2025-03-15
I love music, and over the past decade and some change, I've gone through a few different music streaming services.
Most recently (since Google Play Music was discontinued), I've been using YouTube Music. The selection is fine, but I like how there are really few restrictions on what I can find. However, like so many others, I'm getting tired of not owning my media. I find that as I look at my playlists, I see "X songs hidden." Not even the courtesy of letting me know what is gone???
I set up a Jellyfin server for a friend of mine a few years ago and thought it could work well with music. And truth be told, it works okay. The music metadata population isn't great, but overall, it works.
But this isn't about the technology that is allowing me to self-host; rather, it's about the joy that is coming out of the process.
I am having fun figuring out what music to add to the collection. As part of this process, I've been reflecting on all of the music that I love and what I want to move to this server.
My initial thought was, "Let's get the albums that I know have been in heavy rotation over the past decade."
First, every Carly Rae Jepsen album. I like her music. There have been multiple years when she has been my most listened-to artist. What has been so fun is going over these albums and reflecting on where I was in life during that time.
My high school girlfriend asking me to be in a YouTube dance video for Call Me Maybe, tossing Body Language on while I was biking to my buddy's apartment to play Mario Kart. The sonic rope-a-dope that I put my now fiancée through as I was bouncing back and forth between Dedicated and We Are Not Your Kind by Slipknot.
A fun walk down memory lane, to be sure.
Next, I had the thought, "I don't really want to just get individual songs for everything," which led me to take songs I liked and listen to the whole album that went along with it.
I recently listened to Primus's The Desaturating Seven, and I was blown away by the story that was told over the duration of the album. Folks may think this is obvious, but I came up in a time of picking out individual songs rather than listening to albums in their entirety.
My only concern right now is around discovering new music. Previously, I would click through categories and end up looking at related artists. Now, I'm not sure what my plan is. I'll need to think about this.
However, what I can say is that it has been an awesome experience falling back in love with music I've listened to over the years.