physical media is rad!
in this age of subscriptions, the only way you can truly own something is by having it physically, whether that's on a disc, tape, vinyl, or an mp3 player
so, i wanted to make a guide!
first, you've gotta decide what sort of physical media you're into. do you want your music on the go? how important is convenience vs. aesthetic for you? do you have room/even want a physical colection of things? do you want to be able to personalize your media? what's your budget?
i'll be going over mp3 players, cassette tapes, and cds in this guide - since that's what i have experience with, but there's a whole world of neat physical media you can (and should) look into!
supplies needed: laptop/pc, mp3 player, ytdlp(free), autotagger(free), spotify account(free), deezer account(free)
mp3 players probably make the most sense for modern day life, especially if you're going from using a streaming service to physical media.
so now it's time to find one! i reccomend going somewhere in the $45-$60 range for most people, anything under $30 isn't going to last you very long, and will probably be an unpleasant experience. i'll always reccomend trying to find one second hand (there's enough e-waste in the world already!) ebay is a wonderful source for some good quality, secondhand, and cheap mp3 players! you can even find some in this price range that will play .wav files if you're into that sort of thing!
so you've got your mp3 player! time to get your music. there's plenty of legal and not so much ways to achieve this part. i'm not sure how advisable it is for me to explain the far less expensive method here, but! here is a guide on my favorite method:
now you've got your music! woo! but, it's ugly and has no metadata. let's fix that.
put all your fresh mp3s into a folder, and download onetagger - then open it up!
once you've got onetagger opened up, go to 'auto tag'. i've had the most success selecting discogs, itunes, spotify, and deezer. spotify and discogs require free accounts - which i definitely reccomend creating for this process. next!>
select your folder of mp3s, while you're in there, make an empty folder within your mp3 folder named something like "tagged". next, select all the metadata you'd like to add, here's a list of what i usually do: album art, album, artist, title, genre, and duration. next!>
on this page you'll put in your spotify token (here's how to get that) as well as your deezer token (info here) you do need to create free accounts for both of these! you'll also see a "max albums to check" option (I have mine set to 4) and an album art resolution setting, pick what you'd like! i have mine at 500px, because my mp3 player screen is quite small and i don't want the album art to take up too much space. next!>
alright this page is important, here are all the settings i have turned on: overwrite tags, ID3v2.4, identify tracks with shazam, force shazam, and move successful tagged files after tagging (select that empty folder within your mp3 folder we made earlier). i have strictness set to 55%, and search threads set to 16. leave everything else alone and hit the play button in the bottom right corner :)
now most, if not all your songs should be tagged! if there were some it missed, try running it again with the same settings. if there are still some songs left behind (usually niche stuff is) you can take it into 'edit tag' and manually tag it with the song title, artist, etc. untagged songs will be left in your original mp3 folder, whereas successfully tagged songs will be in the new one! once all the songs are tagged make sure everything is in the same folder
okay one more step in one tagger, let's make the names less ugly. this part is super easy!
go into 'auto rename' and select your folder of tagged mp3s. leave output folder empty. in template put: %title% and leave all other options off. then hit the play button in the bottom right corner!
now you've got a bunch of beautifully tagged and named mp3s! yay! most of the work is done :)
plug your mp3 player into your pc, navigate to where music is held, and copy over your mp3s! you've done it! 