@Doofy - Exactly! This first year of retirement has been great.
you may think retirement will give you time to listen and read more - it does but not to the extent that you imagined, as there are so many other things to do too!!
@greg - Exactly! I still haven't started some of the things I had planned for my first 3 months. But, there's the challenge!
This pruning thread couldn't have come at a better time for me as I've also started the process of of going through all boxes of treasures that have been saved by the those loved ones that have gone before us. It keeps me floating between the past and the present and reminding me how precious our time is with each other. My grandparents kept all the letters we'd sent them as kids as well as my Dad's letters to them when he was stationed in Ottawa during the war and telling them he's fallen in love with this most amazing girl from Saskatchewan. My Mom kept all my school report cards in a photo album and along with the "needs to apply himself better" was my grade one report card stating my teacher thought I was a "Good little citizen". That's me alright.
I've sorted through a whack of old toolboxes and every old screw or nail or part that would fit in a jar and it's pretty easy to decide what to save. What's really hard is to part with things that they've made or used as second nature at the time. I wore out my Dad's gardening shirt this year as the material finally just let go.
I suppose, for me, this is the only good thing about this pandemic. The opportunity to reconnect with the past has been most fulfilling.
I do like the idea of looking at my collection like a radio station, or my own personal Spotify. Changes the perspective a bit and lessens the self-inflicted pressure to listen to everything, or to delete things that don't ring my bell at a particular moment in time. I will still delete on occasion, but only when I know I'm not going to miss those tracks.
The biggest challenge for me is deciding whether to download everything to my HD, which has always been my default, or to let some things live in the cloud, where I can stream on demand. I wish Bandcamp had a better app, because I'd like to be able to stream and shuffle that collection without having to download everything and stick it in a playlist. I have Bandcamp subscriptions to a couple of artists who are VERY prolific. Amazon's music player, to use a counter example, is good enough that I'm comfortable leaving many of those purchases (like those massive $1.99 classical composer box sets that I purchased on the off chance that I will someday want to listen to classical music) in the cloud.
I've also cleaned up my hard drive, expanded my iMac's memory, and done some iTunes reorganizing that should pay dividends down the road. I'm tentatively starting to explore some of the prog resources that @Germanprof and @peterfrederics mentioned, as a few of the bands referenced are personal faves. Not that that will help with my original concern, but c'est la vie.
I probably need some definitions here because I'm so out of the loop, but since I do nothing "in the cloud," are you just wanting to stream tunes when you're away from your iMac and any of your drives? When I used to go away on a trip, I would just dump as large a Spotify playlist as possible on my wife's phone and just plug that in. My own personal car is nearly a 20 year-old Prius, so there's no USB connect, so I just listen to a set of 6 discs that are randomly generated from my iTunes library.
I used to want a shuffle feature for both Spotify and Bandcamp, but came up with better ideas for both because I quickly learned that as open as I am to a world of music, I became disheartened by the amount of music that was obviously made only for sheer capitalist intentions rather than actually treating it as an artform. If you're interested, I can pass those other methods of discovery on to you.
I know I can download Spotify tracks to my phone and listen that way, but it takes up valuable storage space on the phone. Cloud storage means I can access my music anywhere I have an internet connection. Using Amazon Music, as an example, I can listen to any album I bought from Amazon (downloads or CDs that include a free download) because my library is in the cloud. That also means I don't need to store all my Amazon tracks on the iMac hard drive, because the Amazon cloud isn't going anywhere. Same with Bandcamp, I can stream anything in my collection from my phone or a computer (like my work laptop in the old days when I went to the office) without having to download first. Neither is as user-friendly as iTunes in terms of playlists, etc., but they work.
I am interested in your "other methods of discovery" if you don't mind sharing.
Ah, OK, I see now. Not sure what I’d do if I ever owned a phone, but I’m guessing I’d probably use one of those SD cards to store stuff. That reminds me that I would sometimes use a flash drive in those rental cars too.
These are the closest I’ve found to randomized listening on both Spotify and Bandcamp:
Cinuosity (maaan, this one isn’t working tonight - OK, it’s “iffy” tonight. Sometimes the playlists show up in your Spotify playlists even if it says it didn’t find anything. Anyway, I contacted the creator of the app...)
and as of a few days ago (but, unfortunately not tonight either - what’s the deal?) Forgotify
Bandcamp Random Album (also provides a regular random album suggestion in your Twitter feed).
Randcamp (this used to have a better interface by taking you directly to the page, but you can still click on the page link to get you there).
I just now found a shuffler for all of your Spotify playlists called Shufflefy which is not quite the same as total random, but interesting.
Comments
@Doofy - Exactly! This first year of retirement has been great.
@greg - Exactly! I still haven't started some of the things I had planned for my first 3 months. But, there's the challenge!
This pruning thread couldn't have come at a better time for me as I've also started the process of of going through all boxes of treasures that have been saved by the those loved ones that have gone before us. It keeps me floating between the past and the present and reminding me how precious our time is with each other. My grandparents kept all the letters we'd sent them as kids as well as my Dad's letters to them when he was stationed in Ottawa during the war and telling them he's fallen in love with this most amazing girl from Saskatchewan. My Mom kept all my school report cards in a photo album and along with the "needs to apply himself better" was my grade one report card stating my teacher thought I was a "Good little citizen". That's me alright.
I've sorted through a whack of old toolboxes and every old screw or nail or part that would fit in a jar and it's pretty easy to decide what to save. What's really hard is to part with things that they've made or used as second nature at the time. I wore out my Dad's gardening shirt this year as the material finally just let go.
I suppose, for me, this is the only good thing about this pandemic. The opportunity to reconnect with the past has been most fulfilling.
but since I do nothing "in the cloud," are you just wanting to stream tunes
when you're away from your iMac and any of your drives? When I used to go
away on a trip, I would just dump as large a Spotify playlist as possible on
my wife's phone and just plug that in. My own personal car is nearly a
20 year-old Prius, so there's no USB connect, so I just listen to a set of
6 discs that are randomly generated from my iTunes library.
I used to want a shuffle feature for both Spotify and Bandcamp,
but came up with better ideas for both because I quickly learned
that as open as I am to a world of music, I became disheartened by
the amount of music that was obviously made only for sheer capitalist
intentions rather than actually treating it as an artform. If you're interested,
I can pass those other methods of discovery on to you.
but I’m guessing I’d probably use one of those SD cards to store stuff.
That reminds me that I would sometimes use a flash drive in those rental cars too.
These are the closest I’ve found to randomized listening on both Spotify and Bandcamp:
Daily Random
Cinuosity (maaan, this one isn’t working tonight -
OK, it’s “iffy” tonight. Sometimes the playlists show up
in your Spotify playlists even if it says it didn’t find anything.
Anyway, I contacted the creator of the app...)
and as of a few days ago (but, unfortunately not tonight either
- what’s the deal?)
Forgotify
Bandcamp Random Album (also provides a regular
random album suggestion in your Twitter feed).
Randcamp (this used to have a better interface by taking you directly
to the page, but you can still click on the page link to get you there).
I just now found a shuffler for all of your Spotify playlists
called Shufflefy which is not quite the same as total random, but interesting.