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What I do personally is get any music I want from soulseek and then sync my music directory across devices with syncthing. Although I'm planning on renting a vps to put my music on at some point as it's taking up quite a lot of my phone storage now.
On desktop I like to use mpd with ncmpcpp. On Android(/GrapheneOS) I'm using Metro as my music player.
@clark@midwest.social wrote:
Where should I store the music?
I just store it in the music folder of every device I own. I have a 1 TB hard drive on my PC and my phone has 128 GB of internal storage, with an SD card slot.
I haven't any clue about self-hosting. I'm running GrapheneOS, is it enough to save the songs in Files and play in an app like Auxio? Maybe sync with SyncThing?
Yes. Any music player will generally prompt you to scan for your files upon first opening.
Edit: didn't notice your first question. Well, I just get them from everywhere, lol. If you have a tracker that you use for anything, be sure that there will be some music there. If you cannot find it, then just refer to the FMHY's list of various tools to download music from just about anywhere: Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud you name it. I also buy music from Bandcamp as it supports downloading it directly for an unlimited amount of times and in any of the most popular formats, or just go to the band's concert and buy their album directly. This way you're also supporting the artists directly with your money (if you care about it).
It's really too bad Pixel phones don't have an SD slot.
@clark Ugh. You could probably get away with multiple cloud storage services then, and mapping their folders to the music player of your choice. Also, use file types that are generally smaller in size for storing music (like opus or ogg). For cloud services, use the ones whose apps support Storage Access Framework so they can appear in the default Android File Manager / File Picker thing (you can also use something like Round Sync to access them all, and it does all the job for you). If you're willing to pay for cloud storage, then one single provider with 100-200 GB can also be more than enough for your music needs if you own more than just a few songs.
Then you can add the folders in your music player settings.
Edit: Don't forget to also backup your music somewhere in case something happens with your phone or your cloud provider(s)
This guide I wrote about downloading and tagging might help you :) https://mander.xyz/post/13720820
This seems really complicated for a beginner like me (': is there no online tool that can download my playlists in bulk with relatively accurate metadata? It seems deemix and soulseek require accounts which I'm not too keen about, but I really don't know anything about this so I might just be spouting silly speculations.
Aw, I understand ~50.000words can be overwhelming.😅
Hm, I dont know if there's anything better than the tools I talk about. This guide is a bit too compicated and long, so I'll try to re-word it, hoping you can now follow it:
Soulseek: You just use a username and a password. No emails or anything. Search and download.
Deemix: You dont need to have a personal deemix account. You can find on some doubious sites "arls" for accounts. Arl is like the user token. They are long alphanumeric strings which essentially are used instead of username+password. You can simply find one online and put it in deezer. (You can try arls found here: https://www.arldeemix.com/2024/05/arl-deemix.html?m=1 )
To use it with spotify (like downloading a spotify playlist in deemix), its kinda more complex. You can see the steps from this post on reddit here:
https://developer.spotify.com/dashboard/ log in, create an app, go into app, click show client secret under apps title, paste it into deemix along with clientid
I suggest deemix because you can get very high quality music (in batches too) and it's open source.
Lastly, if you simply want to get stuff from youtube without account and such:
ytDownloader acts as a gui for yt-dpl (open source, PC).
Seal acts as a gui for yt-dpl (open source, Android).
Almost certainly there are websites that may use yt-dlp and can download playlists though.
So I did the deemix thing and the Spotify app thing. Unfortunately I can't find my own playlists in Favourites, only somebody else's. Know the issue?
Oh nice, you're very close. What you see, are the Deezer playlists of the account the arl corresponds to. For your spotify playlists, go to spotify, press the share button on your playlist, get the link to your playlist (the url), paste it in the search bar in deemix and press enter. It will automatically fetch and download the whole playlist.
(The next "level" would be to go back to my big guide, in the deemix settings section and customize it to your liking.)
I went back to your guide and adjusted some deemix settings. Is there something I should adjust in "folders/track titles" sections, since you didn't mention them, or is it fine to leave them be? Also, why download in flac and not mp3?
If I dont mention them, it probably means I left them at their default settings, but each one has their own system so feel free to change them if it suits you better.
I download in flac because I want to have them at ~the highest possible quality (ripping CDs or finding each song infividually in various sources and comparing them might provide a better quality, but thats too much of a hassle) and I compress them to .opus format at 128kbit to copy them on my phone. Thus, I keep one flac collection and a cloned, compressed version of it in opus.
Near the ⅘ of my guide I think I describe how to compress files with fre:ac and which app (symphony on fdroid) handles well opus files. I had some frustration with how hard it is for apps to recognise song tags, especially multiple song tags (like 2 artists in a song). If you encounter such an issue, use a different separator other than \\, like ;.
The rabbit hole can get a bit deep quickly.
Have fun :)
Thanks for your help! Will definitely continue following your guide.
However, I've already stumbled upon a few issues. First, my computer can't seem to locate the deemix music folder that I supposedly created when I installed the application. Nowhere to be seen. Not sure what to do about it, maybe I installed the wrong version?
Furthermore, the playlists I have downloaded state the following errors: "cannot read properties of undefined" and "no such file or directory"...
First, my computer can't seem to locate the deemix music folder that I supposedly created when I installed the application. Nowhere to be seen. Not sure what to do about it, maybe I installed the wrong version?
Hm, I suppose you talk about the folder where your music is downloaded. Thats a bit weird, mine saves it in C:\...\user\Music\deemix Music\
I also suppose you downloaded deemix from the link I provided in my guide, which I think is where I downloaded it too (plus deemix doesnt get updated anymore), so I dont think you got the wrong version. For the record, mine is 2022.12.14-r222.5d447b6035.
Furthermore, the playlists I have downloaded state the following errors: "cannot read properties of undefined" and "no such file or directory"...
I dont think I've encountered that issue either, maybe it's because it cant locate the files in the lost folder you talked about before.
I'd suggest you create another folder woth your file explorer, set deemix to download there and retry. I'd also suggest to first test it by downloading a single song (just type anything in the search bar) before downloadig a whole playlist to not waste time
It worked now! Super thanks. <3
Ayy, arrr, glad you made it:)
Oops, too early to cheer... looks like I can only download individual songs seamlessly, but when I try the playlists the "cannot read properties of undefined" error keeps popping up. Ugh, I'm so close to the finish line, why's there always a hinder. (':
Hang on, I have some ideas
(Maybe either theres a mistake in the way you connected spotify or some issue with the links. I'll do some tests and report back.)
So, I did some tests. Apparently you can download individual songs with spotify links, but it can no longer download spotify playlists. I think spotify possibly changed their api recently, breaking deemix... I had used it in the past to batch download ~3k songs..
I used this reddit post to create the spotify app, but there's probably an issue with the api.
Ugh... thats an issue.. I might create a post about that on the community tomorrow or today (its getting late)..
I feel like I wasted your time too🫤
If I get any updates I'll try to let you know.
Hey again! Just a random question.
Is it okay to skip the tagging steps in your guide? My school computer won't allow me to download the mp3tag application, and I wonder if these tagging steps are necessary or will mess anything up if skipped? I downloaded some songs to my phone and most metadata and lyrics are there, and that's fine with me. Does not completing the guide make me miss out on anything important (such as metadata or syncing the files)?
Deemix fetches a lot of metadata and they are kinda accurate. If the tags appear properly on your devices you probably dont have to care much more. Besides, you can do it in the future if your needs change. Thus, I think you can skip it.
As to why I do it:
Deezer and any platform may have lacking info, so what I try to do is kinda merge tags from various sources in a way that I get ~the most and best info. Unfortunately (or fortunately) there is no standard way of tagging or at least ~noone uses it (I think flac and opus have some general tagging guidances, but many times they are ignored), so I tried to make my way of organizing the mess.
Another reason is that if you have proper tags, you (almost) no longer need to create playlists (which are hard to move across devices). I also came up with the idea of adding a custom genre to the genre tags of songs. For example, I add the [F@vourites] genre tag to my favourite songs and I can simply select to play all songs under the [F@vourites] genre, bypassing the need of playlists.
I just find it neat (but probably breaks the standard even more), lol. (And it's a good way to unconsciously distract myself from my responsibilities.)
Do you think it would be fine for me to download all songs and then wait until I'm able to download the tagging applications, or does everything need to happen in one go for everything to sync? I'm thinking waiting about a year (when I buy a new computer) and then use the apps to tag my songs, or will I still need the data from deemix?
Do you think it would be fine for me to download all songs and then wait until I'm able to download the tagging applications
Yes, I think that's what I would do. Downloading from deemix and tagging in other programs are separate processes, so you can do them separately at different times.
I'd probably even encourage to download them now, because as you can see, deemix doesnt get updated anymore and things start to break.
It also gives you time to revise your methods of downloading and tagging. (For example, I started downloading my songs from a website, one by one, until I found deemix (that website got shut down soon after, rip).)
So, no need to do them simultaneously. Download them now and tag them next year or whenever you can. You can afterwards simply sync the ("properly") tagged files to your other devices and have the metadata everywhere.
Thank you so much for your help! So excited to finally begin the journey of owning my music.
owning my music
Thats the spirit! Lets goo
Just to be clear, because some metadata is missing such as year released, tagging and such can all be solved in the other applications? Deemix is solely used for download?
In the tags section in settings you can tell deemix to download tags along with the songs. It does a rather good job as it fetches data from deezer. Is the year missing from every song? On my setup, it automatically downloads the date (or only the year) of almost all the songs I download with deemix (some obscure songs may not have a proper date). Deemix should do a good job and download around 70% (this is an abstract percentage) of the tags you may need.
Once you download the songs from deemix, you should probably not need to use deemix again.
Tagging afterwards should fix many of the missing or incorrect metadata (obsucre songs may have lower success rates). In my guide, I even have the code for a python script I made, which I use to download the dates of songs from genius (the site with the lyrics). (I think it was my first time coding in python, lol.)
PS. It's getting late, so I'll probably be off for some time.
Hm, unfortunately all songs are listed as Unknown Year, and the genres are very scattered and inaccurate. I've ticked all the tag boxes already. So long as I can solve this with the tagging applications, I shouldn't have to redownload everything, or?
So long as I can solve this with the tagging applications, I shouldn't have to redownload everything, or?
Yes. As long as the title and the artists tags (not the filename) of the song are correct (in many cases not even these have to be correct, because there's an option to auto-scan songs with Shazam in my process), my process should be able to work without redownloading anything.
songs are listed as Unknown Year
Thats a bit weird, may I ask:
How do you view the metadata? Some apps may have trouble reading metadata.
Do you download them in flac or mp3?
Could you share a song so that I try to download it myself to check if this only happens to you?
I just downloaded a random song and I can see the date under the YEAR tag. Also if I right-click it on file explorer and go to details, I can see under the "date released" the date of the song.
(Btw, the genious script I use, as I have told you somewhere, fixes the dates, high very high accuracy. Im pulling the dates from genius, because deezer, spotify etc. for some reason seem to use the date they were added to the platform as the date of release and it bothered me a lot.)
genres are very scattered and inaccurate
Yeah.. Genres is probably the hardest to get it right, even after all the automation in my process, there have been times I manually edited the genres. Bandcamp is a good source of genres, so I try to draw genres from there, but still the automation fails some times and have to manually edit them with mp3tag (genious is a good source too).
I can't view the metadata on my phone, just on my computer. As an example I'm viewing the song "Crown of Thorns" by Black Veil Brides. It is a FLAC file (as per the settings), and on my computer I can see the date released, artist, album, genre, track number, file size... so I don't know why this info doesn't translate to the music player on my phone (Gramophone). Maybe it's because I haven't gone through with the tagging process yet? In which case that's understandable.
Also, some songs failed to download from deemix, but their .lrc files still downloaded. Can I transfer these .lrc files to my phone (along with the other downloaded songs), or must the FLAC and LRC files be downloaded as a pair for the metadata to be synced with the right song?
Ok, I did some tests:
For some reason, many mobile apps (like Gramophone, or Symphony which I use) cant read the tags properly.
a) Both apps cant separate tags that use \\ as separator for some reason. Gramophone doesnt have an option to choose a tag separator. Symphony has an option, but doesnt work with \\. (To fix this you have some options; What I do is have a separate cloned compressed .opus music collection that uses ; as separator and to do this I use mp3tag and fre:ac. You can do this in the future.)
b) Both apps in the Year tag expect to only see 4 digits (of the year). We have set deemix to store the whole date in that tag, so they fail to read it. You can either go in deemix to settings, under date format for flac files and choose YYYY (which loses accuracy) or use mp3tag and manipulate the tags so that you have both the year and the date in separate fields. Another option is to use Phonograph plus which can read properly the whole date.
c) Apparently, no (open source) mobile app can read tags separated by \\ properly and as a result, they either combine all the tags into one (they might read the genre tags Glam Rock and Punk Rock as a single genre Glam Rock\\Punk Rock) or they read only the first of the tag (on our previous example they would read only one genre Glam Rock). I think Vlc does the latter. It's frustrating, I know...
As long as the .lrc file has the same name as the .flac file and they are in the same folder, the app should be able to read the lrc file as the lyrics of the flac file. (Though if there's anything wrong in the way the contents of the .lrc file are structured, it might have a hard time reading it.)
Well, at least now I know the issue isn't on my end, so that's a relief. I'm fine with how things are right now, it's all very scattered but I can create a playlist of my favourites to make it easier. Besides, once I get to the tagging part of your guide I imagine things will get much more accurate. I've downloaded all of my 1000 songs now so I think I'll delete my Spotify account and leave the world of streaming (music) behind. (:
Oh youre gonna do the big jump, good luck with that😄
PS. If you care about your spotify listening history there is a way to get your listening records in your email (takes about a month tho). And about music discovery there's Innertune (the forked version is better) which uses yt music without an account or Listenbrainz which can help you find songs and artists/bands.
You persisted despite the struggles and you made it, well done!
You didn't waste my time. This experiment kick-started my process of finally downloading my music, even if it didn't work out completely. Not yours or anybody else's fault anyway. (: Do feel free to update me!
I’m always curious why people do this. Music is the one item where it’s easier to just sub to something like Apple Music… literally $110/yr for all the music that exists. They gave us the solution we asked for and it’s super-cheap.
I pirate the shit out of movies and tv since those guys are gouging me, but musicians barely get by in the streaming era.
Hopefully this triggers nobody. I’m making no judgements.
it’s easier to just sub to something like Apple Music… literally $110/yr for all the music that exists.
As others have stated, not all music exists on every streaming platform. That alone is enough of a reason for me. I recently canceled my longtime Spotify subscription because the price kept increasing while my library kept decreasing. I actually don’t pirate music when I can help it because I’d rather support artists on Bandcamp or purchasing physical media directly. If I can’t do that then I head to Soulseek!
Spotify is terrible, but you seem to be saying that since none of these have every single album, you’ve chosen to pirate it all? Not sure if that was the reason.
I shouldn’t have said “all the music that exists,” more like “an overwhelming majority of existing music.”
As stated, my reason is that I was paying Spotify more money for less music and I was unhappy with that. You pointed out yourself that musicians barely get by in the streaming era so I would rather support them on Bandcamp (I know it has it’s own issues) or buying physical media whenever possible rather than pirating. Streaming platforms may make music you want to listen to seemingly affordable and accessible but that’s not the case for everyone. This is my personal experience.
Hush now, sweet summer child. I don’t mind that you’re putting musicians out onto the street.