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!

This. This is a good list.

Violet Cold goes so hard. What’s your favorite album?

I’ve never gotten too deep into symphonic metal but Blackwater Park is a masterpiece

Many of these bands are new to me so I’m making my way down your list and Murmuüre is blowing my mind

I saw them live last month and Morning Star was a transcendent experience!!!

Hard to narrow down favorites because my feelings change often, but these 5 have been in rotation most often lately (in no particular order)

• King Woman - Celestial Blues [doom]
• System of a Down - Toxicity [alt metal? nu metal?]
• Violet Cold - Empire of Love [post-black metal]
• Liturgy - 93696 [black metal]
• Thou - Magus [sludge]

And I’ll say that I don’t necessarily think these are the best albums ever… I don’t think I could ever make up my mind about that! Looking forward to seeing everyone else’s picks.

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.

I forgot all about Babymetal, this slaps!

I love this! Where do you find inspiration?

This is absolutely ridiculous and I LOVE it

This looks sick you did an amazing job!

Nebulous