Listening to Music Locally
Years ago, when my family finally got a halfway capable computer (32 megs of RAM, Windows 98, to give you a sense of the era), I joined the modern world and started ripping all my CDs. I would've been 17 and had built up a little collection of mostly classical.
I don't remember how big the hard drive on that machine was, but it wouldn't have been big. That said, it didn't stop me from ripping CDs and getting mp3s over ICQ from friends and going on the then-nascent Napster to fill in the gaps. Napster was never really a big thing for me, my tastes veering from what most of my peers were listening to, but for listening, I used what everyone else used: WinAmp.
For years I used that little media player to make playlists and play my collection, and while it felt like we'd entered the final form for music (music! on the computer!!), it turns out this was just a step towards something insidious in the distance. Listening on your desktop (as that's what most people had) via WinAmp and some terrible pair of headphones gave way to the many iterations of the iPod, and then smart phones. But local storage is kind of expensive, and there's essentially a vast, almost limitless amount of storage online, and then at some point in the early 2010s, streaming caught on and never let go.
Streaming is easy. Streaming is awful. Streaming lets you listen to basically any artist in the catalogue (which is generally all of them, at least for pop-type music) and streaming pays those artists almost nothing per play. Whereas before you'd have to buy an album, and the artist would see a significant portion of that sale, now they get the tiniest fraction of a penny per play, the terms and conditions changing regularly. A long time ago I read an interview with Danny Michel (a Canadian singer-songwriter who I've seen a few times when he's played my city), and he talked about how his album sales have cratered, falling 95% from what they used to be. People have accepted streaming, without thinking about the side effects: here's an easy, cheap (well, monthly subscription, natch) source of music. It's legal, so I'm doing the right thing...right?
I don't want to turn this into a long essay about how streaming has hollowed out the already extremely sketchy profits for working, touring musicians. Just to say that I saw the scam early, and never got in on it. I kept buying music (CDs are available, and permanent), bought a Sonos Play:5 in 2014, and have enjoyed streaming music that way. I've since bought a couple more speakers (one for the bedroom, one for my office), and usually listen to music that way. The only exception is when my partner and I are both at home. I don't want to disturb her, so I usually listen to stuff on headphones. Often this was via iTunes. But this never felt great. iTunes has been clunky and slow since the beginning, lagging for almost a second per keystroke when I search my local music library.
Recently I was down a rabbit hole and learned about WACUP. WACUP is a music player based on WinAmp, and...well, yeah, basically that's enough for me. As is true for many others, I'm sure, I was hit by an intense pang of nostalgia when I loaded it up and got the default WinAmp skin. That was all I ever really used - I've never been a configuration tweaker, and good enough has always been good enough. But I gave it my high-level music directory to index, and after a minute or so...it just worked? Searches were instantaneous. The UI was incredibly responsive.
Sold. I've now been using it for a few weeks, and it feels like it's filled a real need. I realize I'm in a real minority, listening to music locally, on my computer, instead of streaming it from some server in US-East. But this is good - a lot of the stuff I have doesn't exist on streaming, whether it's stuff I've made myself, or things friends or very obscure bands have made, and I'm delighted to have a good way to listen to this when I can't cast to my Sonos speakers.
I donated £10 - projects need support, and I'm glad this one exists, even if it's a niche thing. Especially since it's a niche thing.