📝 On Music

2023.01.12

As with a lot of people, music was a really important part of my middle school and high school years. Since I grew up in the beginning of the rise of music discovery on the internet, I spent a lot of time poking around, discovering new artists.

That is something I miss.

With the rise of streaming services like Spotify, I feel my relationship to music has diminished. I no longer go out and find what I like, I just put on a playlist curated by someone else, and couldn't even name more than one or two artists that I listen to regularly, if any at all.

I plan to expend some effort in 2023 to build a close relationship with the music I listen to again.

I am going to use my old 7th Generation iPod Classic again. I installed Rockbox on it a while back, and manage my music on it via MusicBee. I am going to try to use my iPod over Spotify whenever I can. If I find I don't have something I want to listen to, I will buy it to support the artists.

I have a wishlist of albumns on BandCamp I'd like to buy, and I will be using whatever resources I can online for new artist discovery. Taking the time to discover, purchase, and transfer the music to my iPod will make me feel much closer to the music and the artist. I will always puchase the music where I can get it DRM free and where the most money goes to the artist.

I also want to select individual albums or artists to listen to as opposed to just putting a huge playlist on shuffle. I want to pick what feels right for the mood I'm in. I will also curate my own playlists instead of relying on others.

When at work I will probably just listen to some of my favorite online radio stations, and if I hear something I like I'll take note of the artist and look into them later. Here are my favorite online stations/sites:

• Radio Garden I use this to listen to radio stations from Japan or Hawaii
• Jet Set Radio LIVE The JSR soundtrack + other similar music
• Jet Set Radio Future LIVE, The JSRF soundtrack + other similar music
• tilderadio A tildeverse radio station with various volunteer DJs
• DEF CON Radio The SomaFM station for DEF CON
• lofi.cafe Various lofi stations
• MINDMELT Music visualizer with various electronic music stations

👋 Hey! Thanks for reading! If you have any comments or questions about this post, or anything else, I'd love to chat! You can find the best way to contact me on my hello page or send me an email.