Hello!
This question is mainly directed to people who use navidrome or similar software. How do you organize your music library in regards to files? Do you keep them all in one folder? Or folders with author names? Or folders where music belongs based on genre? I can’t get the right way to organize my music library, hence this question.
Thanks in advance for all the answers!
reworking the whole library, I had 1.5 TB of mp3s, but they were super messy organized. Sure, I could have gone through organizing it but still mp3s suck.
So I’m starting over with a FLAC only music library. I use Navidrome on a local server and with a Subsonic client on my phone I can choose to download certain songs or playlists to use when I’m away.
CD quality FLACs are the minimum for me. They are nineties technology and still most digital music isn’t even close to that. I find it hilarious how Spotify is still serving mp3s.
Spotify serves mp3s because it uses less bandwidth and most people can’t tell the difference on their 30€ Bluetooth headset.
I think this highlights a bigger issue when it comes to this discussion.
The issue isn’t the mp3 format – for the most part, the format of any lossy encoder can sound good with the right settings. The problem is that, unlike flac, all encoded lossy files are essentially untrustworthy audio formats. So when people say mp3 sounds bad, it’s only a half truth in the same way that it’s a half truth to say that people cannot tell a difference. You are putting trust in the person who encoded the audio to make the right choice and the encoder is putting trust in the idea that the person consuming the media can’t tell the difference.
When it comes to being cheap on bandwidth since most users can’t hear it, that’s a huge cop-out being made for a company that can do better. While Apple is pretty notorious for making terrible decisions for arbitrary reasons, even they respect the user enough to allow you to opt into higher audio format quality. It’s decisions like these that cement Apple as the kings of the creative computer user.
Spotify serves OGG Vorbis, not mp3
Where do you get FLACs?
You rip your cds or buy direct from the artists (he says without suggesting you can easily find everything for free online)
yes, pretty much this.
Bandcamp and Qobuz sell high quality FLACs.
Other way to do it is subscribing to Tidal HiFi tier and using tidal downloaded to legally download FLACs with your account. But this supports artists less than actually buying from them in Bandcamp.
This is the most ethical way of doing it. I respect it
soulseek