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Notes -
I have a music collection, but I switched from my mp3 player to my phone around Covid, when I couldn't be bothered to keep the former charged. I now try to listen to my own collection when I don't have any conference calls, but foobar2000 has a discoverability problem.
A streaming service might not have everything I want, but it's a skippable radio: I can tell it to play me some synthwave, or classic hard rock, or EDM, and it will, throwing both familiar and less known performers at me. If I don't like a song, I can skip it, if I really don't like it, I can dislike it, and the service will remember.
I have a well-organized collection, so I can drag the "classic rock" folder into the playlist and it will play the songs from there, but the number of songs by each artist doesn't really reflect how much I want to listen to them. I am not going to delete the discographies of The Doors and Pink Floyd just because I only like a handful of songs from each band. I am not going to split my collection into "hoarding" and "listenable" piles, either. So I have to make playlists, and I don't have enough patience for that.
So I find myself resorting to the streaming service simply because I can tell it, "computer, play me some more terrible upbeat pop like The Ting Tings", and it will.
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