Spotifies come and Spotifies go, but that folder of badly-sorted MP3s will still be there in the 2050s.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
For Linux there's puddletag, which is very similar to mp3tag
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.
I want to marry you.
Pro tip, make sure the browser you're copying the cookies of isn't logged in. Otherwise they may ban you sooner or later.
Is there a good guide to passing cookies to yt-dlp? Its one of those things I've been meaning to learn but never quite got around to yet...
I've been doing something similar but but very basic. I didn't know you could also add thumbnails and metadata! Mind = blown..
I will change my old ways ASAP. A new era begins!
TYVM
I have just been downloading as it is with yt-dlp -x (created an alias so I just type dl) and then rename and sort the files manually as I find stuff is so often in different naming formats
Doing God's work
That can be fixed easily with programs like beets
= the program itself is easy to use, but installing and configuring it, requires a PhD in Linux-Arch-ology
No I'm sure there will be an obscure shell script that someone wrote to do all of the install for you that will suddenly fail on a broken python dependency (because why not) and then leave your system in semi-altered state that doesnt really work wrong but its never quite right again
Musicbrainz Picard is a lot easier than beets, although it does require some introductory concepts to make sense (e.g. terminology like “release”, “release group”). And it makes it too easy to accidentally poison datasets in an attempt to be helpful. Harder to automate than beets, too.
Both of them also benefit from a decent knowledge of where your files came from, not as good for a random pile of mp3s.
Picard is very manual, I fucking love it though
I used MusicBrainz Picard when I stopped paying for Spotify. Went over my old library, audio tag matched all my songs, added all metadata, sorted everything. I moved it to Nextcloud and using the Music Player plugin, I have my own Spotify using any supersonic/ampache client. Life is good.
I fucking love beets
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.
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.
hey now, they're flac files and painstakingly sorted with the help of musicbrainz picard
I have that too! I also have that one folder of random shit that I've avoided sorting for the last 20 years.
I also have that one folder of random shit that I’ve avoided sorting for the last 20 years.
pff I have so many folders like that that I have folders for those kinds of folders. I should probably put those folders all into a single folder..
Check out beets.
Nah, it has very much been replaced with properly sorted .flac files. What ever is left is stuff I don't listen to anymore.
I really want to go this route. Had Spotify, tempted to get Tidal but I don't want to deal with content coming and going anymore. I have about 300 gigs of random MP3s, and Flac files. I want to obtain more and move over fully to flac. Any recommendations on making the transition back to locally stored music.
I'm currently making the move myself and I've had a really easy time with soundiiz.com and YouTube-dl with a Linux GUI. Basically soundiiz takes your playlist from one service and makes an identical one on another service. You move all your jams to YouTube and rip the audio out of them with youtube-dl. Here's a wikihow with the deets
I gave up on trying to sort my initial batch and just started replacing.
First I try to find a full discography of an artist by a solid release group (for example "PEMEDIA or "88"). With those you can just copy the entire folder into the artist directory and plex/jellyfin etc will perfectly detect it. Then just add new albums as they are released.
You can probably find a converter that will rip those files from Youtube for you. I did mine a year and a half ago. If I open Spotify it's just to see the playlists they made for me, because those are actually pretty good, but I rip those files and store them too.
File format has nothing to do with proper sorting. I've got 350k songs properly organized by artist, album, etc, but mp3. I've no need for flac.
My library is better organized than Spotify's database at this point.
You're missing the new albums from dead singers generated by the slop machine though.
And in my library I actually know what version I have not some 2018 “remix”.
Same with my movie library. I can have theatrical and directors or unrated extended version.
I still use mp3s because:
no fucking commercials or streaming bullshit.
ZERO FUCKING DOLLARS GOES TO JOE FUCKHEAD ROGAN.
that's enough justification for mp3 imho
Yeah forgot to mention the lack of ads and the reliable access anywhere part
Unless you're like me and your 25 years worth of mp3s was lost in a hard drive failure a couple of years back... 😢
o7 we all learn the backup rule one way or another.
thanks for the reminder to test mine!
Wanna know the funniest part? I have a bachelor and master of computer science! 🤣
Mine is included in my backup script, rsync to several other devices.
For me it was 10 years worth of mp3s in my pen drive
I had the perfect collection back then
Data loss is tragic, I feel for you
I can't possibly calculate how many hours I spent curating my music library. I don't use it anymore but you better bet that I still have it saved to the cloud and locally and it's there in case I need it.
Some of this stuff I downloaded off the original Napster.
I'm amazed you still have the old files. I was late for Napster but I downloaded loads of individual files from kazaa/limewire/frostwire and used them to burn CDs.
Only a few years later though I would get into torrenting and replace pretty much all those shitty old low bitrate files with 320kbps mp3 discographies.
Many years later after college when I finally had a little extra money I started buying all my favorite CDs I discovered from the previous meana and ripped them myself to ~1000 kbps FLAC and meticulously tagged and organized them into my current music collection.
CDs are unfortunately getting harder and harder to find and I've only very recently started torrenting a little again, and I prefer everything be FLAC but if it's not available I still do have some 320kbps mp3 left in the collection.
Everything I could find that was of higher quality, I downloaded over time. I have some bootlegs though along with some music I've found from no other sources. I'll never replace some of it, but that's fine.
I find it funny how we've resorted to streaming services in an age where you can put 256 gigabytes ono a pinky nail sized storage solution. Ereaders are even better, my old Kindle with 4gb of storage can hold an entire library.
Try Mp3tag
A wild Mp3tag mentioned!!
Remember you can always check out CDs from the library and rip them to your collection.
Spotify is the last subscription I have. I'm otherwise completely free of big tech.
The reason I can't let it go is because I actually would never find new music I like without it's algorithm. I've found such good music based off it's recommendations. I know I could still find these bands without a premium subscription. But, music is a big part of my life and I just don't want to faff around when trying to find some music I like. For the same reason I think I'd struggle to self host my music because it'd totally fail to work at the worst times no doubt
The reason I can't let it go is because I actually would never find new music I like without it's algorithm.
Have you tried just surfing bandcamp? I love discovering new shit there and my friends are like howd you find this!
You just too used to agorithms. I have zero issue finding new music without them to th point whwre i has to stop exporing new artists because i already listen to over 2000 artists without algos
Not unless you keep up with migrating your files. Drives fail over time.
Gotta have a good backup strategy for sure. I would've lost my collection a few times if I didn't have one.
Well surely you can just use a program to rename the files based on their properly maintained ID3 info?
This looks very promising.
My folder doesn't even have a consistent file format, almost nothing has that kind of data included.
I used Musicbrainz Picard to sort out my old library. I was honestly impressed with how much I could find all the data for, but it did need help for a lot of things.
True. Mine's already over 25 years old. Just keeps hopping from hard drive to hard drive.
This, except the same also applies to those with OCD tendencies who spent like 2,000 hours meticulously renaming and organizing file and folders. At times the archive has felt pointless but you're correct -- I should never get rid of it. Even besides the sunk cost fallacy aspect, it might actually turn out to be very valuable in the future. I don't listen to a ton of music anymore but I recently axed Spotify and started using Plexamp for when I do listen. I like Plexamp -- just needs a bit more polish to feel like a AAA app.
I have two directories. The original badly sorted one and the duplicate directory that I ran through some tagging software that failed to properly tag everything. Of course I was going to fix that and so I added things there that aren’t in the original directory so I have to keep both around.
IIRC, filenames/tags aren't included in a file checksum, only content, you could sort them that way to get rid of duplicates.
Precisely this situation is what's keeping me from just giving in and having the whole thing autotagged.
MusicBrainz Picard https://picard.musicbrainz.org/
I've used this to fix all my fucked up MP3 mess and it really helped a lot. Just make sure you change the input and output folders and let er rip!
It's free
I'll sort it next year. Or next computer. Or...
So will all my records. And probably tapes. And probably my stack of hdds that I have 3 backups of.
Bite me, corpo streaming leeches
My man, I've been putting off sorting that shit for twenty years now. In the meantime I've circled back to CDs !
How to protect against bitrot?
RAID1 combined with a separate backup drive on a different machine (Raspberry Pi with a USB->SATA drive bay works). ZFS with EEC RAM helps a lot, too (as another poster mentioned).
No, it's not a full 3-2-1 backup solution, but you have to spend quite a bit as a data hoarder to actually get that. As far as I can tell, few data hoarders actually have a 3-2-1 backup without squinting about the details. Having any backup is better than no backup.
In like 5 years we'll all have self-hostd LLM agents and you just send the lil' bastard on YT to scrape the audio in higher bitrates all over again. It'll be FINE.
I also have MP3s that are 20+years old at this point, and they were bad rips in the first place. Some of them from CDs that skipped during the rip. bitrot on this low quality MP3 I'm too lazy to re-get is on me.
Honestly, the community should make such a tool.
Since the argument is that LLMs scraping content isn't piracy, if we just "scrape" the songs with a LLM it's protected use.
ZFS is your friend.
But nothing replaces a good backup strategy! Borg backup can help you there.
ZFS NAS and ECC ram. Or backup to back blaze and let them worry about it
M-disc
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.
And no ads 😁
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?
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.
Aren’t private trackers the best method? But good luck getting an invite to them.
Side note, if someone has connections, I’m interested.
And it won't have modern ai rubbish in it, just old gold.
I don't really do the folder of MP3s thing any more.
I am much more into the Jellyfin full of FLACs thing these days!
I bet up in the attic next to one of my sweet old Abit motherboards I have a dusty old hard drive with a folder full of music from the 90s and early 2000s.
mp3tag.de is what i used to properly name and tag my 60Gb mp3 collection
I noticed the other day my car can play MP3 CDs and Ive been thinking about popping the one I used to have in my first car in there. It's still in one of the 5 CD books I have in my closet.
Back in the day I used iTunes to manage my mp3s, used it to properly fill out their metadata, and then used it to rename all the files appropriately, but there's tons of other software to do that.
I also lost the last 1/3 of my music library when my roommate spilled beer on my laptop (frying it), and then midway through transferring the files off I tripped on the usb cable and shattered the hard drive.
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....
/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.
only if you keep backups
I'm always disappointed to remember that the average computer user doesn't keep any backups whatsoever :/
I wish. I lost my 1TB drive of somewhat sorted MP3s and it took all the energy of collecting music with it. I've been using Spotify since then. But I still miss that drive.
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.
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.
I just wish people would name their shit well enough that I don't accidentally download live albums anymore.
immaculately sorted. IMMACULATELY!
Mine is sorted as well but I named the folder "unsorted"
What? you have your own music that you can listen to any time, even offline without some annoying app?
And you can get niche and non-corporate music that's not on that app?
That's not progress, get with the times!
I just found all my old burned CDs including the folder of them I made for my spouse. I can't believe those songs won her over lol, but 20 years later here we are.
No, that hard drive is long gone
I... Still use the same tools I've used about two decades ago...
Jamp! Organizer, and/or MP3 Tagger. MP3 Tagger for fixing the id3 tags, and Jamp! for renaming the files in bulk how I want (artist - song, usually).
Oh, just edit the tags, you lazy fuck 😂
I have an external hard-drive with some 300-500h of music on it.
Problem is i don't want to clog up my SSD and i often am too lazy to plug it in. But i have been listening to a lot of songs i haven't archived yet and risk losing with the digital platforms failing me sooner or later.
NAS devices can hold several hard drives, and most of them have wi-fi and other networking capabilities
Just another person recommending Musicbrainz Picard.
I had about 600 sketchy music files. I had started using Kodi and I wanted my music library to look nice. So I cleaned up all the art and metatags. It was a bit of an undertaking. I actually added a few of my albums to their database. I'm happy with the result. MBP is a really cool project.
Also consider backing up to the cloud when you can. Never know when a rainy day will come by, or ICE for that matter.
"the cloud" is not a legitimate backup solution, and you're doing people a disservice by advertising it as such. The majority of service providers are just as untrustworthy as spotify.
Its still a valuable part of a 3-2-1 rule based backup plan: 3 different copies, on 2 different media types, with 1 copy offsite. I don't think they were recommending storing your only copy in the cloud afaik
You're not entirely wrong. Look, if you want to run your own nextcloud with a VPS, then have at it. IDGAF. My point is, don't just leave things locally. That's all I'm saying. If y'all want to argue about which cloud is more ethical than the next, leave me out of it. Average Joe ain't using something like IronMountain for offsite. Average Joe probably won't also know how to encrypt their data but I would say doing that helps and I do that with my own keys before uploading it to something like mega.io
I've been sorting my MP3 files since 2003. It's a Sisyphian task. Every few years I'm like "ok, let's sort those songs with the new, improved sorting method I just came up with" and after a few hours or days of intense sorting I just quit and let them be.
Maybe this will be the year I finally sort them out! 🤣
That reminds me that I should definitely plug my phone into my desktop and do a ton of music folder creation and reorganizing. I've got over 500 files and I really need to fully organize every single one and reorganize the ones that are organized already. Same with my much smaller set on my desktop. Luckily that one isn't nearly as bad.
I have a few thousand mp3s and they are all neatly organised with tags and sorted in folders by artist and album. Whenever I add something i make sure it follows my naming scheme and has all the tags. Has been like that since I got my first few albums when I was like 10.
Maybe I'm on the autism spectrum.
I have something similar on my laptop, but it's only partially implemented on my desktop and phone. I only recently, within the last few years, really started to care. Some gear in my autistic brain started turning and now I need to have my music organized. I've just been held back on my phone and desktop because of how much work it would take, even though it would probably take less than an hour.
Yeah, that's what I thought too, until that drive failed during a system upgrade. I'm not ripping 300+ CD's AGAIN. Youtube it is.
Soulseek is your friend, use nicotine+
That's why I have at least 3 copies of my library at any time.
To this day nearly a third of my Jellyfin library is stuff I downloaded through ourTunes over the dorm LAN in 2004/2005.
Plexamp is my favorite music player. I miss it when trying out services. It’s so buttery smooth and quick.
Does anyone know why Jellyfin cant auto scan for mp3 signatures of random directories i have it targeting and auto-populate song/album/artist metadata into the existing library? Do I need a specific addon?