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Enjoy the pure joy of listening to music

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This post is translated from Chinese into English through AI.View Original
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The author reflects on their experience with music listening and how it has changed over time, primarily due to switching music apps. They realize they have not listened to songs by Jay Chou in a long time, despite enjoying them in the past. The transition between music platforms often leads to lost songs, and the reliance on recommendation algorithms can limit exposure to music. The author expresses frustration with the fragmentation of music and media across various apps, which requires users to subscribe to multiple services to access a complete range of content. They advocate for a return to managing their own music library, reminiscent of using MP3 players, and have set up a personal music and media library while still supporting copyright through subscriptions. Ultimately, they emphasize the importance of having access to a broad selection of music and media to enjoy throughout life.

A few days ago, I was reading a blog written by a colleague at the company. One colleague talked about doing data visualization, analyzing the lyrics of songs by Kris Wu and Jay Chou, wanting to analyze which words appeared most frequently in these songs and what characteristics they had.

Then I suddenly realized that I hadn't listened to Jay Chou's songs in a long, long time. Although I'm not a die-hard fan of Jay Chou, I listened to quite a few of his songs during my middle and high school years, and I liked many of them. But when did I stop listening? I don't know. Did I actively give up? Definitely not; there are still many songs I want to hear now.

How Did This Happen#

Thinking back carefully, it probably happened when I switched music software.

During one of the transitions, when importing playlists, I found that they didn't match, and afterwards, we became very reliant on recommendation algorithms to suggest songs for us. Occasionally, when searching for songs, we couldn't find them, and slowly we just gave up.

Or maybe at first, I could still listen to them, and then one day they suddenly became grayed out. While listening to music, the software silently skipped them. And we wouldn't even realize that we hadn't listened to those songs anymore.

Reflecting on my entire music listening experience, this kind of change has happened before.

In the beginning, I used Baidu Music to listen to songs, which seemed to allow online listening and downloading. Later, I used QQ Music intermittently, and then I used Douban Music for a long time; my earliest organized playlists were on Douban Music. Then Douban Music also stopped, and after trying QQ Music and NetEase Cloud Music, I chose NetEase Cloud Music.

I still clearly remember that when I imported playlists from Douban to NetEase Cloud, many songs didn't match, so during this software migration, I lost quite a few songs, but I had no other choice.

A Fragmented World#

It's like a complete world, but for various reasons, we can only enjoy a part of it. If you want to enjoy another part, you need to use a different method. Moreover, this separation is artificial.

Aside from music, our films are the same; there are various apps, and one app occupies a certain territory. If you want to enjoy this complete world, you need to prepare all the apps and pay for them.

I believe that paying for copyright is reasonable, but it's unrealistic to have to download all the apps just to enjoy the whole world.

It's fine for the world to give us choices, but I hope the options are complete.

For example, I've been listening to songs on NetEase Cloud Music for 7 or 8 years, and during this time, I am not very aware of everything happening on QQ Music. There might be many excellent music works there that I would love if I heard them, but I have no channel to know about them. Even if I knew, I wouldn't be able to enjoy them.

I have been forced to give up things I didn't want to give up. Or some options just didn't appear on my list.

I know that many things in this world are like this; you don't have all the options, but I hope that in some small matters, I can understand everything as much as possible and then make my own choices.

Enjoying Pure Joy#

Looking back at the migration process of music software, I realize that the lifespan of software is much shorter than I imagined. A person's life is only about seventy or eighty years, which is not long, and many software programs may not even last ten years. After much thought, I ultimately decided to return to the most original method: to download and manage all my favorite music myself, just like when I used to listen to music on an MP3 player.

So I set up my own music library on a NAS and found suitable playback software. Now, I use this software on my phone and computer to play my music library. If I discover good songs on other platforms, I add them to my music library. Of course, this way lacks copyright, so I will continue to pay for a NetEase Cloud Music membership as support for copyright, but I no longer use it to listen to music.

Similarly, I also built my own film library, and of course, the content of the film library is watched and deleted as I go, and I recharge my iQIYI account. The same goes for my book library; I still have my own large bookshelf containing all the books I love, which I can browse at any time when needed, with my membership on WeChat Reading.

In a person's life, the number of songs they can listen to, dramas they can watch, and books they can read is not that many. Perhaps there's no need for frequent upheavals, nor do we need so many flashy features in apps. All I need is to be able to listen when I want to and find songs when I search for them.

Imagining myself at eighty, still able to open the app I used at thirty, listening to songs accumulated over fifty springs and autumns, isn't that a kind of joy?

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