I find myself heading back to using Spotify as my main music player program. I have been using TIDAL for many years, what drew me was a refreshing change of the algorithm, plus higher quality lossless audio for my low-mid range audiophile gear (I think had a Ultrasone HFI 2400 headphones and an original O2 headphone amp. TIDAL has been a great refreshing change of my algorithm, but eventually even the new algorithm starts to get a bit stale and I have lost touch with my old favourites I used to listen to on my first iPod in 2006. It's become almost a "what's hip" radio station more than it giving me my favourite music to hear. I like modern and trending music, I guess my algorithm keeps throwing me some niches that aren't "mainstream" indie nor closer to my old favourites from 10+ years ago. Enjoyable but I keep wondering what I am missing out on in exchange for the convenience of the algorithm.

Then lately, TIDAL has been being TIDAL, and some tracks have just disappeared, and some just aren't playing at all. TIDAL has been known for having some bugs for a while, and for the most part I haven't experienced major issues, and if I did have issues I tolerated it in exchange for better audio than Spotify and the above better algorithm. But I guess finally I am starting to lose my tolerance for bugs, after 8 years or so. I thought I would try Qoboz, as they appear similar but better. But immediately saw that the playback responsiveness was slower, and it was missing some music from TIDAL. If I had seriously expensive audio equipment, no doubt Qobuz would be a necessity, despite some quirks. But I still use Bluetooth headphones, and only have headphones in the range of $300-400 RRP.

So, despite my issues with Spotify, the CEO who invests in military tech, the low pay for artists and their disappointing move towards AI generated music. I am thinking of Spotify as more like the radio, it's not really my music, like the old days with my iPod, or even younger when I had a cassette player. Yeah I am that old! The relationship you have with Spotify is that it's not really your music, it's their audio experience. Like the broadcast radio. It just has individualised algorithms for each person. Yes you can play any track at any time, and you can build static playlists. But I think the assumption is that many prefer the convenience of the Spotify algorithm over hand curated music. Even I enjoy the convenience of Spotify or TIDAL's algorithm, mainly for the music discovery aspect. In a world where we are becoming more so islands on our own, I'll take some immediate music suggestions over waiting to see what I find in the real world. It used to be very different in the 1960s and 70s apparently.

But, little do many know, there is a middle ground between purely hand curated music, and the algorithm. I think it is "smart playlists" - that is, playlists defined by certain rules, including things like a rolling 12-month top rated or most listened tracks. A five-star rating smart playlist. Music discovery still seems a challenge, but the algorithmic playlists which try to give you music these apps think you might like, I think pale in comparison to smart playlists. Eg, I think there is a distinction between 4-star and 5-star tracks. Tracks which are great but not exceptional. Being a Rush fan, I could listen to Tom Sawyer and Red Barchetta over and over. But at the same time, I would like to keep discovering and listening to newer music, which may not be as exceptional, but satisfies that desire for novelty I think I will always have.

So how can I get smart playlists back? Well I could use Apple Music I suppose (it still has smart playlist feature), and transfer my legally acquired music over to my iPhone, which I just tried and my music isn't appearing? If this even still works. There is MusicBee for Windows, which supports a smart playlists feature, but I use Mac and Linux most of the time. Which is why I have been working on my own cross-platform music manager and device sync program. Currently called "Leo's Music Manager". The idea is that you can use your own music collection of legally ripped CDs, online downloads from places like Bandcamp, etc. Supporting artists and curating your own music based on how much you value them. And combine that with smart playlists.

But the software is missing for me, so I am building my own. Some close competitors include Clementine/Strawberry and Rhythmbox, but they don't quite match the feature set of MusicBee for example.

WIP screenshot

Below is a screenshot of the program I am building. It uses Kivy (Python) and I intend to deploy it with PyInstaller. Kivy has been chosen due to it's excellent cross-platform support, with libraries such as mutagen for track ID3 info, and USB device detection. Performance is okay with a smaller (20GB) library but I am unsure how it will go with larger libraries. I currently intend to release it a free version, with paid support for device sync, but only for a very low fee, a few dollars perhaps.

I am working on a very related music player app called "Audio Focus" which also uses Kivy, but is purely designed as a program to run while working, playing music in the background while you work, such as lofi, chillout, soundtracks, ambient, etc. A small amount of CC0 licensed music included.