Returning to owning things in a streaming world

Sophie wrote about rebuilding her music collection with media she owns.

It was around 2013 that I started using Spotify, so my digital music collection has been frozen in time ever since, on an external hard drive languishing in the back of a cupboard. All the albums I’d enjoyed listening to since then, and the songs I’d been obsessed with, were just borrowed. If I cancelled my Apple Music subscription (and I would, if we didn’t have a family Apple One plan) I wouldn’t be able to listen to any of it.

This is a project I’ve been working on too!

I’m using Doppler on my Mac and iPhone to play music and manage my library. It aims to be a hybrid of the “all your music where you want it” approach many streaming apps have today, and the “curated collection of audio files” approach from the early days of digital audio. I appreciate the effort the developer put into the Doppler Transfer app for copying music from a Mac to an iOS device.

I also occasionally experiment with CLI music players, like mpd and cmus. Truthfully, I like the idea of these programs more than I enjoy using them day to day.

I have a small collection of vinyl too, which I play on my U-Turn Orbit turntable. Living in a small space with two other people, I have to keep my vinyl collection compact – we just don’t have the space for it. I will splash out for a vinyl version if it’s an album I really love though.