[1]
Based on our discussion about organizing video game music [2], it looks like a lot of us still keep folders and files meticulously arranged on our PCs. While that may seem like the obvious answer to this community question there are more services, software and sites to play music on than ever before. Some people want to take it all with them, some want to ditch the dedicated music player and stream solely from their phone. Some spend all day at a computer and stream from the web. So, how do you listen to your video game music? I’ll start.
Through the 90’s I used Winamp [3] on PC almost exclusively. It provided a ton of customization and grew to support all kinds of file formats, visualizers and extensions. If I was driving I had an array of burnt CDs for every mood. In 2008 I got a Zune 120 [4] because I wanted all my music with me at all times (and because I don’t love Apple). Commuting 30 minutes every day to and from a retail job, it became my daily driver for music and podcasts. The companion PC software [5] is still one of the most beautiful music managers I’ve ever used but it was never as full-featured as I wanted. Soon I purchased MediaMonkey [6] to rip, tag and organize my music and I have just recently started using MusicBee [7] because — gosh — it’s pretty. I also use PowerAmp on my phone but I only keep a small contingent of new albums and 5-star favorites on there most of the time.
As the last decade has brought dozens of streaming sites and radio apps to every platform, I began dabbling here and there. Bandcamp [8] has been a wonderful revelation for me, although I probably listen to full albums for too long before finally buying them. I’ve just recently begun using YouTube when I want to check out an unfamiliar game’s soundtrack and I even started using Spotify [9] on the PlayStation 4, although that’s usually for non-video game music.
So that’s me, what about you? Fill us in on how you listen to game music and what you use to play it in the comments. I’m really looking forward to seeing how people do things completely differently than I.
Comments Disabled To "Community Question: How do You Listen to Game Music?"
#1 Comment By Patrick Gann On August 8, 2015 @ 2:46 pm
Even though it’s officially gone abandonware (no more updates or official support), I STILL use Winamp. I rip all of my physical CDs and have my own anal-retentive folder organization on my HDD, and every album has a .m3u file. I also have custom .m3us to pull up full series, or a bunch o’ music from the same composer or publisher (ie — I have a Falcom playlist).
I also follow some vgm playlists on Spotify. And I have an iPod which I hook up to a cassette tape adapter to use in my car. <3
#2 Comment By Shawn Sackenheim On August 10, 2015 @ 9:26 am
To you and Rotane, it was pretty hard giving up Winamp for sure, felt like part of me died when I heard that news! I didn’t mention it in the post but I had a Zen Jukebox for a very brief period of time too and refused to use that software for anything but syncing. I’m trying to get better about playlists; you both mentioned them but I’ve never been really into making them or finding really good ones people have made. I AM going back and doing the multiple tag thing (I wondered if anyone else was denoting “orchestra”, “remix”, etc.) so smart playlist deals will hopefully get easier. Thanks to you both for commenting.
#3 Comment By okkk On August 9, 2015 @ 1:26 am
While naked by candle light.
#4 Comment By Shawn Sackenheim On August 10, 2015 @ 9:11 am
THAT is the kind of personal stories I was hoping to bring out with this post! My work here is complete.
#5 Comment By rotane On August 9, 2015 @ 12:23 pm
Winamp (classic, but with the ML once it got released) from the late 90’s until 2007. I even used Winamp to sync my iPod nano back then (with the community-built ml_ipod plugin). Before the iPod i had a Creative Jukebox Zen portable mp3 player, and the only software i could use was the one Creative shipped with it. I used it exclusively for the Zen though, and never as my own player; it was rather horrible. For a while i tried mp3toys (i believe that was its name), but i went back to Winamp after the trial ran out. Once i got the iPhone i finally made the switch to iTunes. Transferring all of my play-counts was a bitch, to put it bluntly, but it was worth it. iTunes could perform a bit snappier, but i love its smartlist capabilities to death. I have a few top tier smartlists for Albums, Classical Music, Film soundtracks, Film scores, Game music, and Remixes – and a rather complex tagging system underneath it. (Every single mp3 gets tags such as “game”, “album”, “score”, or “instrumental”, so these smartlists get populated automatically. it’s rather tedious to set up at first, but i wouldn’t miss it.) I don’t do streaming a lot, but when i do, i usually use the Spotify web player – or YouTube if it’s only one track.
#6 Comment By rotane On August 11, 2015 @ 11:50 am
I’m a nut when it comes to this, so your post made it easy to tease this story out of me. 🙂
Yeah, i do use tags such as “remix” and “orchestral”. I use the Grouping field when editing mp3 metadata, using a simple space as a separator between multiple tags. It could be as complex as this: “ 2013 UK movie album OST cover rock indie alternative acoustic english female “. (Yes, i use leading and trailing spaces to make it easier for smartlist rules to catch my keywords.)
PS: It would be great if we got email notifications if someone also replies to our comments. I wouldn’t have seen your reply, had i not remembered it and wondered if someone else shared their story…
#7 Comment By Shawn Sackenheim On August 11, 2015 @ 12:03 pm
HAHA Thank you for sharing, I appreciate it! I’ve been thinking about the Grouping field for a while but wasn’t sure how it worked or if PowerAmp (on my phone) would pick up on them. So far I’ve just kept it to 3 or 4 genre tags like “Game, Genesis, 16bit”. Seems like I’m either in the mood for one console or a certain era of music so those will help quickly narrow it down. I love the detail in yours though, maybe I’ll give things a second pass some day and add more.
The comments system could use an update. Even having access on the back end it’s easy to miss new responses. Hopefully we can update to Disqus or something.
#8 Comment By rotane On August 11, 2015 @ 12:35 pm
My pleasure! Sure, whatever works for you. I tend to overdo things, and it’s quite a pain to properly tag new music once i add it to iTunes. But since my taste in music is quite varied and my library keeps growing, it’s necessary if i want to find my way around. 😛
Disqus sounds good to me. It’s one of the better commenting systems, i’ve come to realize…
#9 Comment By Jayson Napolitano On August 11, 2015 @ 8:47 pm
Was Winamp until a few years back when I got an iPod. Then I started using iTunes. Which I hate. On a Mac now and am using iTunes. Every update they send out breaks it further. But at least it allows for batch tag editing and whatnot.
#10 Comment By Jayson Napolitano On August 11, 2015 @ 8:51 pm
Oh, using iTunes now a lot due to subscribing to iTunes Match and having my library available to me anywhere via my iPhone. Problem was I had more than the service’s 25,000 song limit, so I had to actually remove a lot of music from my library. So I use Google Music to store that other stuff. Also have stuff on the Bandcamp app that I’ve bought. Using Pandora for streaming music mainly.
#11 Comment By Shawn Sackenheim On August 12, 2015 @ 8:01 am
Now THAT’S the kind of story I was expecting to hear from some folks. I was excited about Google Play Music when it launched but with the same limit on songs I’d still have to have split things up across services so I just stuck to the giant, lumbering Zune to keep everything together.