Regaining Control Of What I Listen To

06 Mar, 2026

First of all: I had to write that title in first person because I really don't want this post to sound like I'm talking to a crowd. Regain control of your life, your soul, YOUR music! Yeah whatever skip the ads bro.

It's Bandcamp Friday today. As many are already aware of, I'm a composer and make music for a living. I also have a Bandcamp, but this is really not the point right now. The point is that it's just a good day to write about how I'm trying to listen to music more like my teenage self than what I became when the age of streaming fell upon us, and I feel like the whole things too often gets reduced to "streaming is unethical, pays artists too little, you should buy CDs and attend live shows and if you don't you're either lazy or an asshole". That, or "it's really easy to set up your own streaming service! :)" when IT'S NOT IT'S NOT IT'S NOT STOP TRYING TO SELL ME TECHNICAL SOLUTIONS AAAAAAAAAAAAA¹

While I do think you should really consider who you're giving your money to, I really don't want to talk about ethical alternatives to streaming more than I want to talk about experiencing music in other ways. I'm talking about

HOARDING MP3S

Alright, you can hoard FLACs if you'd like. Let's face it: when you're used to having all music (not exactly, actually, but a lot of music) at your fingertips, getting back to your own library seems limiting. When I was a teenager I couldn't wait to upgrade from my iPod Nano to a Classic because "What if I want to listen to a song that couldn't fit in?". You will never achieve that amount of storage unless you really set up your own streaming service², and even then you're still limited by what you can store. And hoard.

I have an Apple Family subscription with some friends and that comes with free Apple Music. I don't use it often, because I use an old iPod Classic (modded) for normal listening when I'm out. At home, I tend to... listen to stuff on YouTube, sometimes. I actually don't listen to music THAT much at home because, well, that's my job and I actually need to listen to what I'm doing, and if I want to get into a deep listening session I sometimes just plop on my armchair and use my iPod. So, here's my rotation:

• iPod Classic for the road
• If what I want to listen to is not on my iPod: YouTube at home, Apple Music (on phone) outside if it's available, otherwise back to Youtube (fuck ads btw I'm not paying Google)
• Secret third option: I sometimes send music through Telegram either to myself or to friends. If I know I did, I retrieve it from there and listen to it from my phone

As you can see, it's not perfect at all. And I'm also writing this because I want to take more care and reduce option 2 (option 3 too but it's so specific I usually just listen to my own WIPs lol).
Reasonably, can you handle not being able to listen to a song you don't have at hand? This is not a rhetorical question. Some things, even though they sound silly to others, are still unbearable to us. But it's still a question I think it's valid asking. As I wrote already, I still seek the song I want to listen to outside of my device of choice. To be honest, if I have no other choice I tend to hum it to myself. I do that a lot when I forget headphones at home.

I want the address the point of "hoarding MP3s". We're not used to it anymore. I am not used to it as much as I did: new release from an artist I like? I'd download it immediately. New game I enjoyed? Snatched the entire soundtrack. Cool anime I'm watching? Got all opening and ending singles, soundtracks and character albums. Which is, frankly, a bit of an overkill and what probably feels... daunting, today. But do you remember the feeling of buying an album, or even pirating it, and listening to it over and over? It seems I had forgotten all about it until recently. And it really made me feel like I had been listening to music wrong.

I don't believe there's a right or wrong way to listen to music, to be honest, but I do think that if you're feeling numb there might be something wrong with how you're doing it. Now I'm rambling, but it's something I think a lot about. Feelings, I mean.

If you're still reading and you haven't been put off by this word vomit yet (yes, I am aware and that is precisely the point), let me get back to topic and try to pinpoint two very important questions to my issue:

1. How do I know what to hoard for my Personal Music Library?
2. How can I be sure to have at hand the song I want to listen to?

Putting them side by side, it's pretty obvious you're related. Every time I pivot to option 2 because my iPod doesn't have the music I want right now, I write it down. Slowly, a list of my Dream Music Library starts to take form. Something that I want to change from my teenage self is how much I need to keep. I used to keep drama CDs on my iPod just because they were part of a bigger album in which I liked... 2 tracks out of 15. Come on. My Library is my own, and if I want to keep a collection of, say, "just the openings to this one anime which are scattered from 10 other albums" I can just either put them all together on an album I just made up (it's legal), or put them in a playlist properly tagged. I prefer the first one because I'm not too used to playlists, but that's something I also would like to change (I recently got into mixtape sharing and it's been fun).

Music is Expensive

I know. I mean, it often costs much less than what it should be sold at. My take on this is that pirating music won't rob your favorite artists of a lot of the money they'd make from streaming, and if you can save the money for a subscription to buy a digital album down the line I'd say it's a good thing. Buying music instead of paying for a subscription also makes it easier to listen to it properly because you kind of want your money to be worth, and that might make you like it even more. I personally wishlist all cool albums I find on Bandcamp and buy some on Bandcamp Friday so they get all the money, and for some releases I just get them on day one. To be honest, music from smaller artists costs... very little if nothing at all, and if I even think of idk yt-dl'ing someone's work knowing they struggle to make end meets I feel the urge to stab myself violently, but downloading the whole Naruto Opening & Ending Playlist from YouTube as shitty 128 kbps is on a whole other level. Of course. I feel a bit silly pointing it out, but if I don't I feel my words morphing into "Please rob me and my friends, art has no value and you should pirate everything".

What I mean to say is that you should take time to give meaning and value to things. It's what I want to do, and it's why I want to take more time choosing the music I want to listen to and spend on. If you don't want to spend a cent on Crescendo's discography you can painstakingly download it in low quality on my Bandcamp and YouTube, can't stop you. But when you do, always consider: did you like this enough to keep it and listen to it again? If you do, consider paying for it when you can. Also, gift music to your friends! People don't do that anymore. Let's bring it back.

Discovering New Music

A friend of mine asked me recently how I do it, and my answer is pretty simple: I just want to. I hear something and I look for it. My mental list of my ideal Library is constantly growing, and it's a pain in the ass.

But I've got some rational tips that I also want try out more, so I'm listing them in random order:

• If you do stream sometimes, take advantage of radios and suggestions but don't stop there and take notes. New band or artist you don't know? Look into it. And note down that song that caught your ear, that's going in the playlist and possibly the rest of the album too
• Normal radios are still a thing, and you can listen to them. I've never been a fan because I need more control over what I'm listening to, but the "listen and then take notes" tactic works like a charm here too
• If you like a band or an artist, look for their influences. Then the influences of their influences. You can pull this trick almost ad libitum and it's going to lead you to so much cool stuff
• Share mixtapes with your most trusted friends. Don't feel pressured to listen to stuff you don't like just because your friend does, just use it as an excuse to try out new things. And if it doesn't... now you know you don't like it
• Follow artists on social media, especially smaller ones! Small artists tend to share a lot from their peers, and it's pretty easy to build a web of "cool musician I want to listen more of". This is probably the main reason I'm never out of music to buy, but always out of money on Bandcamp Friday

Also, I know you have CDs at home. I have a lot and some of them are still in their packaging because "I can stream it". Rip them, for God's sake! This is a strenuous plea to myself, actually.

#music #tips