CD Collecting

For a few years now I've been really into collecting physical media, really since the discovery of the friends of the library bookstore near me. Obviously this is a good place to get cheap books (usually ~$3), but they also have a decent selection of CDs and movies.

I initially started collecting, as many people do, with vinyl records. While vinyl is great, you quickly start to spend a lot of money on anything other than cheap jazz records or compilation albums. Anything with moderate popularity will quickly reach $15-$30.

Somewhere along the way I started listening to CDs in the car on my commute to work. As the collection in my car started to grow, I realized CDs were much cheaper if I wanted to get albums I knew. At the library bookstore CDs were usually $2-$5 and it quickly became my go-to location for building my initial CD collection.

Once I had a large enough collection, I bought a 5-disc CD changer to connect to my sound system. The extra benefit provided by CDs is being able to queue up 5 albums instead of having to switch the vinyl side every 20 minutes. I don't mind flipping the vinyl, but during work it can sometimes disrupt things.

Around this time I became frustrated with Spotify's policies regarding AI and artists I was also becoming more aware of Spotify's recommendation algorithm removing my control of music discovery. I decided it would be fun to try ripping all my CDs and playing them locally on my computer while I was working. Naturally this led to me wanting to put them on my phone.

As my collection grew even more I struggled to maintain the large collection, especially as tagging the files became more problematic. I started searching for tools online that would help me manage my music. Initially I had just been using Picard to tag my music after ripping them. I had been aware of Jellyfin for media streaming when I was in college, but had never really used it. It seemed to be a good solution for video streaming/hosting, but I just needed audio streaming. More searching led me to Navidrome, which is the service I use now.

I bought an HP EliteDesk Mini on eBay for a good price and loaded Ubuntu onto it alongside Navidrome, a DDNS service, and Wireguard. I initially used Tauon as my music player, but I've recently switched to Feishin. To stream music to my phone (over the VPN), I use Symfonium, which is well worth the one-time fee.

For tagging the music files I use Beets and for backup I use Borg. I'm still trying to figure out the best backup solution, but this works for now.

At some point here I think it would be cool to automatically get an album list and put it on this website.