Radio
Radio GardenStorefronts
BandcampQobuz Store
Amazon Music
iTunes Download
Software
Exact Audio CopyMusicBee
VLC
Misc.
Last.FMMusicBrainz
The Piracy Megathread
go back?
This is a page I have put together to help provide resources and information for managing digital music! After Spotify's CEO Daniel Ek was seen funding military artificial intelligence companies with the money directly from his streaming service, along with the various other issues around music streaming as a whole, I personally chose to ditch the service in favour of physical music as-well as digital music bought from online storefronts. It's hard to drop completely, I still will use Youtube Music for listening to newly released music, but Spotify is at least one more subscription off the monthly bill.
The benefits and quality of life features afforded by streaming services for their monthly fees are hard to pass-up. Being able to access whatever music you can think of anywhere you have an internet connection, suggestions based on your listening and all your playlists, likes and listening data kept server-side ready for end of year Spotify wrapped (or your service equivelent) are very aluring. Yet in-part due to many people becoming disenchanted with their near-infinite library of music, and the choice-paralysis that it can create, cds have been making a bit comeback. I know lots more people have been wanting to enjoy a smaller more intimate library.
So if you're wanting to ditch Spotify or whatever streaming service you use or just wanna try physical media but would like to have them available without access to a cd player and cd-book around there are some pointers and resources here to get you started!
This is how I go about it, there are a million other ways but I think this is a good way to go when it comes to being nice and simple way to enjoy your music digitally while off of streaming services and I've tried to make this all informational without going too overboard. I hope it proves useful to someone!
I'm going to link all the main resources here for ease of access but I'll talk about them in more detail below!
Radio
Radio GardenStorefronts
BandcampSoftware
Exact Audio CopyMisc.
Last.FMRadio is as accessible as it’s ever been and completely free. You can support real DJs instead of AI or algorithmically generated playlists. You probably already have an app on your phone that can access local FM stations such as Apple Music if not there are hundreds available on the App Store or Play Store. If you’d like to browse stations a bit further afield however I’d definitely recommend Radio Garden. You can easily browse radio stations globally by their broadcasting location on a map of the Earth!
A quick aside about File Formats!
Digital music usually comes packaged under two umbrellas.
Very reasonable file sizes (i.e. the amount of space it will take up on your device) at the cost of audio quality.
.MP3 .AAC and .OGG are all lossy formats
No loss in audio quality at the cost of much larger file sizes.
.FLAC .ALAC .WAV are all lossless formats
.MP3 and .FLAC are the most popular formats while .AAC and .ALAC are Apple's own versions of them and by default Apple Music (the iPhone's default local music player) will only play them and .MP3. Apple Music will not play .FLAC or any other format. However I will go over an easy option to give you more options if you use an iPhone.
Here's some places you can directly get some digital music. Convenient but check out your local music shops.
Format: .AAC
Pros - Largest catalog out there
Cons - Difficult to use outside iTunes and Apple ecosystem
Formats: .MP3 & .FLAC
Pros - Also a very large catalog, physical purchases often come with a digital download.
Format: .FLAC
Pros - Very Good Selection, excellent for extremely high quality lossless music
Formats: Various
Pros - Indie store!
There are of course other ways of sourcing digital music online. Pirating music is a personal decision and there are many legitimate reasons for doing so. Some music may not be accessible otherwise, you may have purchased the music before in a format that you can't make a digital back-up of yourself, have lost or damaged it or the original artist has long since passed and the rights moved to someone you do not want to financially support. There are many reasons to consider piracy and there are many resources online. The Piracy Megathread is a good starting point for resources relating to piracy and how to go about it safely.
Now if you're going the physical route we can go over how to get the music from your CDs copied into any of the digital file formats we've mentioned.
What you'll need...
A computer with Windows and a cd drive (an external cd drive works perfectly too!)
Macs and Macbooks work a little differently and I'll have to get my hands on one to help here but I assume there is a similar method.
There's many different ripping softwares but I highly recommend Exact Audio Copy as its the gold standard these days for ripping accuracy. MusicBee will be how we will organise and play our digital music. It has many many features and customisation options but also works out the box as a simple music player with great metadata editing options built-in plus it's got it's own ripping feature if you'd like to keep to one single program it's very simple and intuitive so highly recommend it too.
[WIP] Insert EAC screenshots [WIP]
[WIP] Insert MusicBee screenshots [WIP]
iPhone:
iPhone's default music player Apple Music is limited in what file formats it can play. If you want to load up .FLACs for instance it won't recognise them. It will play MP3s and any music synced through iTunes or Apple Device Manager. I highly recommend VLC on iTunes for the ease of transferring music and it's ability to play any file formats.
You can download VLC from the app store, it's free but please do consider donating to the VideoLAN project, it's been free and open source for decades despite numerous offers to the creators to purchase the brand and application for millions.
Now to get your music from your computer to VLC all you need to do is first...
[WIP] Insert Screenshots of VLC on iOS [WIP]
Go to "Browse".
[WIP] Insert Screenshots of VLC on iOS [WIP]
Toggle Sharing via Wi-Fi.
[WIP] Insert Screenshots of VLC file sharing in browser [WIP]
Back on your computer, go to either of the URLs displayed in the VLC app.
[WIP] Insert Screenshots of VLC on iOS [WIP]
Now just drag and drop your music files or use the plus button in the top right corner to select them in your file explorer.
[WIP] Insert Screenshots of VLC file sharing in browser [WIP]
And that's it! Your music will transfer over your local wi-fi so long as both devices are connected and will appear in VLC on your phone for you to listen to! There are other methods as well if you would rather not transfer over wi-fi, all documented in the VLC app itself if you go to Settings → Documentation. Give them a try and see if any work better for you!
Spotify to M3U is an open source Windows program made by TypNull that lets you convert Spotify playlists to .M3U8D files which can be imported into many different music players including MusicBee.
Last.FM allows you to "scrobble" while listening to your music. Scrobbling keeps tracks of your listening habits and saves them to your Last.FM account. Last.FM can suggest you new artists based on your listening this way! You can scrobble across many different services and apps including MusicBee
MusicBrainz great for searching for metadata and any information relating to music. There Picard tool is a helpful tool for tagging any of your music that is missing metadata also.