 · focus · HN ↗
    <a href="https://listenbrainz.org/" rel="nofollow">https://listenbrainz.org/ is an open source alternative to Last.fm that I can confirm works with Navidrome. You can also self host it if you would prefer to keep your listen history private.
    pkthunder · 1790940723 · focus · HN ↗
    Love love love to see this, thank you for making my day!
    notpushkin · 1790942556 · focus · HN ↗
    > You can also self host it if you would prefer to keep your listen history private.
    On the other hand, if you don’t mind making it public it would help train open source recommendation algorithms :-) <a href="https://listenbrainz.org/about/#:~:text=Roadmap" rel="nofollow">https://listenbrainz.org/about/#:~:text=Roadmap
  2. jim180 · 1790945098 · focus · HN ↗
    and btw they recently went independent!
4. alin23 · 1790940916 · focus · HN ↗
  I got myself an iPod Nano recently and love curating my songs to fit the 8GB [0]
  But I have the same problem of trying to find recommendations. Whenever I talk about music with my brother and friends, that's when I discover the best music, but that happens rarely nowadays.
  So with the help of Claude, I've revived my 10 year old project on finding music based on Spotify tracks and liked songs: <a href="https://noiseblend.com" rel="nofollow">https://noiseblend.com
  Completely free, haven't shared it much because it's more of a personal thing than something I want public. But maybe it comes in handy for some people here.
  [0] <a href="https://files.alinpanaitiu.com/ipod-nano.mp4" rel="nofollow">https://files.alinpanaitiu.com/ipod-nano.mp4
  1. pkthunder · 1790941229 · focus · HN ↗
    Took a quick look at Noiseblend, seems nice! Will play around a bit more with it when I’m actually at a computer, but I find that I end up getting into a downward spiral of recommendations (not from yours - just in general) that reinforces what I listen to, versus expanding based on what I listen to.
    I listen to a good amount of underground hip hop/backpack rap kind of stuff and I find that so many recommendation systems just recommend what I already listen to.
    Oddly enough, I randomly asked Claude one day and got three novel album recommendations that no other service really gave me :shrug:
    alin23 · 1790941636 · focus · HN ↗
    Oh tell me about it, it's so hard to expand into other genres using online services.. Noiseblend is no better at it since it relies on the same data.
    I mean, in its 30-50 recommended albums, one might be just the one I might be looking for, but how am I going to find it? Am I supposed to sit through 29 albums I don't really like, just to find that?
    That's why friends are the best here, they act like impromptu curators :)
    But on some occasions, I find Noiseblend useful when I hear a song at a cafe or restaurant or some friends' place, "shazam" it, then put it through Noiseblend and get dropped into a musical area I might have never looked into otherwise.
    pkthunder · 1790941964 · focus · HN ↗
    Really wasn’t a knock on NB - don’t worry hehe. I’m at least glad it gave me what I expected. I listen to a good amount of stuff like Aesop Rock and you tend to just get a bunch of his own stuff back, generally.
  2. showsover · 1790941263 · focus · HN ↗
    Nice website and functionality!
    I would love a way to create a playlist from the related songs it found if that is possible!
    alin23 · 1790941339 · focus · HN ↗
    Thanks! sure, if you click to open in the Spotify app or webapp, it will open a created playlist with those songs. You will need to connect your Spotify account for that though.
  3. swozey · 1790942320 · focus · HN ↗
    I use spotify for convenience and social sake, my friends use it and its been the best mobile/android auto/desktop sync app but it's well known for not having literally the best albums/songs/eps/whatever that they can't monetize or license for whatever reason so you might want to expand your app to look at spotify for recs but factor in that even someone huge like mac miller has a ton of music not on spotify that a real fan would side-eye you for not knowing on a recommendation list.
    There is so much early career music for artists you can't find on spotify that it gives people who only learned the artist from spotify a curated history of the artist.
    Spotify is the disney land walled garden music app and right now Ella Langley is Minnie Mouse.
    When you go camping or kayaking you can tell all the people using spotify, their playlists all blend into the same algo topping songs at some point. At this point I wouldn't be surprised if they factor in how much music is cached near the cell tower at the lake I'm parked on right now to maximize profits and limit their bandwidth costs. Let's keep that Zac Brown Band pumping near the boat ramp and feed it to everyone who probably likes it anyway.
    alin23 · 1790942637 · focus · HN ↗
    Yep, I'm aware of that, I listen to a lot of live small room concerts of Jason Mraz for example, which aren't even on Youtube, I mostly get them from fan uploads on archive.org.
    I mostly use Noiseblend to find such artists, or albums, and then I expand my search manually through Youtube, fan forums, archives. It would be a pain to try to integrate that into a web app.
  4. criddell · 1790942467 · focus · HN ↗
    > But I have the same problem of trying to find recommendations.
    If you're buying music semi-regularly then the people at the record store are probably starting to recognize you and what you like and will probably be happy to recommendation stuff.
  5. raddan · 1790961359 · focus · HN ↗
    I suspect that the iPod nano is somewhat un-hackable, but the iPod mini and earlier models actually had physical mini EIDE spinning disks in them. The interface was electrically identical (or close enough) to CompactFlash cards that a little service I ran on the side for beer money was upgrading people’s iPods to CF. Nowadays you can get absolutely gargantuan CF cards. I put a 256GB CF card in my iPod mini and the firmware, to my surprise, had no trouble recognizing the capacity. I also personally love that form factor, but obviously, different strokes for different folks.
    I do appreciate that you said that you enjoy curating your 8GB but I got tired with that way back in 2003 when I bought my first iPod. I never want to go back to that.
5. komali2 · 1790942431 · focus · HN ↗
  > I do wish I could figure out some sort of recommendation system to find new magic, though. Obviously not to steam new/unowned songs, just to point me in a direction next time I go to the store.
  Navidrome can scrobble to <a href="https://listenbrainz.org/" rel="nofollow">https://listenbrainz.org/ which has a recommendations mechanism
  Or set up "soulsync" and just use the library scanning, scrobbling, and recommendations / artist watching features if you don't want to pirate the music as well.
6. this_user · 1790943331 · focus · HN ↗
  And how many CDs can you buy per month for the price of a Spotify subscription? I am not going to be spending hundreds of Euros per month on physical media, and I also value my time too much to bother with ripping and converting these, just so I can end up with a worse experience for more money, while also producing a bunch of unnecessary plastic rubbish.
  1. flyinghamster · 1790943647 · focus · HN ↗
    After ten years of Spotify subscriptions, you own nothing. Put that $12.99 or more per month into discs instead, and you'd have quite a nice music collection that's still yours ten years later.
    pkthunder · 1790944885 · focus · HN ↗
    Local used CD store sells albums for 7USD - could even get two a month and put money away on months you don’t want to buy anything.
    zen928 · 1790963188 · focus · HN ↗
    You dont own those either. If you lose your copy, it's gone forever with no remediation or claim of ownership except at the specific retailer you did your transaction at. The source where it came from is unaffected by your loss, and they can decide at any time to stop selling their discs with or without your involvement. The nostalgic rose tinted pandering behind vinyls and old media conveniently forgets the introduction of digital storage to actually ensure reliable redundancy, and so "buying" physical media is just a smoke and mirrors way of saying the disc is for vain aesthetics while the actual mental relief comes from the secondary process being able to digitize it locally.
    Following the same mindset of circumventing the traditional process, I could spend one single month ripping every single song I possibly can from Spotify and have the same claim of ownership over their files that you do with a much larger variety and without all the wasted physical space on assets that are immediately digitized. The only benefit to your method is that you feel like it justifies hoarding.
    ndriscoll · 1790967533 · focus · HN ↗
    Presumably people also have some sense of fair exchange when buying the disc to rip vs. ripping from Spotify. If you want to be strictly rational you can of course skip the Spotify part too and just pirate it.
  2. ndriscoll · 1790943738 · focus · HN ↗
    At least for a family plan ($22/mo), around 2-20 or so depending on the CD. That accumulates pretty quickly, and of course you don't have to worry about limitations like living at the same address.
  3. 10729287 · 1790943812 · focus · HN ↗
    This may be the main difference between consuming content and listening to music. For some people, more is not always better and the process of building a collection and putting time and energy into it is a big part of the experience.
    pkthunder · 1790944180 · focus · HN ↗
    Yep - I’ve noticed I’ve stopped “having music playing” and I’ve more started “listening to the music” if that makes sense.
  4. 1718627440 · 1790944010 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't understand myself, what you actually gain from constantly buying new music. Either the music is good, or it's not. If it's not it's not a loss to not buy it, and if it is it's not going to stop invoking the emotions you like it for, or intellectually demand you. You can hear the same music for hundred of times and still discover some new aspect, instrument, melody or sound, you haven't noticed yet. (if it is good)
    If I would try to chase, constantly, new music, I wouldn't be able to actually listen to anything, and thus wouldn't enjoy anything at all.
    (The only thing that makes sense to me, if people want to be like their peers and up to trends, so simply "listen" to new music to be able to talk like they now what's en vogue right now. But then it's hardly about the music itself and more like collecting an evergrowing checklist.)
7. flyinghamster · 1790944648 · focus · HN ↗
  I'm far less ambitious, but I ripped my entire 100+-disc collection to FLAC years ago. I've set up a mutant shell script/Makefile hybrid that can transcode the entire FLAC tree to whatever format du jour makes sense (Opus these days), while doing it all in parallel and using all cores (really all but one to keep the system responsive). Album art in the FLACs gets carried over along with tags.
  On the LAN, the FLACs just sit in an NFS share, while on the phone, Foobar2000 works nicely with the Opus files.

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