Thread | Brutkey

Alright nerds, I got you a quest of sorts.

Situation: Some gen z and zellinial folk I know are keen on forgoing Spotify for mp3/mp4 players/alternative ways to listen to music for many reasons.

Quest: What are some options they can consider? Ripping CDs? Good music player options? Software for them to organize their media/playlists? Similar ways to discover new music? Alt services?

Scope: Options that are friendly to not-tech-savvy folk are very welcome. [Hard mode, ik, lol].

Other info:--

That Frisian Girl-ish
@thatfrisiangirlish@blahaj.zone

@tombofnull@voidwood.online My own things consist of:
- Optical drive in an ICY-Box 5 1/4" external frame
- EAC to rip CDs (combine with codec of your choice to get from WAV to compressed format)
- mp3tag to tag stuff with all the things you want/need
- I absolutely hate "media library" type things, because they inevitably mess up stuff, or don't handle music vs audiobooks well, so I have things in a file structure at home on a NAS. Very barebones, but easily accessible without specialized software.
- foobar2000 can play things well from this, as it has a file structure view
- to go, I have a decent-ishly big SD card in my phone. But honestly... you can put a lot of compressed audio on even just a 128GB. Bonus, no draw on data, no dependence on connection that way, no lag, no buffering, no ads.
- speaking of phone, the Android player I use is Musicolet.
- I just copy files over.

That Frisian Girl-ish
@thatfrisiangirlish@blahaj.zone

@tombofnull@voidwood.online Music discovery: ... at home, I have a very neat radio box that streams internet radio stations via wifi. Choice of radio station is of course dependant on taste, but there are good ones for nearly every taste. My personal favourite is "Radio Dunkle Welle", and if I hear something I like while doing the dishes, a quick glance tells me what that is, and then I can investigate further. Preferably, the interesting artist has their own distribution channel.