After the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, one of the news tidbits that I saw was about the arrest of a musician while he was protesting against ICE: Minneapolis Rapper Violently Detained by ICE: “I assumed I was going to die.” (Rolling Stone). I had never heard of Nur-D before, so I took a look at his music. On Bandcamp, the cover art for Songs About Stuff caught my eye. Listening through it, I liked two of the songs enough to buy the album.
20 Cha is a D&D-inspired love song, and The Epilogue is a sequel to The Devil Went Down to Georgia by Charlie Daniels Band. Both of these are now on my big list of favorites.
This video by Adam Neely discusses a company focused on AI generated music, how it cuts out some of what makes music meaningful, and the agenda supported by some of the folks pushing generative AI into everything.
Suno seems like pretty much the opposite of the music experience that I want. I like supporting artists by buying music from them. I like that there are real humans behind the music that I listen to.
It was also funny to see the worst executive that I’ve ever worked under name dropped in the video. Nat Friedman only gets a brief mention in the video that is related to his investments in AI companies rather than his time at Microsoft and GitHub, but I really did not enjoy the time I spent working in his organization.
Once upon a time, I had a pretty good setup for my digital music experience. I had all of my mp3 files in a Music folder on OneDrive, and I could play them from the Groove app on my phone, iPad, and computer. Then Microsoft gave up on digital music. Playback from OneDrive stopped being an option and the Groove app disappeared.
After that I moved to Google Play Music. Then that stopped being supported and I had to move to YouTube Music. While I could still upload my own music collection to play from the app, each of those moves resulted in a worse experience than the one before. YouTube Music technically supported uploads, but every interaction with the app made it clear that Google wanted you to be paying for a streaming subscription instead of having your own collection. Then, the iPhone and iPad apps for YouTube music stopped wanting to play my uploaded music at all. The feature didn’t seem to be intentionally removed, it just stopped working one day.
I needed to find a new solution. Playing and managing my own music collection was increasingly feeling like a chore rather than a pleasure. My requirements felt like they should be pretty simple. I wanted to be able to keep a collection of music files in a single library, and I wanted to be able to include music from multiple sources – CD rips, old Zune purchases, more recent purchases from Amazon, iTunes, and Bandcamp, game soundtracks from Steam, and even ambient tracks from DriveThruRPG. Then from this collection, I wanted to easily be able to play back my music from my computer, my tablet, and my phone. In an ideal world, sharing this music with Stef and Lexi would also be easier than the pain that is using iTunes to get music on to their devices.
It turns out, there was a solution that nailed all of that: Navidrome. Navidrome is an open-source, self-hosted digital music server. It gives a web frontend to browse and play back music from a collection on the server, and it implements both its own API and the Subsonic API for apps.
Using open protocols means that there are a bunch of compatible apps that you can choose from. I’ve decided on Nautiline which offers a pretty solid phone and tablet experience. The only thing I wish it did better as CarPlay integration where it lacks browsing of albums and artists. With a choice of apps though, we’re not locked into one, so if I switch phone OSes or decide to try a different app, I can do that without any changes to my server setup.
Navidrome is self-hosted software, so it isn’t quite as easy as a hosted web service. Thanks to PikaPods, it was pretty easy to set up a server for my family that is accessible on the web. A nice bonus to using PikaPods for hosting is that some of the money for that goes back to the Navidrome open source project. For my server configuration (1 CPU, 1 GB RAM, 50 GB storage), my cost is just under $4 each month.
Navidrome also supports multiple users, so Stef, Lexi, and I all have our own accounts. We can all access all of the music, but playback stats, favorited items, and playlists are unique to each of our accounts.
This setup is still pretty new, but I’m very happy with it so far. If you enjoy having a music collection rather than a streaming service, it’s worth checking out. Just because the big tech companies aren’t interesting in delivering a good experience, it doesn’t mean that one doesn’t exist.
Tens of thousands of people, at any given time, are idly listening to the ambient, muted beats that accompany the Lofi Girl livestream: in solo studying sessions, taking tests in a classroom, and using the tunes as a stand-in for white noise to aid sleep. The livestream, which is one of the longest running live broadcasts on YouTube, is often hiding in browser tabs, leaving the perpetually busy Jade (the Lofi Girl) to lazily take her notes behind whatever Wikipedia page or spreadsheet you’ve got open. But she is always there, the googly eyes stuck to her headphones wobbling as she looks up from her notes, to peek in on, to study with, or to chill to—the details of the music become secondary to the vibe.
It’s Friday, so time for another song that I like: Let’s Face It by The Mighty Mighty Bosstones. I’ve been listening to this one since I was in high school.
Bandcamp does a promotion called Bandcamp Friday where they waive their revenue in order to give more to the artists when you buy their music. Today is a Bandcamp Friday, so here are some artists that I think you should check out. I know I’ll be buying songs from a few of them today.
Sylvan Esso: One of the localish artists that I found thanks to an article about Psychic Hotline. I bought What Now recently and it has been a pretty regular entry in my listening rotation.
Daughter of Swords: Another artist I found through Psychic Hotline. I picked up their album Alex last month and have really enjoyed listening to it.
Made in 1985: I went to school with Scott, and he’s a cool guy not just because he shares my name and we chatted in some art classes twenty-some years ago. I’ve bought a bunch of his music over the past few years.
Rogue Radio: Louise Sugden is a former Games Workshop employee who has a hobby-focused YouTube channel called Rogue Hobbies. She also has made some music.
neon shudder: neon shudder did soundtrack albums for the Hard Wired Island roleplaying game. That album is one of my daughter’s top picks when her and I are driving somewhere.
Lofi Girl: This is actually a label with songs from a bunch of different artists. They do a mix of big and small albums. One of my favorite is chill beats for LEGO building, but I also enjoy their seasonal releases like Halloween 2023 and Christmas 2023.
Like Daughter of Swords, Sylvan Esso is a group that I learned about by way of an article about Psychic Hotline. I bought their album What Now, and Radio is my favorite song from it.
Scott Boehmer 