Allow me to spread the word about ListenBrainz , the occasion being that ListenBrainz is about to hit 100.000 users.

ListenBrainz is a FOSS project that aims to crowdsource listening data and release it under an open license. Basically it’s Last.fm but better. Whatever you use to listen to music, you can probably link it up with ListenBrainz. For instance you can connect Spotify, Apple Music, Soundcloud, Last.fm . You can link it up with loads of music players . If you’ve kept track of your what music you’ve listened to up to this point, don’t worry, there are several ways to import them into ListenBrainz.

All ListenBrainz listening data is available for all to use. This means that we don't need to rely on big companies like Spotify for recommendation algorithms. We can use whatever algorithm suits us best. All sorts of other services could be build to make use of the ListenBrainz data set. The dataset can also help analyze other services' algorithms, for instance the Fair MusE project uses LB-data and LB-users to investigate the fairness of different music service algorithms.

Obviously ListenBrainz initially suffered from being a comparatively small service, For good recommendations you need loads of data. But it's growing every day and I feel like the 1 billion listens is an impressive milestone. And ListenBrainz has the advantage of having listening data from several services, Spotify could never recommend you music that's not on Spotify. ListenBrainz, because it's open, doesn't have such inherent blindspots.

I am not working for ListenBrainz in any way, I just really like this project as well as MusicBrainz , and I like to spread the word. I think the aims of the ListenBrainz probably align with some Fediverse-folks. If you don't care about the service itself, you could still link up to support FOSS music services, not only LB itself, but other services that are, can and will be built using LB's data. If you use another service to store your own listening data, for instance Last.fm, you could use ListenBrainz as a backup for you data in case the other sevice ever enshittifies. Note: you shouldn't sign up if you want your listening data to be private, that's not what LB is for. I care very much about privacy, but in the case of LB I consciously choose to share my music listening data with others for my own benefit.

Curious to hear peoples thought on all this.

P.S. I have posted about LB over a year ago. I don't intend to spam this service, but i feel like it could be useful for folks on here, and I think most of you folks would support the spreading of FOSS. And LBs usercount rising from 36k january last year to 100k now seemed like a good celebratory occasion to spread the love once more.

So I'm moving from a PC setup at my desk towards just a laptop that I can use around my 1 room apartment. I'm not sure what I should do for my audio setup though. I looked into wifi-speakers, from what I read they are the home setup alternative to bluetooth speakers, whose purpose is more particularly for mobile use. Wifi speakers also have the advantage of usually coming with a power cord, instead of a battery. My use case for the speakers would be to listen to music and to have decent sound when watching videos. I have some questions though.

• Would such speakers work with Ubuntu, which is what I run on my laptop. Do I need any speakers in particular, or would all be compatible?
• What advice could you give me on what speakers to buy. A lot of what I see has built in 'smart home' bullshit which I want nothing to do with. I would just want plain and simple speakers, that I could connect to through wifi.
• Is this even the smart thing to choose, or should I go for something like a docking station instead and just link up regular speakers to the docking station? That would feel a bit weird, considering that I would probably only hook up the speakers through the docking station and nothing else. I don't want a second monitor or anything like that, and I'm fine with internet through wifi. Also with a docking station I wouldn't be able to use the laptop around the room, or atleast not with sound.

Any advice is welcome. Please consider that I am not tech savvy in the slightest.

So I bought a product for €200 on Amazon.com. I am slightly ashamed of doing so but I did, didn't know where else to find this type of product. So after a few days they told me they would not be sending me the product for whatever reason. So I would be getting a refund. They said if I hadn't gotten the refund within 5 days I should contact support. So after 5 days I contacted support. And as soon as I did that, they sent me an email claiming that they require me to upload a picture of my "government issued identity document". They write that if I don't do that "You may continue shopping on Amazon, but you will no longer be eligible for a refund on the order ". Surely they have no right to do so right? They claim they've noticed some suspicious behavior on my account, but all I did was order a product, pay for it in advance, which they decided not to ever deliver to me. It's not me who's being suspicious here.

Anyone else had this experience? This a clear dealbreaker for me. I feel shame for ever having bought something from their store.