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Do I use a website to download songs off of YouTube or Spotify?

Where should I store the music? I haven't any clue about self-hosting. I'm running GrapheneOS, is it enough to save the songs in Files and play in an app like Auxio? Maybe sync with SyncThing?

What's the best way to compress mp3 files but still retain the quality (even possible)?

Could really use some help as I'm very inexperienced. :)

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[-] wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works 30 points 1 month ago

Do I use a website to download songs off of YouTube or Spotify?

Soulseek and/or private trackers, both with a VPN.

Where should I store the music?

On a hard disk?

I'm running GrapheneOS

Android isn't well suited for this. It's fine for playing either by transfering your files or streaming them with something like subsonic, mod, etc.

Maybe sync with SyncThing?

This could work yeah.

What's the best way to compress mp3 files but still retain the quality (even possible)?

By design MP3 is a lossy format, so no you cannot. What you want is FLAC, a lossless compressed format.

[-] Maxy@lemmy.blahaj.zone 19 points 1 month ago

To add to the audio compression: it isn’t possible to further compress an mp3 file without losing any quality. You can either:

  1. Recompress to a lossy codec (mp3, aac, opus). This will lead to smaller file sizes if you set the bitrate lower than that of the input file, but it will always worsen the quality, no matter the bitrate.
  2. Recompress to a lossless format (flac easily being the best one). Going from a lossy to a lossless format will increase the file size (sometimes by quite a substantial amount), while keeping the same quality. There is very little reason for you to do this
  3. keep the original files (my recommendation)

If you’re willing to spend some extra time learning about audio compression, you can download lossless files and compress those directly to whatever format and bitrate you want. The quality will be better than option 1 above, as the audio is only lossely compressed once instead of twice.

[-] madeindjs@programming.dev 5 points 1 month ago

Recompress to a lossless format (...) There is very little reason for you to do this

I though there are no reasons at all to do it. What could be a valid use case for this ?

[-] Maxy@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

It’s possible for a certain hardware/software setup not to support a certain codec. For example, my jellyfin client (Finamp) uses the iOS native decoders (afaik), which means opus files are practically broken. My music library (8000+ songs) contained exactly 1 lossy file, which just so happened to be an opus file. I decided to spend the extra ~20MB to standardise my entire library to flac files, ensuring I could play every song on all my devices.

Edit cause I posted too soon: you are generally correct; only in very specific circumstances will you encounter compatibility issues like this one in the modern world. This is 100% apple being apple, and you can expect pretty much every other (reasonably modern) device to support all codecs you might encounter in the wild.

[-] downhomechunk@midwest.social 6 points 1 month ago

Upvote for soulseek / nicotine

[-] ElectricAirship@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 month ago

FLAC is best if space is no concern. But when your collection starts getting very big, there are better options like AAC (which I use). It's a lot less space than FLAC and mp3, and higher quality than mp3 as well.

https://primesound.org/audio-file-formats/

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[-] LilacLobotomies@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

https://rentry.org/firehawk52

Check this website out, there's lots of options for obtaining music. I personally use Murglar on Android for high quality Deezer rips. Telegram bots work well too.

[-] gramgan@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 month ago

As far as where you get the music from, you’ll have to determine for yourself what audio quality you require.

To test this, use something like Soulseek to get a high quality version of a song you are very familiar with, and then get the same song off of YouTube with yt-dlp (better yet—do this for a few songs). Then, open both songs in separate media player windows, randomize the layout of said windows so you don’t remember which is which, plug in your favorite headphones and see if you can guess which is which.

For me, I found the difference between a lossless or 320kbps download from Soulseek and a 128-196kbps download from YouTube to be negligible (or outright nonexistent) in most cases, so I mostly download off of YouTube, which is very simple to do.

Depending on where you get the files, you may need to add metadata yourself. For this, I recommend MusicBrainz Picard.

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[-] LaGG_3@hexbear.net 7 points 1 month ago

What's the best way to compress mp3 files but still retain the quality (even possible)?

If you're not starting from a lossless format (like FLAC), you shouldn't really be compressing anything. When compressing from a lossless format to MP3, it's totally subjective. When I was more into ripping CDs, I'd do V0 or 320 - there's probably plenty of internet arguments by people more knowledgeable than me if you need a breakdown in different MP3 compressions.

[-] averyminya@beehaw.org 7 points 1 month ago

Lidarr is all you need.

You can do other methods, but this one is simple and effective. Set it up, tell it what bands you like, wait a day and you've got the entirety of your childhood favorites and nearly every discography you can think of. All for maybe an hour of upfront work.

Versus remembering every band/song you ever liked, tracking it down, downloading each individually... Like yeah, you can do that. It's what I do for shows and movies for curation. But for music, I have so much and so many that curating like this just isn't as worthwhile as checking off a band in Lidarr and having all of their stuff in a few hours.

[-] EarthShipTechIntern@lemm.ee 3 points 1 month ago

Lidarr sounds fine for computers, what about android?

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[-] halvar@lemm.ee 4 points 1 month ago

I personally look up torrent files for either FLACs (lossless quality, with very large files) or 320kbps MP3s (smaller files with no noticable difference in sound quality imo) and then after making sure they have the right metadata (Title, Album, Artist) (using a tool like Tagger) I upload them onto my Navidrome server, which I connect to using Ultrasonic. If I didn't selfhost I'd probably just put the tagged files on my phone and play them with basically any music player.

[-] HelixDab2@lemm.ee 3 points 1 month ago

I've personally found that I can hear a sound difference in 320kpbs .mp3s, depending on whether or not it was encoded with a constant bit rate, or a variable bit rate.

[-] atkion@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago

Thanks for the link to Tagger, I've been looking for something like that. Looks like I have some library cleanup to do, I've been putting it off for years now lmao

[-] communism@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 month ago

What I do personally is get any music I want from soulseek and then sync my music directory across devices with syncthing. Although I'm planning on renting a vps to put my music on at some point as it's taking up quite a lot of my phone storage now.

On desktop I like to use mpd with ncmpcpp. On Android(/GrapheneOS) I'm using Metro as my music player.

[-] Algernon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 month ago

I’m always curious why people do this. Music is the one item where it’s easier to just sub to something like Apple Music… literally $110/yr for all the music that exists. They gave us the solution we asked for and it’s super-cheap.

I pirate the shit out of movies and tv since those guys are gouging me, but musicians barely get by in the streaming era.

Hopefully this triggers nobody. I’m making no judgements.

[-] Deceptichum@quokk.au 16 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I’ve used Spotify for like 20 years now, and I’m finally going back to pirating.

They started “innovating” and adding shit I didn’t want last year to justify fee increases.

I can’t trust businesses to not enshittify, so might as well continue on with where I left my library all those years ago.

Plus: So much music isn’t available on there. I have a huge collection of Japanese Rock, Pop, Visual Kei from the 90s and 00s that you just can’t find easily.

[-] anothermember@lemmy.zip 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Can you save it DRM-free? That's all I ask for.

[-] madeindjs@programming.dev 6 points 1 month ago

my two cents,

I personally buy some music from Bandcamp, and I'm pretty sure those songs don't exist on the Apple Music catalog. So I don't want to handle multiple apps to listen what I want.

Also, streaming platforms have the internet constraints. Sometimes, like when I'm driving, I don't have a stable internet connection

My good faith response to your good faith question: because having a DRM-free copy on your own server or hard drive is the only way to be sure you will be able to play it tomorrow.

Streaming services are a complex collection of licensing deals that are by design temporary. You may not hear beforehand when your favorite artist's label's parent company's conglomerate's CEO decides to pull their content because they're going to start their own streaming service, or another service gave them a lucrative exclusive deal.

And while you're never going to have a hard time finding Taylor Swift, that one 70s esoteric album may become instantly impossible to find once it drops off a streamer.

In the end there are no promises with a streaming service. On the other hand, you put in a small amount of work to grab MP3s or FLACs, set up your own Plex server (or Emby, etc), and you're good for pretty much forever.

Similarly, support artists by buying their direct merch, going to shows, and so on, but they are barely seeing any Spotify money. Between Spotify and the labels, they are cleaning the plate and artists are getting whatever crumbs fall off the table (unless you're Taylor Swift or another global artist).

[-] Algernon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 3 weeks ago

If the streaming service I use (Apple Music) doesn’t have something, I buy it and add it. Spotify goes out of their way to make that difficult, so I don’t use Spotify. I actually think Spotify is terrible in every way.

I’m not worried about owning all the music since streaming is not going to disappear in my lifetime. If it did, I’d drop the cash on bands that need my money and pirate the ones who don’t.

[-] jerb@lemmy.croc.pw 4 points 1 month ago

Many artists I like were signed with a now defunct record label called Tympanik Audio. Whoever got the rights to the name after the label went under stopped paying their Spotify license fees, and a large chunk of my Spotify library vanished overnight. While the albums still exist on Bandcamp, the money probably gets thrown into the void now.

Never again. The only way I can ensure my music is accessible tomorrow is to have my own copy. I buy on Bandcamp where I can, or will buy physical and rip it if I really like the album. Everything else gets ripped from Deezer automatically because there's no guarantee anything on those platforms will always be there.

[-] sillyhatsonly@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 month ago

it’s easier to just sub to something like Apple Music… literally $110/yr for all the music that exists.

As others have stated, not all music exists on every streaming platform. That alone is enough of a reason for me. I recently canceled my longtime Spotify subscription because the price kept increasing while my library kept decreasing. I actually don’t pirate music when I can help it because I’d rather support artists on Bandcamp or purchasing physical media directly. If I can’t do that then I head to Soulseek!

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[-] TheVelvetGentleman@hexbear.net 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I've been using a hacked Spotify app for years. It takes 5 minutes to set up and I don't have to pay any money to a soulless corporation who will throw a few half pennies to the artists that I enjoy. Oh, and I get to disable the shit ui choices that they try to implement so I get a better experience than a paying customer.

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[-] BlastboomStrice@mander.xyz 3 points 1 month ago

This guide I wrote about downloading and tagging might help you :) https://mander.xyz/post/13720820

[-] clark@midwest.social 2 points 3 weeks ago

This seems really complicated for a beginner like me (': is there no online tool that can download my playlists in bulk with relatively accurate metadata? It seems deemix and soulseek require accounts which I'm not too keen about, but I really don't know anything about this so I might just be spouting silly speculations.

[-] BlastboomStrice@mander.xyz 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Aw, I understand ~50.000words can be overwhelming.😅

Hm, I dont know if there's anything better than the tools I talk about. This guide is a bit too compicated and long, so I'll try to re-word it, hoping you can now follow it:

  1. Soulseek: You just use a username and a password. No emails or anything. Search and download.

  2. Deemix: You dont need to have a personal deemix account. You can find on some doubious sites "arls" for accounts. Arl is like the user token. They are long alphanumeric strings which essentially are used instead of username+password. You can simply find one online and put it in deezer. (You can try arls found here: https://www.arldeemix.com/2024/05/arl-deemix.html?m=1 )

    To use it with spotify (like downloading a spotify playlist in deemix), its kinda more complex. You can see the steps from this post on reddit here:

https://developer.spotify.com/dashboard/ log in, create an app, go into app, click show client secret under apps title, paste it into deemix along with clientid

I suggest deemix because you can get very high quality music (in batches too) and it's open source.

Lastly, if you simply want to get stuff from youtube without account and such:

  1. ytDownloader acts as a gui for yt-dpl (open source, PC).

  2. Seal acts as a gui for yt-dpl (open source, Android).

Almost certainly there are websites that may use yt-dlp and can download playlists though.

[-] clark@midwest.social 1 points 3 weeks ago

So I did the deemix thing and the Spotify app thing. Unfortunately I can't find my own playlists in Favourites, only somebody else's. Know the issue?

[-] BlastboomStrice@mander.xyz 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Oh nice, you're very close. What you see, are the Deezer playlists of the account the arl corresponds to. For your spotify playlists, go to spotify, press the share button on your playlist, get the link to your playlist (the url), paste it in the search bar in deemix and press enter. It will automatically fetch and download the whole playlist.

(The next "level" would be to go back to my big guide, in the deemix settings section and customize it to your liking.)

[-] clark@midwest.social 1 points 3 weeks ago

I went back to your guide and adjusted some deemix settings. Is there something I should adjust in "folders/track titles" sections, since you didn't mention them, or is it fine to leave them be? Also, why download in flac and not mp3?

[-] BlastboomStrice@mander.xyz 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

If I dont mention them, it probably means I left them at their default settings, but each one has their own system so feel free to change them if it suits you better.

I download in flac because I want to have them at ~the highest possible quality (ripping CDs or finding each song infividually in various sources and comparing them might provide a better quality, but thats too much of a hassle) and I compress them to .opus format at 128kbit to copy them on my phone. Thus, I keep one flac collection and a cloned, compressed version of it in opus.

Near the ⅘ of my guide I think I describe how to compress files with fre:ac and which app (symphony on fdroid) handles well opus files. I had some frustration with how hard it is for apps to recognise song tags, especially multiple song tags (like 2 artists in a song). If you encounter such an issue, use a different separator other than \\, like ;.

The rabbit hole can get a bit deep quickly.

Have fun :)

[-] clark@midwest.social 2 points 3 weeks ago

Thanks for your help! Will definitely continue following your guide.

However, I've already stumbled upon a few issues. First, my computer can't seem to locate the deemix music folder that I supposedly created when I installed the application. Nowhere to be seen. Not sure what to do about it, maybe I installed the wrong version?

Furthermore, the playlists I have downloaded state the following errors: "cannot read properties of undefined" and "no such file or directory"...

[-] BlastboomStrice@mander.xyz 2 points 3 weeks ago

First, my computer can't seem to locate the deemix music folder that I supposedly created when I installed the application. Nowhere to be seen. Not sure what to do about it, maybe I installed the wrong version?

Hm, I suppose you talk about the folder where your music is downloaded. Thats a bit weird, mine saves it in C:\...\user\Music\deemix Music\

I also suppose you downloaded deemix from the link I provided in my guide, which I think is where I downloaded it too (plus deemix doesnt get updated anymore), so I dont think you got the wrong version. For the record, mine is 2022.12.14-r222.5d447b6035.

Furthermore, the playlists I have downloaded state the following errors: "cannot read properties of undefined" and "no such file or directory"...

I dont think I've encountered that issue either, maybe it's because it cant locate the files in the lost folder you talked about before.

I'd suggest you create another folder woth your file explorer, set deemix to download there and retry. I'd also suggest to first test it by downloading a single song (just type anything in the search bar) before downloadig a whole playlist to not waste time

[-] clark@midwest.social 2 points 3 weeks ago

It worked now! Super thanks. <3

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[-] foremanguy92_@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 month ago

Don't know how much storage you have on your phone but you should just try these steps : If you are downloading from YouTube Music you won't get the best quality but for me that's okay. So I just recommend you to download an android client for yt-dl and then download what you want. If you are downloading only 1 or 2 gigs of music it should be okay, but if you are downloading more or wanna take care, you should use a VPN 😁

[-] ruplicant@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 month ago

the main way i get music files (320kbps mp3) is through the Soulseek network, which many commenter have mentioned. what has been left out is the best client to get into that network, that is free and open source software, which is Nicotine+. it work on any desktop OS

torrents are still valid but you won't find many artists there

[-] 6FingerJoe@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 month ago

Spowlo and soundbound are essentially the same app that you just paste links to Spotify lists, artists, albums, playlists, whatever, then it'll find matches on YouTube to download as mp3.

Desktop zotify, you can downloaded the "high" quality level with premium account credentials.

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this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2024
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