2021-02-24 00:00
A sprinkling of different resources this February. We’re seeing more growth in the cloud music locker market, Synology has begun restricting what disks you can use in an enterprise NA… Read More
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A blog about self-stored digital music collections, and the best way of organizing them.
2021-02-15 00:00
In this new release we’re shipping a beta for a new way of launching bliss in Windows. There are also some important bug fixes for the artwork rule.
Download… Read More
2021-02-10 00:00
Over the past few months I’ve been writing a series of posts about cloud music storage. So far I’ve concentrated on the storage itself, but just storing music isn’t much i… Read More
2021-01-29 00:00
Over the Christmas and New Year holiday periods is was a great time - especially in lockdown! - to reconsider your home media setup. This month’s round up include a couple of self-hos… Read More
2021-01-29 00:00
Emergency!
Thanks to a keen eyed devops engineer, we recently discovered two major weaknesses in the way bliss queries metadata and cover art. More specifically: the way it uses certificat… Read More
2021-01-27 00:00
As reported previously, bliss now runs in Synology DSM 7, the latest (although currently in-beta) major version of the Synology NAS operating system. This new release of bliss contains sup… Read More
2021-01-22 00:00
About a year ago I blogged about organising audiobook boxset files. The organisation scheme I derived has proven itself pretty useful. But there was always one problem with that particular… Read More
2021-01-12 00:00
bliss is running in DSM 7.0!
Synology are currently in the midst of a beta programme for the new version of their NAS operating system: DiskStation Manager 7.0.
DSM is the operating syst… Read More
2021-01-06 00:00
Three months ago I surveyed the best cloud storage services for music. Those were generic storage services what you can use to store anything, although I focused on their applicability to… Read More
2020-12-21 00:00
This month’s round up for digital music collectors! This month: privacy and audio devices, a beautiful looking new album art-focused music player launches in Indiegogo, QNAP vulnerab… Read More
2020-12-09 00:00
Back in 2015 I wrote a popular post about finding corrupt FLAC files. Unfortunately I left the post on a bit of a cliff-hanger… once you’ve found some corrupted files, what do… Read More
2020-11-27 00:00
This month - more legal shenanigans, Winamp makes a comeback, Discogs turns 20 and more personal music hosting articles.
The youtube-dl saga
Over the past month we’ve added a new… Read More
2020-11-25 00:00
This release contains an important user experience improvement to how manual fixes are executed, plus some smaller bug fixes.
Download
Download… Read More
2020-11-18 00:00
Cognitive biases are a fascinating explanation of why we sometimes make irrational decisions.
I was wondering: if the majority of people are making a given decision, and I have a differen… Read More
2020-11-11 00:00
YouTube Music is a popular service amongst digital music collectors. Like its predecessor did, Google Play Music, it allows file uploads, so your existing, lovingly curated library could b… Read More
2020-10-30 00:00
This release has an important optimisation to the data that bliss stores in its Activity stream. Also, some fixes for file update listening, licensing and reducing duplicate metadata looku… Read More
2020-10-27 00:00
The past month has brought us yet more developments in the world of personal music hosting, Rolling Stone released its latest list of reckons and Sony Music and Warner Music collectively s… Read More
2020-10-20 23:00
Just around the corner, any day now… macOS Big Sur will be launched. So we’ve been testing bliss on macOS Big Sur using the developer previews and public beta versions and we… Read More
2020-10-13 23:00
Cutting my garden’s grass seems like an odd introduction to musical analysis, but actually it’s often the only time in the week I’m able to simply listen to something. Cut… Read More
2020-10-07 23:00
Anyone else feel the first song of an album has a particular significance? That is, it is elevated in its import simply by being the first song on an album?
I often think about this in r… Read More
2020-09-30 23:00
There’s no doubt the mainstream of music listening has moved to streaming services. The old model of collecting, storing and maintaining your music collection has become a niche. An… Read More
2020-09-24 23:00
Welcome to This month in digital music libraries; a curated list of online discoveries in the world of computer music libraries!
I share a fair number of developments and articl… Read More
2020-09-22 23:00
Another week, another release, with some more bug fixes.
This time the fixes are scattered in different areas.
Missing and accuracy settings
In the tag accuracy and missing tag rules… Read More
2020-09-08 23:00
A few more bug fixes in this week’s release, with a special concentration on the progress indicator (the Scanned n of m albums text).
The progress indicator should now update when… Read More
2020-08-27 23:00
This is a small update - with the only major change being an improvement to scanning which prevents the scan ending abruptly in certain circumstances.
Before, there were some classes of… Read More
2020-07-28 23:00
In this release we’ve made some further improvements to scanning. In addition we’ve fixed some bugs and added a useful new ability to the track number format and file organisati… Read More
2020-07-01 23:00
This release includes some small but important fixes to file update listening and updating music files.
When listening mode is enabled and settings are changed, avoid database errors… Read More
2020-06-22 23:00
We’re keeping up the momentum on releases and, even though focus is on other areas in the bliss project right now, we’ve got a few more improvements to share. So here they are!… Read More
2020-06-18 23:00
For those not tuned into to our social media channels (like our Twitter or Facebook accounts) I thought I’d just draw your attention to a written interview I completed for the Compute… Read More
2020-06-07 23:00
This small, but important, release includes some more improvements related to file scans, plus an important fix for anyone using UNC paths on Windows.
This release’s changes are:… Read More
2020-05-27 23:00
We had a number of reports of problems in the file scan since the past few releases; this release fixes those, plus includes a bunch of other improvements.
This release continues the wor… Read More
2020-05-18 23:00
Should I feel scared? Panicked? Protective? Angry?
When a collective event occurs, especially one that not only affects a town, a state or a country but even the entire world, it’s… Read More
2020-05-11 23:00
This is another small release to keep momentum - again, while small, the fixes are important.
The key problems fixed in this release are:
The file watcher wasn’t being correctly st… Read More
2020-04-27 23:00
This is a small release, but with some quite important bug fixes.
The first important fix relates to rescanning albums from the album page. We introduced a bug a couple of versions ago w… Read More
2020-04-21 23:00
In the eight decades they’ve been around, album covers have carried some quite outstanding and eclectic imagery. We all have our favourites. They seem to have punctuated our lives in… Read More
2020-04-14 23:00
NAS devices have become common for self-hosters and audiophiles alike. One of the leading manufacturers is Synology. Like with many other NAS makers, Synology allow the capabilities of thei… Read More
2020-04-05 23:00
After we found some fundamental issues with 20200311 we pulled it - this new release contains the original good stuff in 20200311, but with music file scanning fixed.
We moved to RxJava… Read More
2020-04-01 23:00
What’s difficult doesn’t get done. I’m often reminded of that when I realise I forgot to sync my phone with my latest music. Such is the plight of the self hoster.
So some… Read More
2020-03-20 00:00
I’ve decided to pull the last release, due to a significant issue found in the way we scan music files.
I’m working on a fix right now, but it’s taking a while, and I thou… Read More
2020-03-17 00:00
There are some small improvements on the surface of this release, but underneath a revolution is taking place in the way bliss reads and flows information through its platform…
Th… Read More
2020-03-03 00:00
If you have a computer-only setup for audio, you have it easy. It’s proprietary audio hardware where things get difficult. I’ve written a lot about in-car audio over the years;… Read More
2020-02-25 00:00
Seems that these days, in our household, we have more children’s audiobooks running through our CD ripping workflow than music. Still, anything for a quiet car journey…
At C… Read More
2020-02-17 00:00
Last week’s build was going to be a sedate affair - open a Terminal, cd build, run the build and the new version of bliss pops out the other end…
Unfortunately Apple had anoth… Read More
2020-02-11 00:00
Pioneer make a range of third-party AV receivers you can have installed in your car. They include large screens, perfect for viewing album art on.
Unfortunately these devices sometimes don… Read More
2020-02-04 00:00
This release promotes the new, improved, Inbox. We’ve taken a bunch of feedback and produced something that I hope makes it easier to visualise the latest problems found in your music… Read More
2020-01-28 00:00
Denon HEOS is a range of wireless speakers with an accompanying app to control them. Sometimes artwork doesn’t show in the app. Fixing this is a case of assessing each album and makin… Read More
2020-01-21 00:00
This is a bug-fix-and-small-UI-improvements kind-of release. There are some important fixes for users of the duplicate tracks rules, and as an experiment I’ve moved in-app chat into t… Read More
2020-01-14 00:00
I’m definitely an album guy.
Over the years we all build up habits about how we listen to music: albums/singles, playlists/shuffle, genre hopping, back catalogues and year-by-year br… Read More
2020-01-07 00:00
Our first release of 2020! This release contains a new Setup page for first-time users, enhanced ways of leaving feedback or getting help, improvements to cover art and NAS integrations and… Read More
2019-12-17 00:00
Over the past few months we’ve been working on a new display to show current issues in your music library and to allow all of these fixes to be fixed en masse. This new version includ… Read More
2019-12-10 00:00
I’ve noticed a more frequent occurrence in the past few months: the launch of niche music streaming
services.
The accepted wisdom so far has been that music streaming services are l… Read More
2019-11-29 00:00
This is a large bug fix release including full Catalina support. We’ve also added a new notification box to allow you to see, at a glance, the quantity of non-compliant albums and ge… Read More
2019-11-26 00:00
2019 was a landmark year for the bliss project; it turned ten years old!
Development started in March 2009 and lasted eight months; the first sale came a couple of weeks
later. Since then… Read More
2019-11-18 00:00
We’re all individuals. But sometimes being pigeon-holed can be to our advantage.
I’ve slowly realised how my interest in music; its listening, its storage
and its curation, ca… Read More
2019-10-23 23:00
This month has seen the release of the latest version of macOS -
Catalina. This is the first version featuring the new replacement for
iTunes, Apple Music.
The release also inc… Read More
2019-09-18 23:00
Another maintenance release; I've been tied up working on a lot of home improvements and so
progress on the "New Inbox" project I've started has been slow. I have managed to fix a bunch
of… Read More
2019-07-17 23:00
This is another small maintenance release while work on a new Inbox is ongoing.
The main bug fixed in this release was for users of the
maximum data size rule. Some users of this mig… Read More
2019-06-25 23:00
This release contains a fix for existing users and a couple of other improvements.
Last week's release had a nasty bug which affected existing users only. Between versions of bliss
we… Read More
2019-06-17 23:00
This release contains some significant refinements to the album list; we're trying to make the album
overview list quicker to use and get stuff fixed, faster!
There are also a couple of… Read More
2019-06-03 23:00
This new release includes some more UX improvements - chiefly communicating activity and
fixes made specifically for an album, plus a bunch of other bug fixes and other
improvements.
T… Read More
2019-05-27 23:00
This week, let's review album art support for Shanling.
Shanling are another manufacturer of high-end portable music players, but this time with a difference.
Shanling makes a range of p… Read More
2019-05-20 23:00
More small UX improvements and bug fixes in this version...
This week's tranche of UX improvements are:
Albums in the albums page that have been fixed in the last rescan cycle, or ma… Read More
2019-05-13 23:00
Cowon is another
manufacturer of high-end portable music players. We're going to continue our series on portable
hi-fi album art; examining Cowon's support for album covers and how you can… Read More
2019-05-06 23:00
This release contains some usability improvements and bug fixes.
We're continuing to work on the first-use usability of the product. So for this release we've changed
a bunch of things… Read More
2019-04-22 23:00
This week we're taking a look at another portable hi-fi manufacturer:
Cayin.
Cayin market their products to audiophiles. Like other devices in this market, the players have high
quali… Read More
2019-04-08 23:00
Let's look at another portable hi-fi manufacturer's album art support. This week we take a look
at the players from FiiO, a Chinese electronics company.
Like other companies covered on thes… Read More
2019-04-01 23:00
This release contains some small usability improvements and a bunch of bug fixes.
Our current focus on bliss is to improve the first use usability of the product. We've set
up testing… Read More
2019-03-26 00:00
We Are Vinyl is a UK-based online vinyl record store run by Sony.
They sell re-issues of existing releases.
As well as selling vinyl records, each purchase comes with a free digital downlo… Read More
2019-03-19 00:00
Another release, more automation!
We've added automation to the tag accuracy rules. We've also made
the file organisation token even more powerful, and fixed a bunch
of other things… Read More
2019-03-12 00:00
Astell & Kern are an electronics company that manufacture
a range of hi-fi equipment, but in recent times it has been its small portable hi-fi units that have
garnered most attention… Read More
2019-03-05 00:00
This release includes the first tranche of rules automated using the new automation framework
we've built into bliss. The maximum image data size rule (which shrinks artwork consuming too m… Read More
2019-02-20 00:00
This release completes the porting of all rules to the automation framework. From this
point on, converting rules to be automated will be a lot easier.
More fixes
Other fixes in this r… Read More
2019-02-13 00:00
You can write a generic "find and replace" rule in bliss using custom rules.
In this example I'll take
this idea to remove HTML encoding from tags and implement it as a custom rule. HT… Read More
2019-01-31 00:00
Phew! It's been a while since the last bliss release. We've been mainly working on a bunch
of things to make it easier to implement automatic rules. This release sees the framework
imple… Read More
2019-01-23 00:00
I've noticed something about myself in the past few years. It came from considering why
I find, in the most part, musical "comedy" unfunny.
Whenever I listen to (most) "comedy" music I f… Read More
2019-01-16 00:00
A few weeks ago, my desktop speakers finally
gave up the ghost. These were important speakers; the means by
which I listen when working.
My ceased-to-be speakers connected to a Mac Mini… Read More
2019-01-09 00:00
Disaster! A lovingly curated music library, comprising meaningful and affirming music, lost!
If you own an asset, you need to protect it. In other parts of our lives we attempt to minimi… Read More
2018-12-19 00:00
I guess a lot of people think this, so it's no great shakes, but I consider
music important to who I am.
It's important for so many reasons; the sheer enjoyment in the short term, the
mu… Read More
2018-12-12 00:00
I like to think of myself as not being the biggest fan of "Greatest Hits" (or "Best of") albums, but they seem to
fill an input function in a lot of people's libraries, mine (and my family… Read More
2018-12-05 00:00
Aurender are a South Korean company making a
popular range of music servers and other
audiophile playback components.
In common with the other major music server makers, I
get frequent… Read More
2018-11-28 00:00
A quick tip for Linux users looking to set up bliss on a headless server.
Sometimes it's useful to run bliss as a particular user. In my case I recently set up a bliss install
on a new L… Read More
2018-11-14 00:00
Capitalisation seems to be at the root of a lot of music library management annoyances.
I recently noticed how many genres in my own collection were affected by this.
The chief annoyance… Read More
2018-11-06 00:00
Yeah, I couldn't get that song out of my head while working on the new Windows installer. I
need to get out more...
This release contains a new installer for the Windows version of bliss… Read More
2018-11-01 00:00
A few days ago I upgraded my home server to Ubuntu 18.04, largely because (1) it needed doing
and (2) abcde is now a maintained package.
I like abcde best out of all the command line ripper… Read More
2018-10-22 23:00
At last, the new settings page has been promoted to be the default settings page. For this release
there has been a few things to tune and tweak and now the page is ready for prime-time… Read More
2018-10-10 23:00
Assigning track ratings was one of the first big projects I embarked on when first building a computer
music library in the late '90s. It's easy to see why for a geeky music collector: the… Read More
2018-10-01 23:00
The main work in this release has been honing all the rough edges of the new settings page. The
last build's release notes listed some known issues; these have all been fixed:
Adding a… Read More
2018-09-24 23:00
I'm going to return to lossy and lossless compression this week. A common concern I see about lossless
audio is that it's a form of compression, and compression is bad because the original… Read More
2018-09-17 23:00
This release by-and-large completes the new settings UI beta; it's functionally complete.
That isn't to say it's perfect, but now there's a larger button for existing users to enable the… Read More
2018-09-04 23:00
In this build, work on the new settings page is continuing. Meanwhile, I've added a few fixes in the UI for the album
oriented pages.
The settings beta page now has the ability to dele… Read More
2018-08-28 23:00
Lossless is best. Ensuring your music library is stored in as high a fidelity as possible is
important to ensure playback quality, future flexibility and lower effort; never having to re-a… Read More
2018-08-21 23:00
We're all familiar with things that are difficult to use, and I'd count music libraries as
(potentially) one of the things. How is a music library used? Well, it's a combination
of how easy… Read More
2018-08-15 23:00
This release fixes an issue for people running bliss where English is not the language configured
for the computer! There're also some other small fixes and the settings beta has taken anot… Read More
2018-08-13 23:00
This release contains some small improvements, while
work on the settings page is ongoing.
Extra information has been added to the Linked Releases panel. We've added the format of… Read More
2018-08-06 23:00
Over the coming weeks I'll be refocusing on making bliss a bit more understandable for new users
and existing users alike. We've implemented a few smaller improvements, but the first big pi… Read More
2018-07-30 23:00
This is a maintenance fix, building on the
emergency release last week. It fixes a couple more things
around metadata lookup that were lower priority before.
Avoid errors when releases… Read More
2018-07-19 23:00
This release contains a bunch of UX improvements and ARM fingerprinting support.
I had to bring forward this release; it turned out that
last release's improvements in
lookup efficiency… Read More
2018-07-16 23:00
A really small release this week - a piece of work to make lookups more efficient which unexpectedly
took longer than thought to complete!
For a while now bliss has been performing eag… Read More
2018-07-09 23:00
In case you were wondering why everything had gone quiet (there being no bliss releases
for a few weeks): we're about to break cover with a new beta, with full release next week.
For t… Read More
2018-07-02 23:00
Think of a tag editor and there are a bunch
of common options. MP3Tag, Picard, Tag&Rename...
but for Windows users there's a lesser known editor that comes for free: Windows Explorer!… Read More
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