Hey folks!

One of my life goals for 2025 was going back to single purpose devices and avoiding algorithm-based media consumption. No smartphones, no AIs, no Spotify.

I’m quite happy with my offline music library, even if it took a while to organize. I use MusicBee (it FINALLY runs perfectly via Wine, if you install some dependencies in your prefix) to listen, find artwork, find lyrics, create playlists and so on and I sync them to my Innioasis, a little iPod Classic clone that supports modern features like USB-C charging.

But here’s the thing… how are people finding new music nowadays? I’d assume TikTok and automatic suggestions from your music streaming services, but are there alternatives?

TikTok would probably work for me if I didn’t stop using social media, but I did. Apple Music’s algorithm sucked tremendously when I used it in the past - it always recommended me Ed Sheeran, an artist I strongly dislike and not anywhere near adjacent to my taste in music (and tapping ‘Not Interested’ a million times never worked) and Spotify’s worked well for a while, but then it started getting extremely repetitive and pushy, “Shuffle” became essentially “Your 10 most recently listened to songs, repeated often, and sometimes we sprinkle two suggestions you already didn’t like but we think you should like actually”