#plexamp

A big part of making the decision was the 20+ years of MP3 files sitting disorganised and abandoned on various hard drives and old devices. I spent this past week or so organising them all onto one hard drive, updating file names and tags and folder structures so I could load them all into Plex.

I have a lot of music. Most of it ripped from CDs, some bought as MP3s, and some recorded from cassette tapes using an audio jack and a dream. There's bands I haven't thought about in years; ones that, once reminded, I missed terribly.

It made me realise in the 6 or so years I've had Spotify I've listened to less and less music overall and certainly to fewer once-beloved bands/albums. (I didn't even realise Linkin Park had a new album with a new co-lead singer, a woman, who is incredible.)

Now my music is all set up in Plex, I'm listening to it through PlexAmp, a fantastic music app I'm running on an old tablet, bluetoothed to some decent speakers instead of the crappy computer ones.

Result? I've maybe listened to more music this past week than in all of 2024.

Now there's obviously a novelty factor at play, having everything easily available for the first time in so long, but I think there's something else going on.

Algorithmically, Spotify fed me music. I had a few playlists, a few bands saved, but I didn't have a collection of my music. I'll be the first to admit I'm not a huge music buff, so without my music in front of me, without being able to flip through my personal musical history, the music I'd curated, it was just kind of lost. Listening to Spotify was more like walking through a record store or listening to the radio. I forgot about what I enjoyed and just listened to what was convenient.

Having all my music at my fingertips is making me happy. Happy listening and happy looking through my collection and happy remembering that yeah, that is an awesome album! It makes my brain feel good and I remember when I first heard it, who I was with, what was happening in my life!