How to get started with pirating music (mp3s)?
Do I use a website to download songs off of YouTube or Spotify?
Where should I store the music? I haven't any clue about self-hosting. I'm running GrapheneOS, is it enough to save the songs in Files and play in an app like Auxio? Maybe sync with SyncThing?
What's the best way to compress mp3 files but still retain the quality (even possible)?
Could really use some help as I'm very inexperienced. :)
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This seems really complicated for a beginner like me (': is there no online tool that can download my playlists in bulk with relatively accurate metadata? It seems deemix and soulseek require accounts which I'm not too keen about, but I really don't know anything about this so I might just be spouting silly speculations.
Aw, I understand ~50.000words can be overwhelming.😅
Hm, I dont know if there's anything better than the tools I talk about. This guide is a bit too compicated and long, so I'll try to re-word it, hoping you can now follow it:
Soulseek: You just use a username and a password. No emails or anything. Search and download.
Deemix: You dont need to have a personal deemix account. You can find on some doubious sites "arls" for accounts. Arl is like the user token. They are long alphanumeric strings which essentially are used instead of username+password. You can simply find one online and put it in deezer. (You can try arls found here: https://www.arldeemix.com/2024/05/arl-deemix.html?m=1 )
To use it with spotify (like downloading a spotify playlist in deemix), its kinda more complex. You can see the steps from this post on reddit here:
I suggest deemix because you can get very high quality music (in batches too) and it's open source.
Lastly, if you simply want to get stuff from youtube without account and such:
ytDownloader acts as a gui for yt-dpl (open source, PC).
Seal acts as a gui for yt-dpl (open source, Android).
Almost certainly there are websites that may use yt-dlp and can download playlists though.
So I did the deemix thing and the Spotify app thing. Unfortunately I can't find my own playlists in Favourites, only somebody else's. Know the issue?
Oh nice, you're very close. What you see, are the Deezer playlists of the account the arl corresponds to. For your spotify playlists, go to spotify, press the share button on your playlist, get the link to your playlist (the url), paste it in the search bar in deemix and press enter. It will automatically fetch and download the whole playlist.
(The next "level" would be to go back to my big guide, in the deemix settings section and customize it to your liking.)
I went back to your guide and adjusted some deemix settings. Is there something I should adjust in "folders/track titles" sections, since you didn't mention them, or is it fine to leave them be? Also, why download in flac and not mp3?
If I dont mention them, it probably means I left them at their default settings, but each one has their own system so feel free to change them if it suits you better.
I download in flac because I want to have them at ~the highest possible quality (ripping CDs or finding each song infividually in various sources and comparing them might provide a better quality, but thats too much of a hassle) and I compress them to .opus format at 128kbit to copy them on my phone. Thus, I keep one flac collection and a cloned, compressed version of it in opus.
Near the ⅘ of my guide I think I describe how to compress files with fre:ac and which app (symphony on fdroid) handles well opus files. I had some frustration with how hard it is for apps to recognise song tags, especially multiple song tags (like 2 artists in a song). If you encounter such an issue, use a different separator other than
\\, like;.The rabbit hole can get a bit deep quickly.
Have fun :)
Thanks for your help! Will definitely continue following your guide.
However, I've already stumbled upon a few issues. First, my computer can't seem to locate the deemix music folder that I supposedly created when I installed the application. Nowhere to be seen. Not sure what to do about it, maybe I installed the wrong version?
Furthermore, the playlists I have downloaded state the following errors: "cannot read properties of undefined" and "no such file or directory"...
Hm, I suppose you talk about the folder where your music is downloaded. Thats a bit weird, mine saves it in
C:\...\user\Music\deemix Music\I also suppose you downloaded deemix from the link I provided in my guide, which I think is where I downloaded it too (plus deemix doesnt get updated anymore), so I dont think you got the wrong version. For the record, mine is
2022.12.14-r222.5d447b6035.I dont think I've encountered that issue either, maybe it's because it cant locate the files in the lost folder you talked about before.
I'd suggest you create another folder woth your file explorer, set deemix to download there and retry. I'd also suggest to first test it by downloading a single song (just type anything in the search bar) before downloadig a whole playlist to not waste time
It worked now! Super thanks. <3
Ayy, arrr, glad you made it:)
Oops, too early to cheer... looks like I can only download individual songs seamlessly, but when I try the playlists the "cannot read properties of undefined" error keeps popping up. Ugh, I'm so close to the finish line, why's there always a hinder. (':
Hang on, I have some ideas
(Maybe either theres a mistake in the way you connected spotify or some issue with the links. I'll do some tests and report back.)
So, I did some tests. Apparently you can download individual songs with spotify links, but it can no longer download spotify playlists. I think spotify possibly changed their api recently, breaking deemix... I had used it in the past to batch download ~3k songs..
I used this reddit post to create the spotify app, but there's probably an issue with the api.
Ugh... thats an issue.. I might create a post about that on the community tomorrow or today (its getting late)..
I feel like I wasted your time too🫤
If I get any updates I'll try to let you know.
You didn't waste my time. This experiment kick-started my process of finally downloading my music, even if it didn't work out completely. Not yours or anybody else's fault anyway. (: Do feel free to update me!
Hey again! Just a random question.
Is it okay to skip the tagging steps in your guide? My school computer won't allow me to download the mp3tag application, and I wonder if these tagging steps are necessary or will mess anything up if skipped? I downloaded some songs to my phone and most metadata and lyrics are there, and that's fine with me. Does not completing the guide make me miss out on anything important (such as metadata or syncing the files)?