Hi guys. This may seem like a strange question but does anyone know of any online systems that would allow me to catalogue my music collection? By this I mean music I have listened to that I either listen to on Spotify, Bandcamp or have purchased physically.
For context I’m old enough to remember life without the internet so when I was younger I had a collection of albums on my shelves and I would flick through them until something caught my eye. I find now that I am beholden to the algorithms that show me either what I play most or what programs like Spotify want me to listen to.
It’s infuriating to listen to an album these days and then months later want to hear it again, only to have a forgotten the name. I have an album in mind right now and can only think of the cover but really want to hear it again.
Anyway, does anyone know of a site like this that would let me browse a collection of user-collated collection of music with cover art?
This isn’t really what you’re describing but last year I started using Obsidian, which is an amazing note making tool that allows you to create hyperlinks between notes and use things like tags which makes finding stuff again quite easy.
There are many ways to set it up and change how it looks but I’ve a got a few different workspaces depending on what I’m using it for, this is the music one. The node graph in the bottom right shows all the individual notes I’ve made for artists/labels/mixes/specific songs, and the connections and tags that link them. Whenever I find something I really like I’ll make notes in Obsidian in the appropriate folder along with what label it was on etc, and I’ll link it to any other associated items which is very quick and easy to do on the fly. That way I can start to build up a web of connections and map out my musical taste in a way that helps me rediscover things and find new stuff too.
Like you I’ve also been quite frustated by the nature of online music discovery which usually boils down to algorithms, commercialism, and tastemakers. Trying to to ‘primary research’ can be a little bit tricky but usually going through the label’s page in Discogs is good, and it’s possible to do a random search in Bandcamp which can occasionally bring up something you like though you inevitably have to wade through a lot that you just aren’t into. I think going to small labels/imprints is the best way though, because that’s where a lot of new artists will be trying to get their stuff out to. While I feel music is largely a meritocracy there’s definitely a lot of amazing material out there that ends up getting lost in the noise or is just relatively unnoticed.
This looks really intriguing. I’m happy to put in a bit of work and this might be fun to play with. I’m a bog fan of music blogs and reviews. If a writer recommends an album I will happily give it a listen even if it isn’t initially my taste and it is usually these albums that I come back to again and again.
Shout out to a blog for heavy music that is beautifully curated and has been a joy to read for over ten years: https://www.heavyblogisheavy.com/
Shout out to what looks like one of the gnarliest and most coherently organized obsidian systems I’ve seen - especially for music. Very cool. I only use tagging and linking pretty minimally. Would there be any way you’d consider sharing these notes via a template or something if that exists?
Thanks. Yeah I may do that at some point, though I feel like you might be better off I gave you a list of the plugins I’m using and a description of how to set some parts of it up. That way you could make it work best for you. Some of it is a bit janky but ‘good enough’ for what I need too, and I’m going to change some visual stuff around at some point.
There’s a few essential plugins like Zoottelkeeper which autocreates index notes in folders, Pane Relief, and I think some others that I can’t quite figure out just now, and some very handy ones like Auto Link Title which is good for pasting in YT links for example and having it autocreate the link title. Templater is another nice one if you want newly created files in a particular folder to automatically have a timestamp or other structure in there. I’m not quite sure what I used for the tables, I think it was Dataview, I just use it so I can have the alphabetical list that Zoottelkeeper maintains as well as a seperate chronological one. There’s many other probably better ways you can go about this though.
And for the graph I did this to colour everything -
And that’s a local graph window that I’ve linked to the one on the left, so it shows the local network of whatever particular note you’re looking at there.
Aside from all that I don’t think I’ve done too much else. I recommend using workspaces so that you can quickly recall and switch Obsidian depending on if you’re using it for music stuff or work etc.
Yeah I’ve done that too, either opened something in a tab meaning to take a closer look at it and not getting around to it, or adding a cool track on YT to my liked list which ends up lost down there somewhere. So now I really try to chuck a note about it into Obsidian, even if it’s brief, and add tags and links so I’ll be able to find it again one day. I used to have a few google docs with stuff I needed to find again, but this is just a much better way. It’s basically like a centralised repository of information I can use to offload stuff that my poor brain can’t hold on to
Jazzed to try implementing some of this in Obsidian. Thanks a lot for the outline/ideas.
@snakegoat sharing the pain, but unfortunately no ideas to add - If only there were some way to tie in ‘listen later’ type lists or virtual album collections for all platforms. Alas they would need some kind of shared track/media model or API and it’s hard to picture that happening
True, but that’s one source. What about an album your colleague puts on in the office once a few months ago and both of you have forgotten the name?
It’s also the method of choosing an album to listen to in the first place. Obsidian looks interesting as I can create intuitive “suggestions” for myself based on my own musical history
Obsidian is great as it’s just text files, so you can so anything with it. Takes a while to launch on my phone and iPad though, as the iCloud part has to sync.
I’ve been using the built in Notes app for a vinyl wishlist.
Things like this is where something like Obsidian shines, I would try to add tags to the note that hint about its provenance; your colleague’s name, the workplace, if you were eating lunch or dealing with a particular problem while listening to it. And things like a particular lyric or instrument that stands out or its genre. So you could just quickly type “#Bob#TheOffice#Lunch#Mandolin” etc into the note which might be enough to help you figure out what the heck that one tune was. I think if you’re using a device with a mic you can record sound clips into a note too, might be handy if you don’t have time to write stuff down.
You can get it to embed YT links so you can listen to stuff through Obsidian too, I haven’t checked but I wouldn’t be surprised if you can do the same with Soundcloud/Bandcamp etc. I usually just open links in Firefox though.
At the moment I’m doing manual backups and transfers to different devices when I need it, so loads are plenty fast. They do a cloud sync service which I might have to try out at some point.
