The freedom to organise music how we want

Like most Millennials, I’ve gone through three phases of music file organisation: A single, giant, amorphous folder of files played through something like Winamp. The files are named whatever, and all the metadata is incomplete, invalid, or incorrect… but it all held together just well enough to tell your Lou Bega remix from your Pérez Prado original. An iTunes music folder with an enforced structure the software organised and maintained for you. Giving up and paying a streaming platform each month, which we quickly abandoned because it sucks. Clara and I have since moved over to Navidrome, which is an excellent way to play our music through the Hi-Fi, on our computers, on the go when we leave our Walkmans behind by mistake, and share with close friends, all behind our VPN. We’ve also taken the opportunity to replace lower bitrate files with FLACs, rip CDs, clean up ogg and ID3 metadata, and source larger cover images. It’s a (very!) slow, deliberate process, but having everything…