I mainly listen to my music collection from my Plex server, but I’ll also pop in a CD on occasion and listen from start to finish. It can honestly be so refreshing to have the music experience be so physical without a screen in the way. I agree with your feelings on mainstream streaming services. You have access to a lot of music but it really discourages you from traveling deeper.

I don’t believe the human brain was ever made for this level of stimulation

Before recorded audio, every song was unique. Every play of every song was unique. Non-Variable stimuli is actually the weird situation.

One of my coworkers told me he doesn’t like hearing the same song twice after I was talking about alternatives to Spotify. I was just baffled.

Is there some music database that lets me put in an artist I like, and why I like them, to get recommendations?

I ask because often what I like about a band is specific and different from the norm in their genre. I like Pink Floyd in large part because of Waters and Gilmour’s vocal styles, whereas I don’t listen to Rush because I can’t stand Geddy Lee’s vocals. But if I put in “I like Pink Floyd” I get offered Rush because they are adjacent, genre-wise.

Being able to say “I like Band A for their recording production and bass guitar” and get recommendations for other artists with similar (or even opposite if I could invert the search!), that would be a dream! “Artists like Rush but with vocals not like Rush” 😅

(Rush is a great band and I have lots of respect for them and Geddy’s talent as well, I wish I could like it. This is purely a me problem)

I’ve grown content with not having to store my music for listening. And I hate to admit it but I have gotten bad at finding new and Spotify us all like " you like this, check this out. That said my listening is done at work and while driving. If I want music at home I pick an instrument and play some. But saying there’s too much access to music is horseshit. Everyone gets something different out of music, and it’s nobody’s business but theirs what that is. Even if it is just background noise. You want to know why a song exists, I’m picking apart the chord structure and lyrical devices. Or giving my day theme music. Or maybe just knowing that today was a good day.

How about a bigger personal collection?

On thing I miss is listening to full albums, i.e. you put on an album, listen to all the tracks from beginning to end in the order the artist intended. I know you still can listen to full albums now, but most software is designed these days around individual tracks and it loses something. Sometimes a well put together album can be better than the sum of its parts.

Never subscribed to a streaming service myself, I don’t see the appeal of listening to (and potentially becoming emotionally attached to) music I don’t actually own and could lose some day.

In the before times you would buy a new album and listen to it from start to finish, several times. It was Tuesday.

I still enjoy listening to music in album form. I can think of many songs that are not discrete pieces of art without the track(s) before and after.

A local radio station once played “Golden Slumbers” without also playing “carry that weight” and they apologized for it the next day.

Yup. I’ve pretty much moved to on-device music exclusively. Pretty pricey, but treating myself to a new album feels good every time.

Since streaming became a thing, I could probably only name a handful of artists I’ve discovered. I just pick a genre and let the algorithm decide.

About 6 months ago, I started self-hosting my music, and it’s a game changer. It feels like much more intentional consumption of media.

Although I have family plans for both Spotify and Youtube, I only use my local itunes libraries for listening and curating my music.

All the tracks have their corresponding albums. All tracks except new ones are rated. A lot of my purchase goes to the artist (more if I buy from Bandcamp), and all my music is always available on planes, trains, road trips, and camping trips regardless of the status of the network.

It’s also surprising how much stuff just isn’t on streaming. I’d say about 10-20% of my library can’t be found on Spotify.

I have tried Spotify and apple music for discovery but actually find it very difficult to get them to offer me stuff I don’t already own or know about. In general I usually find out about new stuff from recommendations or forums or just following specific bands and musicians i already know.

I never plan to change owning my library .

One of the primary appeals of early streaming platforms (first via MySpace and then later through services like Napster and Pandora) was the opportunity to explore outside your normie musical tastes. For folks who weren’t living in some major metroplex with an active indie music scene, this was a reliable way to find new music and get outside whatever your parents had on repeat in the car on the way to school.

The modern scene has exploited a desire for “newness” in the abstract and stuffed everyone’s feeds with AI slop. But there is still a demand for media broadcasts outside the ClearChannel “Top 3 Pop Songs on a Loop” and Oldie “Mandatory Metallica” stations that go beyond what you have already listened to.

How do you fill your local collection if you aren’t listening to stuff outside your local collection?

I think some people enjoy the thrill of discovery more than the depth of experience. Which is fine. No judgment.

Personally I’d rather have 10 albums that mean a lot than 100,000 albums I listen to once.

Navidrome + Scrobble to ListenBrainz + RSS notifications for Fresh Releases feed = Perfection

Local > Streaming, but I’d prefer to have a large, eclectic library: My musical preferences are all over the place.