Do I use a website to download songs off of YouTube or Spotify?

Where should I store the music? I haven’t any clue about self-hosting. I’m running GrapheneOS, is it enough to save the songs in Files and play in an app like Auxio? Maybe sync with SyncThing?

What’s the best way to compress mp3 files but still retain the quality (even possible)?

Could really use some help as I’m very inexperienced. :)

  • Blastboom StriceEnglish
    1·
    4 months ago

    So, I did some tests. Apparently you can download individual songs with spotify links, but it can no longer download spotify playlists. I think spotify possibly changed their api recently, breaking deemix… I had used it in the past to batch download ~3k songs…

    I used this reddit post to create the spotify app, but there’s probably an issue with the api.

    Ugh… thats an issue… I might create a post about that on the community tomorrow or today (its getting late)…

    I feel like I wasted your time too🫤

    If I get any updates I’ll try to let you know.

    • Wild Bill@midwest.socialOPEnglish
      2·
      4 months ago

      You didn’t waste my time. This experiment kick-started my process of finally downloading my music, even if it didn’t work out completely. Not yours or anybody else’s fault anyway. (: Do feel free to update me!

    • Wild Bill@midwest.socialOPEnglish
      2·
      4 months ago

      Hey again! Just a random question.

      Is it okay to skip the tagging steps in your guide? My school computer won’t allow me to download the mp3tag application, and I wonder if these tagging steps are necessary or will mess anything up if skipped? I downloaded some songs to my phone and most metadata and lyrics are there, and that’s fine with me. Does not completing the guide make me miss out on anything important (such as metadata or syncing the files)?

      • Blastboom StriceEnglish
        1·
        4 months ago

        Deemix fetches a lot of metadata and they are kinda accurate. If the tags appear properly on your devices you probably dont have to care much more. Besides, you can do it in the future if your needs change. Thus, I think you can skip it.

        As to why I do it:

        Deezer and any platform may have lacking info, so what I try to do is kinda merge tags from various sources in a way that I get ~the most and best info. Unfortunately (or fortunately) there is no standard way of tagging or at least ~noone uses it (I think flac and opus have some general tagging guidances, but many times they are ignored), so I tried to make my way of organizing the mess.

        Another reason is that if you have proper tags, you (almost) no longer need to create playlists (which are hard to move across devices). I also came up with the idea of adding a custom genre to the genre tags of songs. For example, I add the [F@vourites] genre tag to my favourite songs and I can simply select to play all songs under the [F@vourites] genre, bypassing the need of playlists.

        I just find it neat (but probably breaks the standard even more), lol. (And it’s a good way to unconsciously distract myself from my responsibilities.)

        • Wild Bill@midwest.socialOPEnglish
          1·
          4 months ago

          Do you think it would be fine for me to download all songs and then wait until I’m able to download the tagging applications, or does everything need to happen in one go for everything to sync? I’m thinking waiting about a year (when I buy a new computer) and then use the apps to tag my songs, or will I still need the data from deemix?

          • Blastboom StriceEnglish
            1·
            4 months ago

            Do you think it would be fine for me to download all songs and then wait until I’m able to download the tagging applications

            Yes, I think that’s what I would do. Downloading from deemix and tagging in other programs are separate processes, so you can do them separately at different times.

            I’d probably even encourage to download them now, because as you can see, deemix doesnt get updated anymore and things start to break.

            It also gives you time to revise your methods of downloading and tagging. (For example, I started downloading my songs from a website, one by one, until I found deemix (that website got shut down soon after, rip).)

            So, no need to do them simultaneously. Download them now and tag them next year or whenever you can. You can afterwards simply sync the (“properly”) tagged files to your other devices and have the metadata everywhere.

                • Wild Bill@midwest.socialOPEnglish
                  1·
                  4 months ago

                  Just to be clear, because some metadata is missing such as year released, tagging and such can all be solved in the other applications? Deemix is solely used for download?

                  • Blastboom StriceEnglish
                    1·
                    4 months ago

                    In the tags section in settings you can tell deemix to download tags along with the songs. It does a rather good job as it fetches data from deezer. Is the year missing from every song? On my setup, it automatically downloads the date (or only the year) of almost all the songs I download with deemix (some obscure songs may not have a proper date). Deemix should do a good job and download around 70% (this is an abstract percentage) of the tags you may need.

                    Once you download the songs from deemix, you should probably not need to use deemix again.

                    Tagging afterwards should fix many of the missing or incorrect metadata (obsucre songs may have lower success rates). In my guide, I even have the code for a python script I made, which I use to download the dates of songs from genius (the site with the lyrics). (I think it was my first time coding in python, lol.)

                    PS. It’s getting late, so I’ll probably be off for some time.