Like you I try to support artists by purchasing physical media or releases on Bandcamp. Outside of that I get my music on Soulseek, through torrents, Usenet, and occasionally XDCC. I don’t need lossless files and even if I download FLACs I transcode them to 320kbps MP3 before they go on my iPod anyway. The harder it becomes to acquire music legally the less bad I feel about downloading with abandon.

Awesome! If you do I’d love to hear how it goes. I’m sure I’m not the only person trying this but I haven’t found much online from other users yet.

I absolutely don’t need (nor can I afford) another QAZ but this is just too good and I must have it 🤤

Streaming my own music was the reason I got into self-hosting in the first place and I’ve been satisfied with Navidrome for over a year now. My preference is to stream via an app on my phone but I’ve made accounts for a couple friends and they stream happily on multiple devices using the browser interface.

As stated, my reason is that I was paying Spotify more money for less music and I was unhappy with that. You pointed out yourself that musicians barely get by in the streaming era so I would rather support them on Bandcamp (I know it has it’s own issues) or buying physical media whenever possible rather than pirating. Streaming platforms may make music you want to listen to seemingly affordable and accessible but that’s not the case for everyone. This is my personal experience.

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!

GIMP is fine but who can find me replacements for After Effects and Premiere Pro? I need software for video editing/motion graphics and these are the two apps keeping me shackled to Adobe for now…

Always love seeing the back! Both sides look fantastic

I’ve had good luck accessing Channel4 via the NordVPN browser extension in Firefox. Using my desktop VPN (OpenVPN) stopped working some months ago as it was detected by the site but it seems the browser extension flies under the radar.

This is absolutely ridiculous and I LOVE it

This looks sick you did an amazing job!

I’m a MacBook user and I’ve been very happy with AlDente. It took some reading to understand all the features but I really believe it’s made a difference in the health of my battery.

I’ve been searching for music recommendation and playlist generator alternatives to Spotify and this looks great!

Not a playlist per se but Datafruits.fm is a cooperative online radio station

Oh how dare you get it stuck in my head 🤣

I’ve been doing this for a few years using AirVPN but it seems like that stopped working after January 1st. Videos would not play unless I used the NordVPN browser plugin, this seems to be a workaround for some VPN restrictions. I do enjoy the commercials!

For what it’s worth, I have this problem sometimes when an album has multiple releases and you can choose which release to pull tags from via the context menu in Picard. There’s also a pretty powerful scripting language that you can use to specify the directory and file re-naming structure as well. It took me a while to get my structure set up properly but once I did it’s been a life saver in keeping my files organized.

If there’s something in particular you’re trying to achieve that’s not working I’d be happy to try and help!

I’ll be taking on graphic design, branding, and motion graphics projects. I don’t have an online portfolio at the moment as I’m still getting everything together but if anyone is in need of design work they can certainly send me a message.

I quit my awful office job in September after 10 years to focus on recovery from acute health issues. I’ll be freelancing in 2024 and even though I know I made the right decision I’m secretly terrified that I will fail. Just gotta keep going!

Keycaps that came in boxes are labeled and stored on a shelf. Loose caps and switches in bags are sorted into 6.2qt. storage bins with colored lids and I have a note in my notes app with a master list of profiles (eg “Teal lid - DSS Shale, DCS Input” “Yellow lid - Gateron Pink Linear, Tecsee Carrot Linear” etc) because I was having trouble keeping track of everything.