I’ve been looking for a decent way to convert FLAC files to MP3 under Linux for a while now. I’d been using SoundConverter, but I notice that there’s something not right with it. I’ll set my preference to VBR, highest quality (target rate is ~256), but I end up with files at around 150-192, which is not right.

So, I’ve done a bunch of searching around and have cobbled together this script, taking a little bit from here and a lot from there:

##START SCRIPT##
#!/bin/sh

for a in *.flac
do
OUTF=`echo "$a" | sed s/"\.flac$"/"\.mp3"/g`

ARTIST=`metaflac "$a" --show-tag=ARTIST | sed s/.*=//g`
TITLE=`metaflac "$a" --show-tag=TITLE | sed s/.*=//g`
ALBUM=`metaflac "$a" --show-tag=ALBUM | sed s/.*=//g`
GENRE=`metaflac "$a" --show-tag=GENRE | sed s/.*=//g`
TRACKNUMBER=`metaflac "$a" --show-tag=TRACKNUMBER | sed s/.*=//g`
DATE=`metaflac "$a" --show-tag=DATE | sed s/.*=//g`

flac -c -d "$a" | lame -V 0 - "$OUTF"
id3v2 -t "$TITLE" -T "$TRACKNUMBER" -a "$ARTIST" -A "$ALBUM" -g "$GENRE" -y "$DATE" "$OUTF"
done

mkdir "$ARTIST" && mkdir "$ARTIST"/"$ALBUM"
mv *.mp3 "$ARTIST"/"$ALBUM"/.
## END SCRIPT##

It works beautifully.

I’ve been a user of eMusic for almost a full year now. Overall, I’ve found it to be a really great service. It’s cheap (I pay something like thirty cents a track), DRM-free MP3 files (192 kbps, variable) and a wide selection of music. However, I’m starting to get really pissed at some things they do (or fail to do).

At times it seems like almost nothing is properly categorized. I understand that in many cases, you can’t really pin down a bands style, but eMusic doesn’t even try. I download a lot of Metal, specifically Black Metal, Doom Metal and its varied sub-genres. I don’t expect eMusic to get that specific, but I find that almost all of this music is classified under “Rock”, which can be argued as somewhat insulting, but they have a Metal category, it’s just not listed there. I find nearly everything I download is categorized incorrectly. I’ll find Death Metal under “Jazz”—shit like that. It makes finding new music you might like a daunting and at times completely retarded experience. To make it more ass-backwards, there has been a number of times where I’ve found bands I like under incorrectly spelled names (rendering it unlikely anyone will easily find them, ever). Tracks are misspelled. Some songs are missing from the album and records from artists who may share the same name are often incorrectly lumped with each other (for example, an album by a Norwegian Jazz ensemble lumped in as being put out by a Suicidal Black Metal group).

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More tunes from Emusic. This time, it’s metal (big change there)! Specifically some fucking Black Metal madness! I’ve been a fan of Black Metal for a good while. I love it, especially the old shit like Burzum and Darkthrone. Seeing Immortal reunited live at BB Kings about a month ago was one of the most fucking unbelievable head-banging moments of my life (not to mention eardrum damaging). Black Metal is the shit. That said, here are some good albums I’ve nabbed off of Emusic lately:

Carpathian Forest is one of my all-time favorite Black Metal bands. Lead singer, Nattefrost has two solo albums out, “Blood and Vomit” being the first. For some reason, Emusic has the artist’s name misspelled in their database (I even emailed them, geek that I am), so it’s kind of buried. If you can get into raw, fast and lo-fi Black Metal (which, admittedly, not everyone can do), then this is one of those must-have albums. There’s pissing, vomiting (enough to make you fast-forward if you’re eating), plenty of songs about Hell, Satan, whores and fucking. It’s an all-around offensive masterpiece. Music to sexually abuse the elderly with. Get that shit, slap on some black leather, spikes and some corpsepaint and go burn something down!
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I signed up for an account with eMusic this weekend and so far, I’m really liking it. Based on a monthly subscription model, I pay a set fee for a certain number or tracks a month. Right now, I’m doing the 50 tracks for about $15.00 package, which works out to about thirty cents a song. The music is delivered in a DRM-free MP3 format and is encoded in VBR at a median of about 192kbps. Normally, I encode at CBR 192kbps, so this works out totally fine. Once I’ve purchased a track, I can download it as many times as I wish, without affecting my monthly quota, which I love.

Since eMusic sells unlocked, DRM-free music, it doesn’t have everything. If you’re a top-20 loser, stick to Itunes. I find that for my musical leanings, just about 75-80% of the bands I like are on eMusic with at least one album. With over 2 million tracks and new music being added every week, I don’t feel restricted at all. In fact, 24 hours and 4 albums later, I’m in a bit of a Black Metal overdose. A good thing.

eMusic uses a download manager application that has clients for most all operating systems. However, the Linux client sucks major ass. Luckily, some intrepid user created a Java application called EMusicJ that does an excellent job getting my purchased music to my hard drive.

I hate DRM. I refuse to purchase from any label that uses it and as long as media companies try to shove it down people’s throats, I will strongly support piracy. However, I also like to able to support bands I like and eMusic is a great example of a sane and reasonable music store. Piracy to me is a protest not a permanent option. Thirty cents for a high-quality digital file seems about right to me. Ninety-nine cents for a DRM-infected Itunes track that you can only download once is a fucking insult and a rip-off. I hear it a lot and perhaps it’s become a bit of a cliche, but who the hell wakes up in the morning, wanting to pay more money for music with less value and use? Not me.

I’m just on a role with the KDE worship. To think, a mere few days ago, I peevishly looked down on all things K. I keep finding more and more bad-ass apps and features that makes me wonder if this website is going to transform into a repository for drooling desktop worship. I’ve gotta reign the geek shit in, I know. But, since I’ve already started this post, allow me to indulge in a bit more of the antisocial software fetish.

My latest object of amorous sheep-humping enthusiasm is amaroK, a media player for KDE that comes pre-installed in Kubuntu. An all-in-one player and music library manager, amaroK is definitely the best I’ve ever used. Using MySQL to manage a database of my music collection, it fetches album covers, artist biographies from Wikipedia and discographies as well as lyrics. It does an excellent job of creating dynamic playlists by analyzing the music I listen to the most. You can’t help but be happy with the damn thing. Another plus is that amaroK works with the Last.fm service, letting me post my listening habits to my profile page as well as any other place I should choose. Case in point, notice the “Recent Music” section I’ve added to the sidebar of this page. As I listen to a song, amaroK updates Last.fm, which in turn updates this list on my website. Kinda cool.

Should I be in a statistical mood, amaroK gives me loads of summaries. What I listen to, like the best and might like. Songs are rated and scored depending not only on how often I play a song, but also how much of the track I listen to. A song I listen to in entirety gets a much higher scoring than a tune I skip after thirty seconds of play. I can also check Last.fm for even more charts and displays showing the history of self-inflicted my ear damage and the fact that I have a serious problem with Death Metal. I’m so deaf, but very happy.