I'm back to building my own digital music collection

Over the past months, I realised it was about time I moved away from music streaming, to keeping a personal music collection that I control.

Trust issues

Over the last years I have consumed most digital music via Tidal. At some point, I realised I didn't really have much trust in my music streaming situation anymore. Two things specifically pushed me over the edge: choice paralysis in and unreportable AI slop.

With streaming services, as long as you pay monthly, you'll have music. I've really loved being able to listen to anything I could ever wish for, unlimited. But more choice isn't necessarily better, and changes in the choice are out of your control. Artists could pull out, and have good reasons too, as they aren't paid well given they provide the main product.

“PICNIC JAZZ” is not an album Hiromi actually made, as evidenced by the discography section on her website.

Second, my main streaming app of choice, Tidal, had started attributing AI generated “music” to the great pianist Hiromi. She's an innovative piano player, this music sounded like generic elevator music at best. When I reached out to support to request the functionality to “report as AI”, I got a generic AI answer.

It didn't disappear by itself, it actually showed up in my mixes. Finding music and browsing around is something I enjoy in a music player, and by sticking non-music in between and making me guess what's real, Tidal isn't taking its purpose seriously. And it's super insulting to artists, their art and life.

The new setup

So… I decided to take matters in my hands, and go back to a setup similiar to what I had pre-streaming times (like Cory Dransfeldt, I just want to stream my music). With slightly different software, much better download speeds and more reasonable purchasing options.

In my case, I already had a NAS (network attached storage). It holds multiple hard drives (of choice), to store files and run software.

A NAS drive… they're quite big and this one is somewhat noisy.

The files I store are basically folders of music: one for each artist, and within each, one for each album. It's a mix of what I once bought in iTunes over the years (still DRM free, yay!), downloads from vouchers I got from records and downloads I don't remember the origin of.

As for the software, I installed a backup tool and Plex. As I understand it, Plex scans folders of music and makes them available through a UI, plus some magic. My files already contain metadata, but Plex added a few things automatically, like bios for artists and pictures of them (sometimes deadnaming them 🤷‍♂️). I didn't really ask for that, but I've been enjoying reading and browsing. It creates smart playlists, too. With the paid Plex Pass, it also lets you download music files, which you can set up to be lower quality. This is great for me, as my phone doesn't have a lot of space.

My hope for this setup is some level of freedom: if Plex ever discontinues or gets worse, I could find other software that can play music files organised in folders (no rocket science involved). If the drives break I can restore from backups. I can trust this!

Music as files

To make the switch, I had to build a music collection (apart from my records). I started with a library I already had, adding what I had started listening to when I was on Spotify and Tidal.

I basically did this by figuring out which artists and albums I care about. I looked at my listening history, live music list, and spent about a week thinking remembering other artists and albums that I really, really wanted. Then I did some mass purchasing, hundreds of euros worth. Money spent on art is money well spent, I'm convinced of that (buy art, not tokens, friends). I also found some music on older drives, CDs and the web. I'm not a hoarder, but…

Two services are particularly good when you want to buy music as files:

• Bandcamp: it pays artists a large percentage, up to 100% on the Bandcamp Fridays they run a few times per year, and because you could buy vinyl and get the download with it for free.
• Qobuz: it has higher than CD quality files, DRM-free. Pricing is pretty good, especially if you sign up for their “Sublime” streaming, as it gives a 60% discount, such that most albums are well under €10. The search isn't great, the app for downloading is very limited (eg doesn't show download progress), but it's fine.

The iTunes store is also ok, and music is still without DRM (thanks to the late Steve Jobs's “Thoughts on music”, from when tech CEOs had values). I've also used reluctantly used Amazon Music once for an album that was only published there.

TLDR: yay, music is sold in high quality, without DRM, for reasonable prices.

Discovering new music

Streaming services had a discovery function for me. But there are other ways to find out about new music:

• following artists on… that one medium that I'd rather not be on.
• artist's newsletters, too (though I find many don't bother to send out emails after they've posted on aforementioned medium)
• 3VOOR12 (Dutch)
• reviews in newspapers
• music festival lineups
• Bandcamp can keep you posted on new releases from specific artists and labels

So far, so good

It's been nice building up my own collection again. To shuffle my music, and have a set up where hearing new music involves considering whether to buy that album or not. It reminds me of

So far, I also had one failing drive, one time, and had to learn a bit more about my network than I wanted to, but all in all, it's been fine.

I realise that a lot of people never did streaming or always kept a big music library. If that's you I am interested in your tips, tricks, caveats, and recommendations.