Dan Gravell

It'll only happen when there's some sort of licensing shenanigans. Even on streaming services the takedowns are not exactly common (but they certainly happen).

I can see how, if I were a user of Qobuz, I would separate the two concepts of something owned and downloadable with something rentable and streamed. However I can imagine that nuance might be lost in negotiations between the platform and their content providers. For example, the latter might demand technical and legal verification and assurance that the two are separated.

I was wondering that - kind of like "transfer"?

I don't know if you've seen it, but the book _Deep Work_ is quite interesting on this. Not sure on the rigour of the science/argument though!

I don't have any general one-stop answers to that. For the verification of existing data, it depends on the data. For example, FLACs can be verified using its internal checksum, but even that might not be enough to satisfy some so other comparisons could be made. For the recovery, this is more of a case of process. You need to know the steps you'll go through to recover the data and then the verification steps to ensure the recovered data is valid (this may use the tools above).

Very important topic - it's why backups aren't backup-and-forget. Backups need to be tested, both in terms of the data that is stored and also the restoration process.

Two levels of difference stand out to me when comparing streaming to what you describe @The Computer Audiophile. First - instigation - how the decision is made to 'acquire' (in which I include listening for the first time) music in the first place. Deciding to acquire music, choosing the music, then clicking the purchase button/handing over your cash is a lot stronger than being passively fed music via another party... whether algorithmically generated or not. I think this is the strongest effect, actually. Second - decision fatigue. Streaming services are oriented around keeping you on the platform - it makes sense for you to dither and move from music to music. To present a catalogue of seemingly infinite size and tempt you with new dopamine hits does help their "engagement" metrics but doesn't help your engagement and contemplation of the music. The music does not become "yours" and you do not build as strong an association with it. I don't think it matters much whether the music you acquire is downloaded or physical, although there's probably some other caveman psychological process that might further alter our relationship with music if we have physically held it.

You trust the company that wrote Windows and this abomination to write a cleanup tool? I suppose you could argue if anyone knows where the cruft needs to be removed, it's them. Otherwise, just use a different OS?

NASCompares and associated NAS blogs have some thoughts about the UGREEN device: https://nascompares.com/2024/05/03/the-ugreen-nas-range-1-month-later-should-you-back-it-or-bail-on-it/

UGREEN (as they are branded) make loads of electronic consumables. I recently purchased a UGREEN bluetooth -> aux receiver for my car.

They rather overshot their goal!

No, Backblaze removed egress fees (with some caveats) 6 months ago https://www.backblaze.com/blog/2023-product-announcement/

Thanks - you're right, it is a concern - but broadly egress seems to be in retreat these days following the realisation just how much of people's AWS bills are "Data Transfer"! Plus, on the really consumer grade services like Google Drive and Dropbox it simply isn't a thing.

Sorry - no idea. The email notification was addressed to me as an end-user of the service.

I've just heard that BRIO is ceasing service (rather abruptly) at the end of this month (March 2024). If anyone needs any help migrating to Astiga ( https://asti.ga - fully native streaming from cloud storage) let me know... Disclaimer: Astiga is a commercial product.

Thanks for the feedback 🙂 . Understand about the fees - egress is coming down across the board, so I think things are going in the right direction.

Via any app that either connects directly (e.g. https://www.blisshq.com/music-library-management-blog/2021/02/10/comparison-best-cloud-music-players/ ) or plays the files via an S3 compatible sync or virtual filesystem.

B2, yes.

For most people it's absolutely fine for storing music to playback from. I appreciate readers here may have different priorities to others, but music streaming seems to work for many people.

Personally I'm more of a minimalist - mo' metadata, mo' problems... Try to constrain tags to the minimum you need, plus immutable fields that won't change. So that's basic titles, identifier fields (e.g. MB IDs) and structural ones (that describe each track's position in its wider release).

I wish this would stop being repeated - it's simply not true, and arguably not even close. That said, the context of the above quote is about it being cheap at $10/month - and that I agree with, for what you get.

The move to free (ish) egress in B2 is positive - it makes the storage much more flexible.

I'm currently using Wasabi - works out well. Used rclone to upload my library and it worked pretty seamlessly.

Just use the laptop, it's going to be the easiest way. It's very, very standard to connect a laptop to a NAS and copy files there. Likely, their 'download manager' is just monitoring a standard HTTP download, and in theory you could plug the URL that is used into Download Manager on the NAS. However you'd need to find the URL, which probably isn't exposed, the URL might not be signed, so you would have to work out how to authenticate, and there might be other things to get around too. So I refer you to my first paragraph.

Looks like their download manager doesn't run on iPads... but I bet there's a way around it :-D Do you not have a Windows/Linux/macOS computer? You mentioned a laptop - just install the download manager there, make your purchases on the laptop, and move the files to the NAS.