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music_management [2026/05/18 22:46] – [Playback] qlyoungmusic_management [2026/05/19 03:37] (current) – [Phone] simplify qlyoung
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 That way the artist gets money for making art and you pay once to own a copy of it instead of renting temporary access. That way the artist gets money for making art and you pay once to own a copy of it instead of renting temporary access.
  
-Streaming is good for the first two steps. Finding new music is hard, and you have to listen to it a few times at different times, since it might only hit in a certain mood. Starting from music you already like and letting the recommender algorithm drive discovery is a good way to find new music. After that though, I prefer to pay the artist for their work instead of paying rent, and prefer to download the data once rather than download it every time I want to listen to music. Bandwidth is a limited resource!+Streaming is good for the first two steps. Finding new music is hard, and you have to listen to it a few times at different times, since it might only hit in a certain mood. Starting from music you already like and letting the recommender algorithm drive discovery is a good way to find new music. After that though, I prefer to pay the artist for their work instead of paying rent, and prefer to download the data once rather than every time I want to listen to it. Bandwidth is a limited resource!
  
 One of the benefits of owning music is that you can put it on whatever device you want and use whatever program you prefer to play it. However, if you have multiple devices then getting your music collection available on all of them becomes an exercise in file management. Music also has its own inherent taxonomical structure (artist, album, label etc) that benefits from specific treatment in terms of organization. This article roughly depicts how I do all that. One of the benefits of owning music is that you can put it on whatever device you want and use whatever program you prefer to play it. However, if you have multiple devices then getting your music collection available on all of them becomes an exercise in file management. Music also has its own inherent taxonomical structure (artist, album, label etc) that benefits from specific treatment in terms of organization. This article roughly depicts how I do all that.
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 <mermaid> <mermaid>
-flowchart TD+flowchart LR
     Source -.-> |download| beet["beet import"]     Source -.-> |download| beet["beet import"]
     beet --> laptop(("fa:fa-laptop laptop"))     beet --> laptop(("fa:fa-laptop laptop"))
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     W -.-> |tunefusion| phone(("fa:fa-mobile-phone phone"))     W -.-> |tunefusion| phone(("fa:fa-mobile-phone phone"))
 +    W ~~~ phone
  
     click phone "https://www.dbpoweramp.com/tunefusion.htm"     click phone "https://www.dbpoweramp.com/tunefusion.htm"
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   - the concept of a filesystem that is shared between apps does not exist on iOS   - the concept of a filesystem that is shared between apps does not exist on iOS
  
-Regarding backgrounding, in general iOS is very strict about apps performing any work in the background. Since sync programs are designed around running in the background, this more or less precludes the file synchronization strategy. It's worth noting that this could be worked around using iCloud, but since I don't use iCloud, that doesn't work for me.+Regarding backgrounding, in general iOS is very strict about apps performing any work in the background. Since sync programs are designed around running in the background, this more or less precludes the file synchronization strategy. This could be worked around using iCloud, but I don't use iCloud.
  
-Even if a sync program was viable on iOS, we would hit another blocker. iOS does not have the concept of a shared filesystem. Apps are only able to write to their own sandboxed filesystems. Consequently any files downloaded by a sync app would not be accessible by a music player app.+Even if a sync program was viable on iOS, we would hit another blocker. iOS does not have the concept of a shared filesystem. Apps may only write to their sandboxed filesystems. Consequently any files downloaded by a sync app would not be accessible by a music player app.
  
 The upshot is that to solve this problem you need a music playback app that also has its own syncing service built in. Obviously this is [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy|heretical]]. A music player should focus solely on playing music, while a syncing application should handle data sync. The result of that being impossible is the app store has a bunch of terrible apps with names like "[[https://apps.apple.com/bf/app/music-player-tube-mp3-player/id1572190372|Network music player ULTIMATE]]" that have varying levels of support for playback and/or sync to/from various data sources - Samba, WebDAV, whatever else you can think of. I've tried most of them and they all suck. The upshot is that to solve this problem you need a music playback app that also has its own syncing service built in. Obviously this is [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy|heretical]]. A music player should focus solely on playing music, while a syncing application should handle data sync. The result of that being impossible is the app store has a bunch of terrible apps with names like "[[https://apps.apple.com/bf/app/music-player-tube-mp3-player/id1572190372|Network music player ULTIMATE]]" that have varying levels of support for playback and/or sync to/from various data sources - Samba, WebDAV, whatever else you can think of. I've tried most of them and they all suck.
  
-I can already hear you saying, "why don't you [[just]] play back your music over the network using a network player"? In addition to the available apps sucking, network conditions on mobile are variable enough that streaming from a home server results in a generally poor experience. Industrial streaming services like Spotify have to go to [[https://engineering.atspotify.com/2020/02/how-spotify-aligned-cdn-services-for-a-lightning-fast-streaming-experience/|extreme lengths]] to paper over the network enough to deliver a good experience. "Pinning" - where you stream but select specific items to keep locally on disk - doesn't really work for me because I don't want to choose what music to listen each time I anticipate a no-network scenario.+I can already hear you saying, "why don't you [[just]] stream your music from home using a player"? In addition to the available apps sucking, network conditions on mobile are variable enough that streaming from a home server results in a generally poor experience. Industrial streaming services like Spotify have to go to [[https://engineering.atspotify.com/2020/02/how-spotify-aligned-cdn-services-for-a-lightning-fast-streaming-experience/|extreme lengths]] to paper over the network enough to deliver a good experience. "Pinning" - where you stream but select specific items to keep locally on disk - doesn't really work for me because I don't want to choose what music to listen each time I anticipate a no-network scenario.
    
 Anyway, as luck would have it, the [[https://apps.apple.com/us/app/foobar2000/id1072807669|best music player on iOS]] also has [[https://www.dbpoweramp.com/tunefusion.htm|the best sync solution]] I've seen. The downside is that the companion program that runs on your server Anyway, as luck would have it, the [[https://apps.apple.com/us/app/foobar2000/id1072807669|best music player on iOS]] also has [[https://www.dbpoweramp.com/tunefusion.htm|the best sync solution]] I've seen. The downside is that the companion program that runs on your server
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music_management.1779144410.txt.gz · Last modified: by qlyoung
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