Friday, May 2, 2025

This is the thirty-fifth installment of West Wind, your daily drop of thoughts, ideas, and info for this Season. The wind is currently blowing in the direction of technology and media. Check out other posts at the link.

It’s Frontier Friday! Check out the latest article on World Anvil. The Floradex is getting close to halfway full already…

It’s also Bandcamp Friday, the day when my favorite music site waives their administrative fees and artists get all of the money from sales of their music. This is important for a lot of reasons. I chose to use Bandcamp long ago not only because they offer DRM-free downloads of songs, which I need for my offline MP3 player, but also because there are a lot of artists selling their music directly to listeners, even if it’s a soundtrack to a game where there are other rights holders. This would be like me selling copies of the Avalon Lost audiobook on my own store and keeping the profits. Which isn’t the done thing!

So today is a good day to support artists by giving them a slightly larger piece of the pie than usual. I have to watch it and not go overboard by buying every album I have in my wishlist, not only because I have limited money, but also because I have a LOT of music already.

I’ve been collecting MP3s ever since I got a computer with a CD-ROM drive. All of my CDs got turned into files, and some of my friend’s game soundtracks, also. I deleted everything that I didn’t actually own, but even having done that, my collection still weighs in at over 100 GB, with who knows how many hours of music. I got a lot of it through the sountracks included with Humble Indie Bundles, when they used to be called that, as well as through Freegal, a service that might be provided by your library which lets you download a few tracks every week for free. Bandcamp has been the recent major source of music, though, with many artists offering their work on a pay-what-you-want basis, and others making their entire catalog free for their birthday or some other event. Being patient and liking music, I’ll download everything and listen to it eventually.

At the same time, that can get a little overwhelming. Sure, I can fit all of the music I own on a chip smaller than my fingernail, then carry it around with me everywhere I go and listen to it constantly. But with so much, how to decide what to actually listen to? My kids also have their own (offline, no apps) MP3 players, which they use during school and chores to focus. My poor daughter, though, spends more time trying to pick an album than actually getting work done. I prefer to make playlists based on moods or Seasons and rotate them out as needed. Focusing is more important than variety, sometimes.

The question is back! What are some of your favorite songs or albums for this Season of your life?