baby steps away from music streaming
Doing some work this week on shaping up an old project. I've been wanting to get away from using algorithmic streams as my primary source of music discovery for a while. Certainly a part of it was Gary Numan's famous vent about only getting $50 for a million streams on Spotify. But it has been brewing for a while.
As a young adult I saw the mass consolidation of American radio. This pioneered the concept of algorithmic playlists that featured Fleetwood Mac only because Fleetwood Mac was deemed to be the band least likely to cause a listener to change the channel before the next Toyota ad. Fleetwood Mac is great, but I like DJs that challenge me now and then to think about music in a new way. Like the DJ in my hometown who got a hate phone-call on a late night alternative show and proceeded to play "Hello Dad, I'm in Jail" six times over the next hour.
I want to put in a plug here for Larry Mizell Jr.'s OG Thursdays on KEXP. Mizell takes an artist or album and unpacks the samples and influences. It's not always my thing but sometimes I walk away thinking, "Wow, I never thought about that work in that way."
This week so far has been mostly about diversifying my discovery and expanding access to what I already have. Recommended Radio Streams is a nice list that includes both streams and stream discovery tools.
For access, I spent a lot of time preparing for a move back in October that by ripping from our CD collection. The effort included rediscovery of great concerts I had forgotten about and hard-to-find local music.
The music is currently made available through Navidrome and as of this week Tailscale. The server is a little bit frustrating at the moment but it's something to work on. I'm having a little bit of a debate with myself about whether to continue to use the cloud or shift to a dedicated music player. More on that topic in a future post.
Bonus hometown music reference: