Side A · for the Snowsky Echo Mini

Your music, taped onto a card.

Remember sitting by the radio, finger on the pause button, waiting for your song? Pausetape brings that back for an SD card: you choose the albums, and it fixes the names and copies them in the layout your player browses best.

Download See how it works

Free and open source · macOS, Windows and Linux

Pausetape A
Pausetape's library: Radiohead's OK Computer, with genres and links to buy or listen to more of their music, a correction suggested by MusicBrainz, and the player at the bottom.

Pause. Record. Pause.

In the 90s a mixtape took an afternoon. You waited for the DJ to stop talking, let go of pause, and caught it again before the ads. Then you wrote the track list by hand on the little card inside the case.

Pausetape keeps the part you liked, the choosing, and does the rest: finding the files, putting the names right, fitting it all on the card, and remembering what's already there for next time.

Side A · what it does

  1. Reads your music where it is. Tidy or not: tags first, folder names when there are none.
  2. Puts the names right. “Bjork” and “Björk”, “Beatles, The” and “The Beatles” become one artist. MusicBrainz, the open music encyclopedia, suggests the rest.
  3. Lays out the card the way the player browses it. Artist / 1997 - Album / 01 - Title.
  4. Copies only what changed. Add an album and only that album is copied.
  5. Converts what won't play. ALAC, AIFF and APE become FLAC with nothing lost; AAC and Dolby become MP3.
  6. Makes playlists for a player without them: folders of numbered copies.
  7. Leads to more music. Each artist's links to buy (Bandcamp, Qobuz, Discogs) or to listen first (Spotify, Tidal…).

Side B · what it won't do

  1. Touch your music folder unless you ask. Corrections stay in the app until you choose to write them into the files.
  2. Delete what it didn't put there. On the card it only ever removes its own copies.
  3. Ask for an account. No sign-up, no cloud, no tracking. It goes online only to look things up on MusicBrainz and its Cover Art Archive.
  4. Cost anything. It's free and open source.

How it works

Five steps, one tape

The first time takes a few minutes. After that it's steps 4 and 5 only: tick, and press Sync.

The folder chooser, open on a folder named Music that holds 40 songs. The folders tab: the music folder, and the card ECHO MINI, with 34 GB free. The library: Björk, two albums, with genres, links, and MusicBrainz suggesting Björk for an album tagged Bjork. The card tab: Björk's two albums ticked, each marked as added at the next Sync and with the folder name it gets on the card, and the Sync button. A write under way: 1204 of 2466 songs, about 5 minutes left, and a Stop button.

Download

Get Pausetape

The first release is on its way. Until then, the app can be built from its source code.

macOS

macOS 12 or later · Apple Silicon and Intel

Releases
Opening it the first time
  1. Open the disk image and drag Pausetape to Applications.
  2. Open it. macOS says it can't check the developer: click Done.
  3. Go to System Settings › Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway.

Only needed once: Pausetape isn't signed by a registered Apple developer yet.

Windows

Windows 10 or 11 · one file, nothing to install

Releases
Opening it the first time
  1. Run the file you downloaded.
  2. If Windows says it protected your PC, click More info, then Run anyway.
  3. For the rarer formats (Dolby, Opus, APE, WavPack, WMA), install ffmpeg: in a terminal, winget install Gyan.FFmpeg.

Linux

x86-64 · one file

Releases
Opening it the first time
  1. Make the file executable: chmod +x pausetape-*-Linux.
  2. Run it.
  3. For the rarer formats (Dolby, Opus, APE, WavPack, WMA), install ffmpeg from your distribution, e.g. sudo apt install ffmpeg.

Pausetape is young: it's been used most on macOS, and Windows and Linux are newer. If something doesn't work, tell us about it.

Which players?

Snowsky Echo Mini · RECHO firmware

Browses folders in name order, so album folders start with the year. Plays FLAC, MP3 and WAV; anything else is converted as it's copied.

Snowsky Echo Mini · its own firmware

Builds its library from the songs' tags and shows covers. It's said to list at most 8,192 songs, so Pausetape warns before a card goes past that.

Anything that reads a card by folder

The same tidy layout suits most players and car stereos that browse folders, though only the Echo Mini has been tested.

Questions

Will it change or delete my music?

No. Pausetape reads your music folder and copies from it. Corrections to names and tags stay in the app (and reach the card) until you choose to write them into your files. Reorganising the folder itself is optional, and can be undone.

What about the music already on my card?

It stays. Pausetape only removes files it put there itself. If the card already has your music, copied by hand, it can check those files against your library and take them over instead of copying them again.

My player has no playlists. Can I still have one?

Yes: a playlist goes on the card as a folder of numbered copies, so it plays in order from the folder view. A .m3u8 list goes along for players that read them.

Some of my songs won't play on the Echo Mini.

Pausetape marks them, and converts them as they're copied: lossless files (ALAC, AIFF, APE…) become FLAC with nothing lost, and lossy ones (AAC, Dolby…) become MP3 at 320 kbps. Your originals stay as they are.

My album is one big file and a .cue.

Pausetape shows its songs separately, and on the card each one becomes its own FLAC file.

Does it need the internet?

Only to look up names, covers and artists on MusicBrainz and its Cover Art Archive. Everything else works offline, and nothing is sent anywhere else.

Is it really free?

Yes, with nothing to unlock. It's open source under the MIT licence, so anyone can read, change or share it.