My taste in music

Being into electronics makes you a pretty weird teenager. Since my parents didn't want to spend a lot of money on game consoles that only last a couple of years (good job!), I got into emulation at around ten years old. Fortunately, my kid self never installed a virus while browsing the shady ROM sites. Instead, I got a unique appreciation for the old games I was playing. And in particular, for their music.

In the last century, raw CD audio was not a luxury many home consoles could afford, let alone MP3's! So instead, video games used dedicated sound chips to make their tunes. Making a chiptune is somewhere between art and programming. You can control every bit of the sound, as the computer plays it back with robotic precision. And yet, you pour your heart into every note as a composer.

In the modern era, these sound chips are out of production. Their service has been obsoleted by ever greater memory capacities. But through emulation and preservation, the chips live on! To this day, there is a vibrant community of chiptune artists who make these soundchips sing like they never have before.

This is a list of the artists and collections I listen to every day.

Agreggrates

This list contains archives and other websites that maintain a huge collection of music. Due to the sheer number of songs, most of them are pretty bad. So it's better to know in advance who or what you are looking for.

Curated collections

Since the agreggrates have a lot of music, it's nice to have a more curated selection. The people in this list post their favourite tunes to YouTube. This way, the music reaches a larger audience. And you might hear a really good tune that you would otherwise have overlooked. In a way, they are like internet discjockeys.

Artists

Of course, individual artists show off their work too. I mostly listen to the people who post on YouTube, but many of these talented folk share their music elsewhere too. I'm just not keen on keeping track of who's where.