Music

[jeanathon]

What do you do for music on long passages or remote anchorages?

[boatman61]

Don't listen to it anymore at sea.. sailing I enjoy the song of the wind in the rigging, the boats dance and the conversation of my tiller pilot..
Do have it on from time to time when ashore though and I need to drown out the din of 'civilisation..

[wingssail]

I have approximately 140 GB of MP3 music (44,300 songs) on hard drives connected to my main ship's laptop computer (and backed up in two locations)

The music library is managed using File Explorer and by a windows application called MediaMonkey

Mostly I play music using MediaMonkey on the laptop playing through my Pioneer car stereo which drives various combinations of our 14 speakers installed in various cabins and outside. There are some additional amplifiers for the main cabin subwoofers and the outside speaker. It all controlled at the nav station but a remote can control the volume.

I can connect headphones or earphones to the Pioneer but rarely do.

Mostly I just select music from the hard drive and play it outside.

If we play a movie it also plays through the Pioneer and main cabin speakers. Same with voice over IP on the computer such as Skype or Zoom. There is a bright LED light on the switch for the outside speakers to remind us when it is on. (playing a skype call to my bank over the outside speakers was a real foopah on at least one occasion).

Occasionally I copy a play list or a selection to a thumb drive so I can play it through the pioneer without having the laptop turned on (to save power usage on the laptop). I can also copy it to my phone (rarely do) and use earphones.

Our 44,000 songs are organized by album or folder on disc. I am careful to fill in all the meta data (names, track names, artist names, genre, ratings, date, etc) to help the MediaMonkey system organize the library. and I have most of the music rated (my ratings) 1-5 stars. The music cover all genres and dates from the 1940s to 2021 however I mostly listen to very recent music (from the last couple of years or so, oldies, never). BTW, I have never been satisfied with Spotify or other online music services, they never play music I like. I say, "play music like this xxxxx" and they come up with junk.


We have obtained all of this music legally over the last 20 years and currently buy 2-3 albums per month through Amazon.

[Shrew]

SiriusXM We don't cross oceans.

[Stu Jackson]

I turned my bunch of DVDs into mp3 files as soon as I bought them over the years, saving me a ton of condensed effort when I switched from my DVD player on the boat to Bluetooth. I bought most of the DVDs to replace my old vinyl and keep up with artists I liked/followed.



While most of the meta data came along with the transfer, I have a bunch of Napster stuff that is all Unknown Album/Unknown Artist. It's like reaching into a big candy jar - never know what you're gonna find! Kinda fun on shuffle all!!!


I also got a nice gift of a thumb drive full of music from a friend a few years ago. I'm still discovering new stuff from that.


I got a cassette tape transfer machine for a gift, and transferred some of my mix tapes, too.


The other day I was motoring back from a local anchorage with no music on, but the engine was singing to me and I could swear it was singing different tunes I knew. This has happened to me a number of times before. Either way, I get "tunes."

[wingssail]

Originally Posted by Stu Jackson

I turned my bunch of DVDs into mp3 files as soon as I bought them over the years, saving me a ton of condensed effort when I switched from my DVD player on the boat to Bluetooth. I bought most of the DVDs to replace my old vinyl and keep up with artists I liked/followed.

While most of the meta data came along with the transfer, I have a bunch of Napster stuff that is all Unknown Album/Unknown Artist. It's like reaching into a big candy jar - never know what you're gonna find! Kinda fun on shuffle all!!!

I also got a nice gift of a thumb drive full of music from a friend a few years ago. I'm still discovering new stuff from that.

I got a cassette tape transfer machine for a gift, and transferred some of my mix tapes, too.

The other day I was motoring back from a local anchorage with no music on, but the engine was singing to me and I could swear it was singing different tunes I knew. This has happened to me a number of times before. Either way, I get "tunes."

Most of us were tempted by napster and other peer to peer schemes. I am happy to say that I didn't get my music that way so in effect I never cheated the artists other than a few compilation CD's friends gave me (most turned out to be duplicates anyway). I have found a lot of music available for free download (old stuff, pre-copy right) such as a few GB of ethnic folksongs, and such, which I also never listen to. But what is fun is when someone mentions a song I can almost always find it and play it.

For the last few years I've gotten a lot of tips for music to buy using Shazam. I hear a song I like (often on music sound track of a good movie or TV series) and Shazam tells me what is is. Then I go on Amazon and buy it.

[Stu Jackson]

Originally Posted by wingssail

Most of us were tempted by napster and other peer to peer schemes. I am happy to say that I didn't get my music that way so in effect I never cheated the artists other than a few compilation CD's friends gave me (most turned out to be duplicates anyway). >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I agree with the concept and only have maybe 100 songs from Napster. I bought all the rest, some dups of vinyl I'd already bought (except for the stuff my friend gave me).


But you have heard about YouTube, right? You can find anything there, all free.

[wingssail]

Originally Posted by Stu Jackson

I agree with the concept and only have maybe 100 songs from Napster. I bought all the rest, some dups of vinyl I'd already bought (except for the stuff my friend gave me).

But you have heard about YouTube, right? You can find anything there, all free.

Stu, I guess YouTube is paying royalties, but what is the audio quality?

If you have to stream the YouTube video to get the audio, that is slow, right (three minute song takes three minutes, and album could take an hour)?

Meta data?

I haven't looked into it much, don't the videos take a lot of disc space? (The key point is that the music must be available to me when we are not on the Internet, so I download it, always.) OK you can strip the video and stream (download) only the audio through other web sites.

I'll investigate but for now buying it straight and clean and high quality, for the minimal amount I buy, works for me.

[Oeanda]

Apart from whatever stuff I’ve loaded into the devices from CDs over the years, I find stuff I like on Spotify, and buy it, then play from phone or ipod over Bluetooth speakers. Spotify has been good for finding old half-remembered stuff I once listened to but never new the name of. I guess with Spotify you can download the music to your ‘device’ as well but I generally just buy it instead. Sound quality is an issue these days but then my hearing is getting worse these days too so wtf...

[NevilleCat]

Originally Posted by jeanathon

What do you do for music on long passages or remote anchorages?

Write it.
If you play guitar or uke great, otherwise baby keyboard on batteries, plenty of room for inspiration on long night watches in the cockpit with analogue pencil and paper for lyrics if you don't take yourself too seriously. Record any ideas straight into your phone and finesse it later.
Now I have taught myself Sibelius score writing so will take the laptop and make backing tracks offwatch.
Now if only I could sing!

[Joh.Ghurt]

Multiple approaches in order of usage on board here:

• Listen to the sound of wind and waves. One can survive without being constantly bombarded by the latest autotuned wonders.
• Sing, play violin, guitar, trombone, flute or any other instrument you fancy.
• And in case of dire needs, my phone has about 10 GB of my favourite songs as MP3. That combined with a good Bluetooth speaker cover another 7 days of continuous playing music.

It's surprising how quickly even jaded teens are weaned off Spotify and iTunes given these options.

[wingssail]

Originally Posted by Joh.Ghurt

Multiple approaches in order of usage on board here:

• Listen to the sound of wind and waves. One can survive without being constantly bombarded by the latest autotuned wonders.What is an auto tuned wonder? Would that include music I have chosen?
• Sing, play violin, guitar, trombone, flute or any other instrument you fancy.This does not work for me. I have no musical ability. I have tried (trumpet). Why should I deprive myself of the artistic genius of others just so I can play off pitch poorly created non-melodies of my own?
• And in case of dire needs, my phone has about 10 GB of my favourite songs as MP3. That combined with a good Bluetooth speaker cover another 7 days of continuous playing music. Me too, same. Only I have a bigger collection and better speakers

It's surprising how quickly even jaded teens are weaned off Spotify and iTunes given these options.

Can you give us any statistics about how many teens have been so weened? I am doubtful.

[Stu Jackson]

Originally Posted by wingssail

Stu, I guess YouTube is paying royalties, but what is the audio quality?

If you have to stream the YouTube video to get the audio, that is slow, right (three minute song takes three minutes, and album could take an hour)?

Meta data?

I haven't looked into it much, don't the videos take a lot of disc space? (The key point is that the music must be available to me when we are not on the Internet, so I download it, always.) OK you can strip the video and stream (download) only the audio through other web sites.

I'll investigate but for now buying it straight and clean and high quality, for the minimal amount I buy, works for me.

My son showed me this free software called MediaHuman that downloads YouTube videos into mp3 audio files. I had another converter before that but it became unsupported and useless. It doesn't take the length of the video to download, maybe 20% of the play time. Another way to say it: I do not download the videos only the audio as tracks.


Meta data? I called that the tags, name, album, album artist, etc, all those categories you or someone else mentioned.


High quality? OK maybe I'm just old, but I've listened to vinyl, cassettes, CDs and now mp3, and I can't find much difference. Sure, some sound better than others, but it's still "my music" and unless the recording is horrible to begin with, it's usually acceptable. If not, I go find a better version and replace it. If you are audio connoisseur, then maybe it's just not for you. I just find having vinyl on the boat is like trying to play Jenga.

[rwidman]

No music. I listen to the sounds of nature, interrupted on occasion by the USCG on the VHF complaining about someone using channel 16 for other than emergencies and hailing.

[Joh.Ghurt]

Originally Posted by wingssail

Can you give us any statistics about how many teens have been so weened? I am doubtful.

My sample of 3 teenager (1 girl, 2 boys) had a success-rate of 2. The last one spent time moping and checking the whole 2 weeks whether he had cellular reception. To make things worse, the unkind skipper based in more than one instance the decision to change tack on the reception bars on his own phone.

Also secluded coves well protected by hills - incidentally also blocking cellular reception - can be very pretty and full of fun activities (none involving mobile phones). Said teenager was a bit miffed when it was suggested, he should check whether there was better reception at the top of the hill. He felt it was beneath his dignity to hike up to the top, thus missing out some glorious cellular goodness.