I’ve been happily being my own Spotify for the past 6 months and am loving it. My basic setup is Plex for serving the files and Plexamp on my computer and phone to listen. I’m trying to stick to music I either own in some fashion, or from CDs I get from the local library. There is something truly wonderful about going to the local library to get CDs in the year 2025. I’ll even let my 5 year old grab whatever he wants at random and have found a few gems that way.
A surprise to me was what basement storage can do to your physical media. Here’s a copy of Shotsakovich’s 7th that has, uh, become transparent in places:
The biggest change I’ve experienced with listening to music this way is that I’m a lot more aware of what I’m listening to. With Spotify it’s easy to flit around and only listen to whatever the algorithm was pushing. I found it hard to discover new music since it kept pushing me towards things I’d already listened to. Now that the process of finding a new album requires more steps it means I listen to it more carefully. Could you trick yourself into doing this with Spotify? Sure! But you are fighting the machine.
This isn’t for everyone, it’s definitely a hobby. I really enjoy this slower process of discovery when it comes to music. It’s also bizarre to go back to a app for listening to music that is just for listening to music. Whenever I jump back into Spotify it’s shocking how much extra stuff (and ads!) are in there.