New local music players arrived this September: a cross-platform upstart, a polished macOS app and an open-sourced mobile client for self-hosters. Meanwhile, on the Web, ListenBrainz hit some serious growing pains, a new site maps classical concerts around the world and a beautifully crafted site documents how far the comforts and technologies of our domestic environment has come. In the real (physical) world: audio player hardware, a car industry experiment proved how much we care about phone integration and someone stored music on paper (and its not what you’re thinking).

August contained a number of developments in music streaming; some about costs, some about the content. TIDAL and Apple Music both nudged their prices up, AI-generated music is getting labels, and prediction markets are muscling in on the charts. On the brighter side: Winamp is teaming up with Deezer, some new discovery tools launched, a shiny-new-thing from Sonos and… MusicBrainz has a new leader!

July was a big month for the music ownership question. Overall, the arguments for local files keep stacking up. Elsewhere, two fresh music servers arrived, Beatport doubled-down on downloads and we took a nostalgic trip from Windows Media Player to the click-wheel iPod.

In June, a fresh crop of macOS music players and utilities, alongside a look at the hidden costs of cloud convenience; Wasabi storage rates rise whilst the quiet death of lifetime plans continue. Elsewhere, tinkerers wired their collections into the smart home, Last.fm regained its independence, and we fell down some indulgent rabbit holes: roads that play music as you drive, microgenres you’ve never heard of, and an app for learning classical music.

This month’s digital music library news covers music discovery tools, new local-first music players, a discussion of how mathematics and music intertwine and how lyrics affect concentration, plus a sobering look at how social media buzz gets manufactured in the music industry.