Having grown up late 90s into the 2000s I went from buying cds to lime wire to spotify.
In the last 6 months I have found such a greater appreciation for just putting on a whole album and listening to it front to back.
I feel there is a huge loss when going from one artist to another to another all random.
Today I am listening to Refused, The Shape Of Punk To Come


As are songs. I have a playlist with about 3000 songs I like in one folder, and it’ll jump through genres from song to song. I like all the songs, so I don’t care about mood changes.
I also find there are album songs on most albums that I like that I don’t particularly enjoy or feel like filler.
Ohh I should try that. Just dump the entire music folder into VLC and shuffle.
Might encourage me to remove the random crap that got downloaded and left in the unsorted folder years ago… Some of it is good, some isn’t.
Try out smart playlists. Plex, navidrome, etc. Let’s you set up a list that will only play songs you havent heard in months
Wouldnt Plex require connection though? Don’t really want to run a Plex server on each device either. VLC is local and I can just periodically sync the music library when on the same LAN.
You can download playlists just fine. I’ll go on vacation all the time and listen offline the whole time.
And you dont need to run a server on each device. Plexamp and/or Symphonium are just apps for your phone. It’s all “local” when the laptop with the server/music and your phone are in your own house, especially navidrome. If you want to hit that server on the internet, thats a homelab project to dip your toes into when you feel like it.
My phone isn’t always on my LAN and I don’t always have internet access when away from it.
Yeah that’s how I used to be but I feel something is lost with a lot of albums