If you are a regular reader of this site, you have tried one of the many music streaming applications that we have shared. A very popular fashion among them is the use of the YouTube API to get the music, and another is to imitate the design of Spotify a bit.
Both things are more than acceptable, especially because you get a free and legal way to listen to millions of songs. But usually they all look the same and do not do much more than put a couple of popularity lists and genres. That’s why Headset has seemed so interesting and special to me.
First, Headset is an open source project whose code is available on GitHub. You can download the application for Windows, Ubuntu and macOS. Or, you can create your own build in a different environment.
Second, it is a very fast and simple app with integrated search, a start screen with a list of popularity by genre and era, and best of all a radio powered by Reddit. Yes, for Reddit. In the popular network there are multiple subreddits dedicated to discover and share new music or rediscover jewels of the past.
Headseat takes the songs that are shared in these subreddits and plays them automatically when you decide to give play to a particular one. It’s a great way to find new music, and a quite unique one because it ‘s chosen by other humans like you, and not by algorithms.
You can listen to all the music you want without having to do more than install the app on your computer. Now, if you want to create collections, playlists and bookmarks, you must create an account with your email address.
And finally, Headset has to show the video in an external window to be able to comply with the rules of YouTube. You can minimize it, but not close it completely. The other thing is that the app is written in Electron, so do not expect it to consume very little RAM.