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I built physical album cards with NFC tags to teach my son music discovery

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Re: I built physical album cards with NFC tags to teach my son music discovery

#201

Post by Symbiote »

leptons wrote: post #192
lexx wrote: post #82

You are in my mind and in my heart. This is a constant thought that I have. I grew up in a house where books, vinyls, cds, slides, tapes and other media were everywhere. Some on display, others archived in boxes. Large part of my childhood was spent with me exploring through that stuff and creating custom mixtapes with songs that I really liked. I still have a lot of them. I also remember my 10 yo self, designing in…

[flagged]

Vinyl records are easily damaged.

A CD collection would be fine, and depending on the genre might be available fairly cheaply second hand, or could be recorded onto CD-R.

Re: I built physical album cards with NFC tags to teach my son music discovery

#202

Post by mieses »

jordanf wrote: post #174
mieses wrote: post #120

Poor kids forced to listen to the pop music of their dad's youth

haha. no one is forcing my kids to listen to my music. also, you think YHF is pop music...?

no one knows wtf yfh is today and no one will know in any future time frame (ftf).

Re: I built physical album cards with NFC tags to teach my son music discovery

#203

Post by mieses »

derwiki wrote: post #157
mieses wrote: post #120

Poor kids forced to listen to the pop music of their dad's youth

That’s how I was raised. The Lion Sleeps Tonight, Summer in The City, Mr Bass Man.. good music is good music, no matter the genre or time period.

if good music is what makes you feel good in the moment then we disagree about the meaning of `good`.

Re: I built physical album cards with NFC tags to teach my son music discovery

#204

Post by 7bit »

crazygringo wrote: post #144

First of all, this is super super cool. I love these cards, and how he's doing this for his son. But it also makes me sad when people write things like: > My 10-year-old doesn't have that. Music just sort of... happens. It's like it's infinite and invisible at the same time, playing from smart speakers, car stereos, my phone. Endless perfectly curated playlists, designed to fade into the background. The default liste…

Yeah. I would want a father that is supporting and open to the changes of modern times. Not one that romantisises the past and pities the future.

But there have always been people who think the time they lived in were superior and the youth will be a lost generation with whatever is lost to progress.

Old man yells at cloud energy

Re: I built physical album cards with NFC tags to teach my son music discovery

#205

Post by lawgimenez »

jordanf wrote: post #167
lawgimenez wrote: post #75

Back in the day me and my friends would also trade cassettes and CDs for a week because buying one costs a lot of money for broke teenagers like us. Hey I just bought this new Dead Kennedys tape I would love to trade for your NOFX CD! Kids nowadays just take for granted music and it makes me kinda sad.

I added a DK easter egg for you

Haha so cool! Fresh fruits is one of my top 5 albums all time. I remember buying it when I was a teen, life changing record. Thanks!

Re: I built physical album cards with NFC tags to teach my son music discovery

#206

Post by nvarsj »

crazygringo wrote: post #144

First of all, this is super super cool. I love these cards, and how he's doing this for his son. But it also makes me sad when people write things like: > My 10-year-old doesn't have that. Music just sort of... happens. It's like it's infinite and invisible at the same time, playing from smart speakers, car stereos, my phone. Endless perfectly curated playlists, designed to fade into the background. The default liste…

You're absolutely right. As a teen, I could only really listen to what my small income could afford. And CDs were expensive! It definitely made you savour that one CD that you could afford every month, but I'm not sure that is the superior experience.

My teen daughter has an incredible range of music taste and strong opinions about her favourite bands, much more than I was a teen. And I've watched this evolve since she was much younger. She has playlists with her favourite artists and she's constantly sharing with me, and asking me to go to concerts with her. All of that is through Spotify/Youtube music.

Re: I built physical album cards with NFC tags to teach my son music discovery

#207

Post by crazygringo »

autoexec wrote: post #198
crazygringo wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course faceless artists exist if that's what you're actively seeking. And sure some people are putting on AI-generated tracks in the background while they study or whatever. But that's not representative. Regular people who like regular real-life artists continue to listen to them, the same as they always have. And I don't know anybody who outsources their music tastes entirely to e.g. Spotify. Like, you have to a…

> Of course faceless artists exist if that's what you're actively seeking. AI generated music is shoved at listeners without them ever knowing about it. Spotify has even misrepresented AI songs as real ( https://holrmagazine.com/spotify-publishes-ai‑generated-song... ) and has been quietly stuffing them into playlists. ( https://harpers.org/archive/2025/01/the-ghosts-in-the-machin... ) so even people who did actively…

> I suspect that much of this change is for the worse.

I think you're just not aware of so many things that have changed for the better. So much better.

I just can't get worked up about AI slop music. It's not taking over. It's the easiest thing in the world to avoid.

Today, new artists can get started in SoundCloud and YouTube without label gatekeepers. They're not constrained by top 40 tastes. They can communicate directly with fans. They get discovered on people's curated playlists as well as custom "radio" stations.

Music is in a better place than it's ever been before. I'm sorry you seem to only focus on small negatives, without seeing the massive positive shifts.

I get the feeling you're not actually into music yourself, and you're just talking about news reports you've read. Because if you were really engaging with artists today, I don't understand how you could be writing the things you are.

Re: I built physical album cards with NFC tags to teach my son music discovery

#208

Post by leptons »

Symbiote wrote: post #201
leptons wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Vinyl records are easily damaged. A CD collection would be fine, and depending on the genre might be available fairly cheaply second hand, or could be recorded onto CD-R.

>Vinyl records are easily damaged.

Yes, and that provides a valuable lesson to a child. Everything about vinyl is a lesson, from "how does this make sound" to "what are the pops and hiss" to scratching it and hearing the results. Digital media also has lessons, but my preference is to teach a child the basics before introducing them to the complexities of digital media.

Re: I built physical album cards with NFC tags to teach my son music discovery

#209

Post by marbartolome »

Like many others, I also built my own version: a raspberry pi with an NFC tag reader would map the ID to a spotify url to play the album on my google voice assistant.

The fun part about mine is that I slapped the tags to mini vynil coasters, and made a casing that looked like a mini vynil player, so it looks pretty cute. And you can browse your minivynils physically like you would with real records, which was the experience I was after.

See on github: https://github.com/coconauts/minilos

A similar project project I made is a floppy disk drive that loads retro games from floppy disks: https://coconauts.net/blog/2025/07/25/nfc-floppy-disks/

Re: I built physical album cards with NFC tags to teach my son music discovery

#210

Post by gwbas1c »

derriz wrote: post #25
gwbas1c wrote: post #14

An easy way to do this without needing to build a thing is to get into vinyl. One of the nice things about vinyl is that historians will have an easier time figuring out what's on it than many of our digital formats.

What's easy about vinyl? If you want a kid to have a physical copies of music, then CDs generally cost between a third and a tenth the price of the vinyl equivalent and are far more "kid friendly" - not just the CDs themselves but the playback equipment. Unless you want to have them listen on one of those novelty mass produced plastic turntables that sound absolutely terrible, a good stylus on a decent turntable is j…

Because you can see a lot of the moving parts and get involved in the actual reproduction of the sound by playing with the stylus, touching the record, slowing it down, speeding it up...

Anyway, used vinyl is a lot more fun, and cheaper. Most of my collection was in the $2-4 range in the early 2000s.

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