I have a folder of MP3s, some of which date back to 1999, just a few years after the format was popularised. Most of them have utterly terrible names (think RIDEONAM.MP3). I think at this point they might even survive the heat death of the universe. And they’ll still be terribly-organised.

  • lichtmetzger@discuss.tchncs.de
    31·
    6 months ago

    I find music on YouTube and autoconvert it to MP3 with yt-dlp and ffmpeg. It fetches new music from my personal “Favorite Music” playlist, downloads the highest quality audio source, converts it to MP3, embeds the metadata and cover art and tries to parse the artist and title as best as possible.

    yt-dlp -x -f bestaudio --audio-quality 0 --audio-format mp3 --embed-thumbnail --add-metadata --metadata-from-title "%(artist)s - %(title)s" --playlist-start 1 --playlist-end 999 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=123abc -o "./files/%(artist)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s" --cookies-from-browser

    Needs minimal adjustment sometimes if the title format is weird, but works 95% automatic. What I like most about this is the fact that music vanishes all the time from YouTube, but it doesn’t affect me. No one deletes the files from my harddrive but me.

  • Quazatron@lemmy.world
    221·
    6 months ago

    You’ll find that MusicBrainz Picard is a heaven sent tool to properly tag your files, with optional proper renaming.

    It takes some getting used to, and I find it works best in whole albums, but produces a much more professional library.

    • darkreader2636@lemmy.zip
      2·
      6 months ago

      Picard sometimes falls short on cover arts and track names of some niche or non-english albums because of that mp3tag with discogs is sometimes needed

    • ggtdbz@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      1·
      6 months ago

      Oh I’ve been looking for something like this for a long time. I wonder how this integrates into something like Jellyfin if I want to host my own personal music streaming for myself.

      • Quazatron@lemmy.world
        3·
        6 months ago

        I use Jellyfin also.

        My workflow is like this: buy CDs from Discogs, rip them to FLAC, adjust filenames, covers and metadata with Picard, push the files to Jellyfin that promptly detects the new files.

        I also use Soundconverter in Linux to generate MP3s files for devices that don’t support FLAC.

        I’m very happy with this setup and my collection has never been so organized.

      • AnExerciseInFalling@programming.dev
        2·
        6 months ago

        In addition to autorenaming Picard can also auto organize into folders. So any time I buy new music, I run it through Picard to ensure metadata is correct, grab lyrics, and put it in the right folder that is then picked up by my self hosted navidrome

        • DarkSirrush@lemmy.ca
          4·
          6 months ago

          Picard is literally the only Jellyfin related tool I use that isn’t fully automated, because somehow the automated versions I could find were doing things like renaming files on a 60% confidence of the filename and I had to nuke and re download my library.

          So instead I open Picard, click 6 whole buttons, and my entire library/new files are renamed, tagged, and sorted 100% accurately.

  • SuperSpruce@lemmy.zip
    13·
    6 months ago

    I still use mp3s because:

    1. No financial cost
    2. Not tied to any one app or service
    3. More customization: Can be played back at any speed or modified in some other way
    • mojofrododojo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      81·
      6 months ago

      no fucking commercials or streaming bullshit.

      ZERO FUCKING DOLLARS GOES TO JOE FUCKHEAD ROGAN.

      that’s enough justification for mp3 imho

  • Noxy@pawb.socialEnglish
    8·
    6 months ago

    hey now, they’re flac files and painstakingly sorted with the help of musicbrainz picard

  • Hadriscus@jlai.lu
    7·
    6 months ago

    My man, I’ve been putting off sorting that shit for twenty years now. In the meantime I’ve circled back to CDs !

  • Apocalypteroid@lemmy.org
    7·
    6 months ago

    I’m old enough to be one of Napster’s early adopters. Unfortunately most of my collection has been lost to either malfunction or negligence but due to most of the major streamers being fucking evil I’m back sailing the musical seven seas. And plus my internet is about 100x faster now so yohoho mehearties.

    • cujo255@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      6 months ago

      I was dipping my toes back in the seas earlier today, but did not find a good option, is there one you like for music other than rutracker which appears very sketch and needs an account?

      • Apocalypteroid@lemmy.org
        2·
        6 months ago

        Unfortunately, the fish aren’t as plentyful as they were back in the good ol’ days but I’m still finding most of what I want on pirate bay or 1337X. It’s just a case of finding the option with the most reliable seeds.

      • tehn00bi@lemmy.world
        1·
        6 months ago

        Aren’t private trackers the best method? But good luck getting an invite to them.

        Side note, if someone has connections, I’m interested.

  • dinckel@lemmy.world
    7·
    6 months ago

    We’ve evolved towards a software-managed autotagged library of lossless audio now, but yeah, pretty much.

    I just had a chat with my friends about how the family plan price went up 30% while the basic functionality doesnt fucking work half the time

    • Lonewolfmcquade@lemmy.world
      1·
      6 months ago

      Amen. Glad to hear I’m not the only one baffled that Spotify’s app development is total garbage. It is one app that doesn’t get updated ever - once I have a working version. If it were up to me, I’d happily never use it again

  • abbiistabbii@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    5·
    6 months ago

    left spotify and started downloading all my music from [COMPLETELY LEGAL AVENUES] and bandcamp. It’s good to have music that Spotify cannot take away from me.

    • tired_n_bored@lemmy.world
      1·
      6 months ago

      I download music from YouTube. Are the “completely legal avenues” better than that? In that case can you provide links in DM so I make sure to block these domains and to promptly inform the authorities? Thank you.

    • kadu@lemmy.world
      1·
      6 months ago

      I have a happy middle ground:

      I pay for Tidal’s student subscription. I leverage the fact Tidal streams FLAC files that can be decrypted by your account to build my local collection.

      So I never actually stream or use their app, but technically am paying for the downloads.

      I tried buying FLACs from companies that actually wanted to sell FLACs but they have ridiculously bad catalogues.

        • kadu@lemmy.world
          1·
          6 months ago

          Yep, they’re regular FLAC files with tagged metadata.

          You can use them as normal. Copy to another device, to an iPod, use them on a video editor, send to a friend.

          This has been going on for ages, Tidal never patched it, so I think they quietly are okay with it because not many users do it anyway and at least you’re paying for the service.

        • kadu@lemmy.world
          3·
          6 months ago

          I think any links would violate Lemmy.world’s policies.

          But a quick search for “Tidal downloader github” will give you several options.

          But the ides is that when Tidal streams to specific devices they basically upload an encrypted FLAC to an AWS host and the device downloads the file and uses your account as the key.

          So people create apps that do all that, but instead of simply streaming the FLAC, they download and save it. They require a paid account, or an active free trial. I pay for the discounted student one, which still gives you access to the maximum audio quality.

          The great part is you get album art, live lyrics, high resolution audio, an organized and properly tagged library with zero work. The output FLACs are regular files - no DRM or weirdness, I use them on a MP3 player.

          • SidewaysHighways@lemmy.world
            1·
            6 months ago

            i gave it a cursory duckduckgo! everything looked a couple years old. I’ll keep digging.

            i wouldn’t mind a dm! if you’ve the time.

            • kadu@lemmy.world
              2·
              6 months ago

              You want a new generation tidal downloader.

              On GitHub.

              So a Tidal downloader new generation.

              One could call such a thing tidal-dl-ng if they’re trying to save some letters, I guess.

  • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    5·
    6 months ago

    Yeah I’ve been in that same boat. My music collection is made up of stuff I stole off Limewire, ripped compilation CDs, soundtracks, stuff I recorded off the radio…most are mp3, I’ve only started using FLAC last year, ID3 or other metadata stuff is completely inconsistent or missing.

    There are services that will identify the track based on examining the audio and provide data for it. I used a piece of Linux software called EasyTag for that purpose.

    • burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de
      2·
      6 months ago

      I was telling someone just yesterday about limewire when one of my playlists popped up the song I had downloaded 22 years ago.

      I may have to try easytag instead of manually searching, right clicking, adding the data to the properties tab.

  • toddestan@lemmy.world
    5·
    6 months ago

    I’ve got a directory like that on my computer, nested under a couple of /old_computer directories. At some point in the early 2000’s I switched to a system of (still not so well named) full albums as hard drive sizes increased and internet connections got faster, leaving the old original directory of one-offs from the dialup days to wither.

    My favorite part is the New Music directory where I stick new stuff I obtain until I give it a listen to it make sure that 1) it’s something I actually want to keep and 2) whether there is any quality issues with the encoding. There’s stuff in there with timestamps from like 2002. Yeah, I’m still planning to check that out…someday…

    • wookiepedia@lemmy.world
      5·
      6 months ago

      /media/zfspool1/music/new/new/frommurray2008/

      It’s half a terabyte and I’ve found all sorts of shit in there, but I doubt I’ll ever get it organized. I mocks me in defiance.