recently i have had a bit of a change in what i've been listening to. still a lot of post hardcore and adjacent stuffs (my almost 12hr long playlist is wonderful), but also i have been listening to mostly evanescence and radiohead. i really like fallen by evanescence; my favourite song is the my immortal band version because it's epic. also, i have been alternating between ok computer and in rainbows by radiohead. i like karma police and 15 step respectively. (radiohead has embeds disabled on bandcamp!). the irony and kokoronashi covers by majiko and akane are soooo good especially kokoronashi. and, of course, misc. vocaloid songs. venus by nanahoshi orchestra recently was added to project sekai, but it is unfortunately not on spotify :( so sad...
this entry is updated frequently. check back in december!

this past summer i have gotten really into post hardcore and emo music, specifically later stuff around 2000-2012ish. i have a couple 7+ hour playlists which i listened to a TON. i really like to sing along to songs, and the energy in a lot of these made it fun sing along in the car on the way to&from work. i even learned to fry scream (mediocre-ly). here are my favourites (including some embeds!!):

as for albums, discovering the waterfront, silverstein -- SOOOOFUCKINGGOOD DUDEEEE i had only ever heard smile in your sleep before so i was SO pleased to discover an almost no-skip album (i don't care for rodeo clown sorry). my favourite song is my sword vs your dagger, but ides of march is a veeeeery close second.
my second favourite album is all's well that ends well, chiodos. another almost no-skip album! i love their instrumentals. probably my favourite song is all nereids beware, with no hardcore dancing in the living room and the words "best friend" become redefined tied for second.
finishing off the top 3 albums is a tie between when broken is easily fixed by silverstein and the used by the used. smashed into pieces; blue and yellow.the used isn't on bandcamp :(

there are so many top songs, but i'll limit myself to 10. in no particular order (& excluding above (& not embedding because that's too much)): i reeeeally loved forevermore by picture me broken. god her voice is perfect for this song it's soooooo fucking good... juneau, funeral for a friend. i didn't say i was powerful, i said i was a wizard by chiodos. when i go out, i want to go out in a chariot of fire by escape the fate. borderline stalker, signal the escape. november, silverstein. two birds stoned at once, chiodos. forgetting alli mae, paddock park. what it is to burn - new version, finch. the diary of jane, breaking benjamin.

additionally! i was super into vocaloid at the beginning of the summer and then again closer to the end. however i was less looking for new music and more returning to what i already know, so i'll make a new post about vocaloid at another time.

i loveeeee listening to music and even more i love having a lot of music to listen to. i have been trying to move away from using spotify only for music (with limited success...) but it can be difficult to build a collection without using music streaming apps. so i thought i would talk a bit about all the software/websites/etc i use to manage and build my digital and physical music collections.

disclaimer: my pc runs on linux mint, so most of the softwares i will include are compatible with linux and might not be available for a windows or macos computer. however i will include some programs which are compatible with windows, though my experience with them is outdated.

second, more important disclaimer: there is a legality issue when it comes to copying music. the following information pertains only to canada; the legality of copying may be different in your country and i encourage you to look into it before anything. THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE & I DO NOT ENDORSE DOING ANYTHING AGAINST THE LAW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! it is legal to copy audio files from a cd provided the copies are from a legitimate source, remain in your possession, you do your own copying, and the files are not played outside of private gatherings (there may be allowances made for djs). the sharing and downloading of copyright material from the internet (ie. a peer-to-peer file sharing service) is more difficult. from what i could find, it's probably fine to download something if it comes from an authorised source (such as a ripped cd which was bought legitimately), but uploading or sharing could be seen as authorising the distribution of copyright material. so, if you're going to use any file sharing service, you should probably only use it for music which is in the public domain. in canada, works become part of the public domain 50 years after the creator has died. so, as of today (18th october 2026), a creator had to have died on 18th october 1976 for their works to be public. most often, if an illegal download is detected on your network, your ISP will send you a notice. if you're concerned about it, just buy music legitimately. supporting artists is important!

tldr: ripping = OK & awesome, random downloading/p2p = maybe ok downloading probably not ok uploading unless whoever made it died at least 50 years ago.

we'll start first with building a digital collection. where do i get music?

my favourite is bandcamp, which is a music sharing/commerce platform for independent labels and artists. bandcamp is (usually) a paid platform, but artists sometimes price their releases pretty accessibly or as "name your price," which means you can download for free. additionally, the third friday of every month is bandcamp friday, which means that 100% of what you pay for a track or album goes to the artist, rather than the platform taking a portion of the price.

soulseek is a peer-to-peer music file sharing platform. it allows you to download and/or upload pretty much whatever you can think of, and supports multiple file types (such as FLAC and WAV, not just MP3!). soulseek displays your ip address on your user profile, so to protect your privacy you should use a vpn. the soulseek client for linux is called nicotine+ and is available from the software manager; in my experience, downloading from the soulseek website directly does not work.

cds are also a great way to get new music, though they can get expensive if you buy new. i typically find my cds from thrift stores, secondhand music stores like the beat goes on, or stealing from my mom's gigantic cd collection. you can also buy new (ex. from sunrise records), or borrow from a local library for purely listening purposes. i use asunder to rip cds -- their default format is OGG, so if you prefer another you'll have to change it. you can also rip directly from windows media player.

an aside about file formats: which should i use? MP3 is by far the most common because the file sizes are very small, allowing more files to be added to an sd card. however, because they are so highly compressed, the audio quality is not so great. M4A and OGG are similar to MP3, though they have slightly higher quality. WAV is much higher quality, though because it is uncompressed, file sizes are typically very large. FLAC is considered the gold standard for music, because its file sizes are not so large and it uses lossless compression. important: i've heard before that MP3 files degrade over time... this is untrue. digital files are unable to degrade because its code is static; MP3 'loss' refers either to its lossy compression or to the gradual degradation of physical media storage like cds over time. so, it's true that your physical storage can degrade, but your digital MP3s will be fine.

now for managing your digital collection: especially if you're using soulseek or some other service to download, some of your tag information might be messed up. wrong dates, duplicate artists with different spelling/capitalisation, track number errors, etc. for this, i like puddletag (from software manager). puddletag allows you to edit track title, artist, year, genre, album, and number. for information i don't know, i use discogs.com to find. discogs is also helpful for finding album art, as well as keeping track of your digital collection. mp3tag is a good windows alternative for puddletag (as of 2024).

if you're worried about music taking up too much storage on your computer or phone, prefer physical storage mediums, want to gift music to a friend, or etc., you can also burn new cds. for this i use k3b, though you can also do this from windows media player; my preferred cd brand is verbatim. these can be found on amazon (pack of 100 for $35) or in office supply stores like staples. you'll need a blank cd-r, cd/dvd player, a burning software, and maybe 5 minutes. there are couple different types of cases, but i believe jewel cases are the easiest to find. as i mentioned before, cds can degrade over time, so make sure you're also storing your music digitally in case of corruption. verbatim cd-rs typically have 80 minutes of storage, which equates to roughly 20 songs, give or take.

now that you've downloaded all your music and organised it nicely, you'll probably want to listen to it. luckily, there are a million and one different music players. i use AIMP on my phone, and rhythmbox on pc. here are others i've tried: windows media player, AIMP linux, audacious. AIMP works well on mobile and allegedly on windows/macos, but the linux version was difficult to set up (downloaded from .ru site, actual software was in vietnamese???), and extremely laggy and hard to use. i was also unable to connect it to last.fm to scrobble. audacious has couple cute classic winamp skins you can use, but i also couldn't connect this to last.fm. rhythmbox is less cute but i can scrobble with it which is more important to me than cuteness. i still need to find a mobile app i can scrobble from, but AIMP works in the meantime... i mostly use the spotify mobile app anyways.

an ode to last.fm: i love to keep track of what i listen to. spotify wrapped is great for this, but it can't track anything from outside of itself, so it's a little unhelpful if you want to include, say, stuff from bandcamp. my last wrapped was supremely inaccurate. last.fm is great. it tracks listens by 'scrobbles,' and you can link it to a number of sites and applications. and it works with receiptify, so you can kind of get an end-of-year summary à la spotify wrapped.