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. 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.

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