Hey, friends! In the last couple weeks I upgraded our instance to run the latest version of Lemmy, and because it was consuming more RAM today I upgraded the VPS to one with 4GB. This means that the cost for running the instance have gone up. Historically I've been paying around $20 per month out of my pocket to run the instance (after [Ko-fi](https://ko-fi.com/lemmystudio) donations), and this will increase to $35 after the upgrade. Our cost per user is around $0.10/month, so it's not a lot. If you can contribute money, even $1/month, please do, it really helps. Thanks!

Anyone else using the Woovebox? I received mine last year, and I'm slowly starting to explore it. It's a full groovebox, with samples, live mode, song mode, multiple synth engines. So small!

Cassette tapes and more beto • 8 months ago • 100%

www.musicradar.com

Let's wait for the reviews to see if the transport is any good. It would be nice to have a decent quality new walkman on the market!

No major changes, just bug fixes. Let me know if something's not working.

There has been a [shitty incident](https://lemmy.studio/post/597490) where someone intentionally posted CSAM to a Lemmy community that unfortunately someone in our instance was subscribed to. Due to federation, the images might have been copied over to our instance storage. Because of that I've taken the following measures until we understand the problem better: 1. I've defederated from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works. 2. I've deleted all images uploaded since 2023-08-27 00:00:00 GMT. 3. I've disabled the image server. I'll post updates when I have them. Thanks for understanding.

Link is also on the sidebar. We'll use it to keep people updated on releases and give support when people can't reach the Lemmy instance. Also, I'm an IRC kind of person, so forgive my noobness with Matrix. 🙃

Hey, hey! This morning (Pacific time) I changed the nameservers on lemmy.studio, switching to [a service](https://noc.org) that provides a CDN and a WAF. It's a cautionary measure to protect us from DDOS attacks. That caused some instabilities, sorry for that. I also noticed that the CDN was too aggressive, caching URLs regardless of the `Content-type`, and it seems that Lemmy uses content negotiation (the same endpoint can return HTML or JSON depending on the headers). I've fixed the caching to take the headers in consideration, so hopefully you won't be seeing JSON responses when accessing the website on your desktop. If you do, let me know! On a related note, I created a spreadsheet showing the monthly expenses on the instance, and how much we're making from user donations on Ko-fi. The sheets was shared with the current supporters. If you can spare a dollar (or five) every month to help the instance run smoothly please do, anything helps. Thanks!

Classic Rock: A Journey Through Timeless Music beto • 1 year ago • 93%

album.link

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.studio/post/488779 >  > > > Out of all the legendary albums on this list, I doubt many of them had their origins as an abandoned rock opera. Many arrangements and scraps of Pete Townshend’s abandoned Lifehouse project became the basis for Who’s Next, an album that has no underlying theme or storyline. This sense of freedom allowed The Who to focus on making great individual songs rather than an overarching story. > > > > The result is The Who growing up in public. The songs combine the hard-hitting energy of the band in their youth with the more experimental elements explored on Tommy. The most noticeable improvement is Roger Daltrey’s voice, reaching heights that were only hinted at in the past. Keith Moon’s drum solo followed by Daltrey’s scream at the end of “Won’t Get Fooled Again” remains as one of rock’s greatest moments. > > > > While everyone knows about the singles, from the opening keyboard of “Baba O’Riley” to the building acoustics of “Behind Blue Eyes,” every song on this record is a potential hit. Listen to the explosive chorus of “Bargain.” Check out a rare lead vocal from bassist John Entwistle on “My Wife.” With tracks like these, it’s easy to see why Who’s Next moved The Who from a great band of the ’60s to a rock superpower in the ’70s. — [Joe Marvilli (2010)](https://consequence.net/2022/09/best-albums-all-time-list/3/) > > [Listen to it here](https://album.link/us/i/1440850317).

 > Out of all the legendary albums on this list, I doubt many of them had their origins as an abandoned rock opera. Many arrangements and scraps of Pete Townshend’s abandoned Lifehouse project became the basis for Who’s Next, an album that has no underlying theme or storyline. This sense of freedom allowed The Who to focus on making great individual songs rather than an overarching story. > > The result is The Who growing up in public. The songs combine the hard-hitting energy of the band in their youth with the more experimental elements explored on Tommy. The most noticeable improvement is Roger Daltrey’s voice, reaching heights that were only hinted at in the past. Keith Moon’s drum solo followed by Daltrey’s scream at the end of “Won’t Get Fooled Again” remains as one of rock’s greatest moments. > > While everyone knows about the singles, from the opening keyboard of “Baba O’Riley” to the building acoustics of “Behind Blue Eyes,” every song on this record is a potential hit. Listen to the explosive chorus of “Bargain.” Check out a rare lead vocal from bassist John Entwistle on “My Wife.” With tracks like these, it’s easy to see why Who’s Next moved The Who from a great band of the ’60s to a rock superpower in the ’70s. — [Joe Marvilli (2010)](https://consequence.net/2022/09/best-albums-all-time-list/3/) [Listen to it here](https://album.link/us/i/1440850317).

ko-fi.com

Hi, folks! Since I started lemmy.studio a lot of people have reached out offering help and financial support for our instance. While right now the hosting costs and administration efforts are mostly negligible, I want to make sure the instance can grown in a sustainable way, and I have some ideas on how to do that. For financial support, I created a [Ko-fi](https://ko-fi.com/lemmystudio) page. If you're not familiar with Ko-fi, they're very similar to Patreon, but the fees are optional and they pay creators immediately (not monthly). They also support one-off donations, which is nice. Right now there's a single monthly tier of $1 (though of course people can pay more, if they want). The current monthly costs for the server, domain, and backups are around $25/month (**edit:** $45), and we have almost 200 users, so I'm hoping it will be relatively easier to get the costs covered. Any excess income would go towards a reserve to ensure we have a good runway and funds for upgrading the server as we grow. I'm going to create a spreadsheet and share with everyone donating, to keep this transparent. Second, so far I've been the only administrator in our instance. The volume of reports is still small, usually a handful of spam posts per week, but as we grow we're going to need more people removing spam, banning bad actors, and ensuring we're building a supportive and encouraging culture across our communities. I'm planning to reach out to some "long-term" users that have offered help, but feel free to DM me if you want to help. (An intermission about culture. This is a music-focused instance, and we're here to share the music we love and the music we make, and also help each other by sharing our process and tools. We're all united by the belief that **music makes the world better**. So let's put our differences asides, focus on what we have in common, and try to always be kind and supportive!) Third, I've been also the only sys admin of the instance, responsible for backups and upgrades. Right now the instance is running on a personal team on [Digital Ocean](https://digitalocean.com/), together with other personal projects. My plan is to move the instance VPS to a separate team, so I can invite 1-2 people to share those responsibilities with me. Initially these would have to be voluntary, but I'm hoping that if we get enough support through Ko-fi we can compensate people doing this work. Finally, for the long run I'd also love to set up a governance model. I'm not sure how this would work, but I'd rather have something where we can make decisions collectively. Let me know your thoughts! **Edit:** I just got my first AWS bill after switching the instance storage to S3, and while it's not bank breaking it caught me by surprise. My monthly bill is around $3-5, last month it was $28.64. **Edit 2:** people are migrating to our instance from waveform.social because of malicious activity (DDOS and spurious file uploads), so **if you can support the instance please do**. I'm planning to move the database to a separate VPS, and maybe look into using CloudFlare to prevent us from being affected, and that will cost more money.

Hi, folks! Sorry for the latest instabilities in the instance. For some reason we were getting spikes of 100% every now and then, and that would make the instance unstable. I just finished upgrading to 0.18.3, which was released today. There should be a lot of CPU improvements since 0.18.0, so hopefully the instance will be more stable from now on. Let me know if you encounter any problems! Since we're usually in the dark during instance upgrades I created a Mastodon account for the instance, so I can post status updates. You can find it here: https://mastodon.social/@lemmystudio

album.link

 > Who would have thought four twenty-somethings from Minneapolis could produce something so timeless, so vital, and so vivid? Back in 1984, when The Replacements dished out their magnum opus, Let It Be, nobody did. While all eyes were on Prince at the time, Paul Westerberg, Tommy Stinson, Chris Mars, and Bob Stinson were creating pure, unadulterated rock and roll. With his heart on his sleeve, Westerberg poured his love, his loss, and his inhibitions into each and every lyric, note, chord, and yelp. > > On “Androgynous,” the first hit of the piano strikes your nerves, tugging at your eyes, and by the time Westerberg sings, “Future outcasts, they don’t last,” you’re right there beside him — in the dusty bar, within the late hours of a week night, and with nobody to hold onto but the music. That’s everything The Replacements were meant to be; here they do that in every note, over 11 tracks, and for 33 minutes and 31 seconds. It’s not an album, it’s a life preserver. — [Michael Roffman (2010)](https://consequence.net/2022/09/best-albums-all-time-list/3/) [Listen here](https://album.link/us/i/162563989).

album.link

 > With new jack swing falling out of favor by the mid-’90s and Lisa “Left-Eye” Lopez dealing with personal struggles that kept her away from the group for extended periods, TLC found ways to mature their sound on their sophomore album. Reuniting with Babyface, Jermain Dupri, and Dallas Austin while adding contributions from Sean “Puffy” Combs, Organized Noize, and Chucky Thompson, they bumped up the hip-hop and soul vibes to utter R&B perfection on CrazySexyCool. > > At the same time, they helped spur a sex positivity movement that still evolves today by tackling romance from numerous angles: the tryst of “Creep,” the sweetness of “Diggin’ on You,” the XXX of “Red Light Special.” In between, they delivered one of the most enduring cautionary tales of all time in “Waterfalls.” CrazySexyCool was the R&B album of the decade. Today, it stands as a testament to confident womanhood, a statement sealed in the record books as the best-selling album by an American girl group ever and the first to reach Diamond status. — [B. Kaye](https://consequence.net/2022/09/best-albums-all-time-list/3/) [Listen here](https://album.link/us/i/270246704).

album.link

 > There is an alternate universe that exists where Wilco never releases Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, an album that would not only secure the band’s place in rock history, but would fundamentally alter the landscape of the music industry at the turn of the new millennium. Yes, this record is awash in mythology and backstory, best encapsulated in Sam Jones’ I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, which just so happens to be one of the best music documentaries of all-time. > > But YHF endures as a classic over 20 years later less because of that lore and more because it’s a collection of songs that’s so damn strong. Jeff Tweedy channels all his anxiety and self-consciousness into songs like “Ashes of American Flags” and “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart,” complementing those heavier tracks with the warm nostalgia of “Heavy Metal Drummer” and heart-on-your-sleeve romance of “Reservations,” which features a lyric that’s devastatingly direct: “I’ve got reservations about so many things, but not about you.” > > The genius of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is the decision to add layers of feedback and field recordings and noise and distortion on top of Tweedy’s folk and country and indie rock songs, leaning into the experimental to such an extent that the record dispatched the “alt-country” label that had dogged the band since its founding. From start to finish, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot mesmerizes and beguiles, and somehow manages to sound like both falling in love and the end of the world. It’s untouchable. — [S.D.](https://consequence.net/2022/09/best-albums-all-time-list/3/) [Listen here](https://album.link/us/i/912314323).

www.threads.net

Meta just released [Threads](https://www.threads.net/), a Twitter clone that is promised to be compatible with ActivityPub in the future. You sign up with your Instagram account and have the option of bringing in the people you follow there, even if they haven't a Threads account yet.

I'm planning to upgrade to 0.18 today and move the storage to S3, so I'll bring the instance down between 5-6pm PDT. **Update:** this took longer than I expected. I started at 6pm because of work. I shut down the instance and took a snapshot, then brought it back up and upgraded to 0.18. The upgrade worked fine. I brought the services down and configured the instance to use S3 for object storage. That required migrating existing objects to an S3 bucket, which took quite some time. Then, after bringing the services back up again I got a "Server error" message. Unfortunately I had to stop at 8pm since I had something scheduled. At 9:15pm I was able to bring the services up successfully, and we're back! **Update 2:** turns out we hit [this bug](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/1530), and the instance was down around 11pm. I changed the hostname of the instance and now it seems to be working fine.

album.link

 > After making a name for themselves with their self-titled debut, System of a Down reached new heights with their sophomore album, 2001’s Toxicity. Melodic, chaotic, and downright hypnotic, the album expanded the boundaries of heavy music. The frenetic “Chop Suey!” became one of the most bizarre hits of all-time on rock radio (even with Clear Channel temporarily removing it from airwaves after the September 11 attacks), while songs like the crushing title track and the haunting “Aerials” also served to propel the album to multi-platinum status. > > Sounding like no other band before them, Serj Tankian’s operatic vocals soar over Daron Malakian’s complex musical compositions, with Shavo Odadjian and John Dolmayan forming a relentless rhythm section. All told, Toxicity stands as one of the finest works of heavy music in the 21st century, if not all time. — [S.K.](https://consequence.net/2022/09/best-albums-all-time-list/3/) [Listen here](https://album.link/us/i/273714443).

How is everyone listening to music these days? I use YouTube Music almost exclusively, since I like having YouTube Premium and Music comes for free. But it's not the best experience. For indie artists I buy their music on Bandcamp and listen there, but I was thinking if I should download all the files from Bandcamp and upload to YouTube Music, so I can listen to everything in a single place.

Bespoke is an amazing free modular synthesizer. Check out [this video](https://youtu.be/NnrStjS4NhU) explaining how it works... it's an amazing product of love from the developer.

Cassette tapes and more beto • 1 year ago • 100%

unwinkingtides.bandcamp.com

> This album was created over the past few years by two artists in two different hemispheres who connected over a mutual love of music. The goal was to create a cohesive work from two different corners of the globe. The result is 'Antipodes'.

daily.jstor.org

> The Mellotron’s debut took place just at the time that the mystical and the mind-bending was trending in rock music, materializing in records like Cream’s Disraeli Gears, Pink Floyd’s The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Once a bug, the variations in sound afforded by finicky analog technology were now a positive attribute of the Mellotron: The ghostly, uncanny quality caused by natural wear on the tape or external irritants created a perfectly trippy ambience on songs like “Nights in White Satin,” from the Moody Blues, the Rolling Stones’ “She’s a Rainbow,” and Bowie’s “Space Oddity.”

Here's a quick trick: a [bookmarklet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookmarklet) that lets you quickly share any page to a Lemmy instance:  Clicking the bookmarklet sends you to this page: 

 > Although they owe Schoolly D and the Park Side Killas some credit for pioneering gangsta rap, N.W.A. can proudly say that they brought this style of uber-catchy, ultra-violent hip-hop to the mainstream. Released in 1988, Straight Outta Compton featured what would eventually become some of the genre’s biggest names — Ice Cube, Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, and MC Ren — spinning tales of life in one of LA’s roughest neighborhoods over minimalist beats and scratching provided by DJ Yella and Arabian Prince. > > Cuts like “Fuck Tha Police” and the title track came to epitomize the West Coast sound, and paved a road that led to rap music infiltrating every household in America. Even if you were from the most tranquil corners of suburbia, you tensed up, clenched your fists, and pretended you were ready for a fight when you listened to Ice Cube open the record by declaring, “When I’m called off/ I get a sawed off/ Squeeze the trigger/ And bodies are hauled off.” N.W.A. made you feel hard, even though you still had to turn the volume down when your mom was home. — [Ray Roa (2010)](https://consequence.net/2022/09/best-albums-all-time-list/2/) [Listen here](https://album.link/us/i/1440816032).

youtu.be

Amazing video showing how to record Radiohead's "Weird Fishes" in your bedroom.

album.link

 > While Repeater is considered Fugazi’s full-length debut, it had the daunting task of following the band’s legendary first two EPs (compiled together as 13 Songs). With Repeater, though, the D.C. band not only raised their own bar, but blew the entire hardcore punk genre wide open. > > With a nod to the precision of post-punkers Gang of Four, Repeater is evidence of a band playing without restrictions. Fugazi never had to answer to suits when it came to the music they recorded, thanks to their entire discography being released via singer-guitarist Ian MacKaye’s own Dischord Records. Their chemistry is obvious, with MacKaye and Guy Picciotto trading vocals over dissonant chords, and bassist Joe Lally and drummer Brendan Canty providing a steady backbone. Those facts together affirm that the commercial success of Repeater is a byproduct of the artists themselves, not a label’s cash-grabby plan. > > Featuring powerhouse anthems like “Turnover” and “Blueprint,” as well as standout cuts like the title track and “Sieve-Fisted Find,” Repeater is a seminal work by the ultimate DIY band. — [S.K.](https://consequence.net/2022/09/best-albums-all-time-list/2/) [Listen here](https://album.link/us/i/49249888).

Friendly reminder that today I'm bringing the instance down to do a snapshot backup before increasing memory/CPU/disk and upgrading to the next release of Lemmy. I'm planning to do this at 8pm PT, and if everything goes well it should be done in under an hour. Since I'm resizing the VPS this will require downtime, but I'm hoping that in future releases we can upgrade with no downtime. **Edit: I've upgraded to a new instance and we're now running 0.17.4. Thanks for your patience!**

album.link

 > There have been no shortage of Lucinda Williams imitators over the years — artists hoping to nick even an ounce of her grit, grace, and gumption and make it their own. But there is only one Lucinda Williams, and on her 1998 Grammy-winning masterpiece Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, she demonstrates why she’s an unrivaled talent. > > The Lake Charles, Louisiana native has a sprawling discography, kicking off in 1979 with Ramblin’ on My Mind and most recently with the acerbic Good Souls Better Angels, which makes selecting just one of her albums as the “best” a bit of a fool’s errand. However, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road stands out as a hallmark of hard-worn Americana, a Southern swirl of country, blues, folk, and rock ‘n’ roll. > > It’s a riff-laden record with a laundry list of lyrics tailor-made for tattooing on your body, doubling as a roadmap to the soul of a complicated nation. Across 13 tracks, from the sexy “2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten” to the middle-fingers-up kiss-off of “Joy,” you learn a few things about the record’s central narrator, but there’s one lesson that stands out in particular: You don’t fuck with Lucinda Williams. If Williams is Americana’s poet laureate, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road is a high watermark of the form. — [Spencer Dukoff](https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/100-greatest-albums-time-120050279.html) [Listen here](https://album.link/us/i/1440915686).

We just crossed the 100 user threshold in the instance! 🎉 I'm planning some downtime in the next few days to upgrade the instance to the [v0.17.4 release](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/releases/tag/0.17.4), as well as bump the instance size and add more storage. Since Monday is a holiday in the US I'm planning to do this Tuesday night Pacific time. [For anyone curious, the instance is running on a $6 VPS from Digital Ocean. CPU usage has been negligible (10%), memory usage has been stable around 80%, but disk usage has been increasing 2GB/day (a lot of it from logs, which I've been pruning). I'm going to double the memory just in case, and attach a 100GB volume to the instance to give us some space to breathe.]

album.link

> In 2015, saxophonist Kamasi Washington announced his arrival to mainstream audiences on Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly. Only months later, he cemented his place at the front of jazz’s vanguard with his equally expansive major label debut, The Epic, largely developed with his compatriots in Los Angeles’ West Coast Get Down jazz collective. But it was the follow-up, 2018’s Heaven & Earth, that more accurately reflects the heights he can reach from his ascended headspace. > > Heaven & Earth evokes the grand scale of its title with an all-encompassing view of the past, present, and future of this world and beyond. Whether Washington is resurrecting the past with his take on Freddie Hubbard’s “Hub-Tones,” refurbishing the theme from the Bruce Lee film Fists of Fury with a modern context, or pushing jazz in a completely new direction on the dark groove jam “Street Fighter Mas,” he is constantly in conversation with a higher power; the divinity just varies from the Almighty to his all-star group of musician friends. > > In regards to the growing presence of spirituality in his music, Consequence’s A-grade review asserted that “if more churches played songs like ‘Journey’ and ‘Will You Sing’ on Sundays, those sanctuaries might be standing room only.” — [Bryan Kress](https://consequence.net/2022/09/best-albums-all-time-list/2/) [Listen here](https://album.link/us/i/1363033047).

https://song.link/ is a free service that helps you link to songs and albums across different streaming services. For example, this is their page to [The Beatles — Abbey Road](https://album.link/i/1474815798): 

Not super excited about these news: > Moog Music will remain in Asheville, NC, and our team will continue to design and build our instruments here inside the Moog factory. As part of the transition, **Moog Music is no longer employee owned**. All past and present employees who have participated in the Moog Music Employee Stock Ownership Program (ESOP) since it was implemented in 2015 will receive a payout. And here's what Roger Linn has to say about the CEO of InMusic: https://youtu.be/jdMRxUC77RQ

Music beto • 1 year ago • 100%

Hi, folks! I'm running https://lemmy.studio, an instance focusing on communities for musicians. We have a few communities for song feedback, making ambient music, but creation is open to users. You're welcome to join, explore, and start communities. Thanks, and please remove if this is not appropriate!

Ambient Music & Creators beto • 1 year ago • 100%

A friend shared this with me today when we were talking about alternative music notation, and I thought it was super interesting.

Hi, all! Feel free to do a quick introduction if you've joined this instance, or if you're from another instance but interested in the communities here. I'll go first: I'm Beto, originally from Brazil but living in California. I started writing songs when I was 14 years old, and always loved making music. I have a one-person band called [The Fishermen & the Priestess](https://thefishermenandthepriestess.com/), and I post all my songs (releases and experimental tracks) on a [Funkwhale instance](https://songs.thefishermenandthepriestess.com) (which is another federated project). My songs are usually ambient/downtempo and very hopeful. I love using cassette tapes, tape loops, and 4-track recorders, and I'm planning to release my next album on microcassettes.

Cassette tapes and more beto • 1 year ago • 100%

purlieurecordings.bandcamp.com

 I bought this cassette tape last year, when it was released in November. From the artist: >Environmental Music For The Multitasker is a slow cooked collection of eight songs. > >The first bits were created in 2020. But quarantine and other boring stuff resulted in the equivalent of a writers block. The tracks fell asleep on a harddrive. It wasn’t until Purlieu said "let’s do a tape" that I found the lost joy of noodling with sounds and the collected tracks were finished. > >Somewhere in the start the theme was ”no theme”. I think? Can’t really remember. > >Anyways I read some grumpy old guitar man saying all modern music (i guess post Toto) is just background noise for young people while doing something else. So there’s that truth and here are eight songs to ignore and have in the background. The album has 8 meditative tracks that are perfect for a cloudy day with a hot beverage. While listen to the album sometimes it would catch me attention ("are those children noises?") and eventually it would drift to the background again. Favorite song: [Wide Field](https://purlieurecordings.bandcamp.com/track/wide-field).

I'm currently running this instance on a Digital Ocean VPS with [1 VCPU and 1GB of ram](https://cloud.digitalocean.com/droplets/new?size=s-1vcpu-1gb), just to get started. I'm keeping an eye on CPU and memory usage, so I can upgrade it as we grow. Right now it looks like this:  Today I added a swap file, since we're around 90% memory usage. But I expect to probably have to bump it to 2GB in the next coming days.

Lemmy beto • 1 year ago • 98%

Lemmies? Lemmings?

Cassette tapes and more beto • 1 year ago • 100%

youtu.be

What happens when Hainbach meets LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER to break a record?