I've made some big changes to the way in which I consume media over the break. These are the things I've done are as follows:
- Cancel Spotify and switch back to Apple Music
- Cancel YouTube Premium
- Continue using Overcast for podcasts
My reasoning for each:
- I'm done with Spotify and the app, I want to switch back to a clean Apple based UI that's a no fuss music player, also the UI in CarPlay is much better I'm finding, it also has a couple of artists that Spotify doesn't have (Joni Mitchell, Cannibal Ox)
- I want to watch much less YouTube this year, what I'm going to do is to subscribe to certain channels via my RSS reader (NetNewsWire) and only watch videos that come through via the feed, taking steps even further (to ensure I watch less YouTube) I've deleted the YouTube app from my phone and I'm using the Focus for YouTube extension to ensure that YouTube has a clean interface with no temptations
- I experimented a bit with other podcast clients (like Pocket Casts) but Overcast continues to be the best by far
The overall ethos of this philosophy is to:
consume media local first
That means:
- Download music (albums) and podcasts
- Have an RSS reader only on my Mac, don't sync this to iCloud or have the RSS reader app on my iPhone
- YouTube doesn't provide a local first way (sadly yt-dlp is a bit of a hack and you can easily get hit with
403status codes) but using the aforementioned Focus for YouTube and not consuming YouTube on my phone is a good strategy
Some other goals for mine for media this year include:
- Continue to play more games
- Watch more TV and movies especially with Emma
- Discover more music
- Watch less TikTok but keep the app on my phone as it is a brilliant way to kill time
- Be more present with talking to friends, reach out to people more first, be the person to initiate contact