As per title, if you had to switch away from Spotify ASAP, what streaming service would you go with? Ideally something around the same price range, meaning the change won’t incur in extra expenses. Also good if the service does its job well: playing music and paying artists. Any feature parity with Spotify is a bonus, except podcasts, which don’t require a paid streaming service. Or audiobooks. Focus on music. No piracy either (it’s illegal). The more money going to artists, the better.
Edit: extra bonus points if it is not 'Murican! Also, piracy is very illegal!!!
Qobuz, french streaming service that does hi-res and offers digital downloads for purchase.
I use iBroadcast, it’s got a free service tier with no ads and the devs are very friendly and responsive. It’s a little wonky connecting to my Sonos, but works great otherwise.
Self hosted Navidrome.
Apple Music has some quirks but it’s what I’ve settled on because I already own mostly Apple devices and it handles importing owned media well (after you learn some of those said quirks)
It allows me to keep my personal and streaming library in the same app but also has some segregation between the two. They also pay artists more than Spotify.
I still try and buy CDs for any music I really care about. It’s the best way to support the artist and also I appreciate the nostalgia piece.
Eh, I don’t own any Apple devices. Do you own a CD player, though? Or is it just to support the artist through purchase? I wonder how much money makes it to the artist on physical sales, and which way is best for the artist (e.g. an artist’s online store vs. physical store nearby). I do have vinyl. Issue is mainly the cost. Damn thing be 30+ monies for each (I think). Also, convenience. Hitting play on anything I want online vs. picking from a limited selection, having to clean it, hold it carefully, store it in the right position afterwards. I considered buying some earlier this year, when I saw some at the store. Ended up not buying. Wasn’t fully convinced, as I’m not as familiar with those albums. There is also the factor of being able to acquire the stuff I listen to. Big, popular albums? Avalaibalabable. Some of my random, less popular stuff? Who knows…
I do own a CD player yes and that’s part of the reason I do enjoy the physical media piece.
The other part of buying the CDs is that the music is kept in-tact. I’ve had a couple of albums from my own childhood/teen years that are just straight up not available on any streaming platform for one reason or another. In those instances I’m very appreciative to have an exact copy of the music, as it was when it was originally recorded.
As much as I despise Apple, I need to hand them a W for supporting Android with Apple Music.
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300 mp3 files in a folder called ‘Music’ on my phone, plus any local music player for playlists (shoutout auxio on f-droid)
At least use aac or opus if we must do lossy.
In theory this is true but I’m gonna be so honest with myself, I can’t tell the difference with my iems and I definitely can’t tell the difference with my $30 Bluetooth earbuds
Yep. I always buy a phone with the biggest built-in storage and keep favorite and new music with me at all times and make my own playlists in Poweramp. Free and private. (Well, I think poweramp is like $5-10 bucks, but it’s awesome and worth it.)
Yes. No ads. No live versions, no AI generated music. I have 30 GB of music on my phone. I don’t understand the appeal of paying to not own anything.
tidal ( + streamrip into navidrome lol)
Selfhosting is not piracy because you’re only streaming the albums you already bought and paid for. If you’re not down for buying CD’s or other physical media, or maybe you no longer have a disc drive, then you should be buying the lossless audio direct from the artists or via a service like Bandcamp. I just bought a few vinyls from Bandcamp and I had them to listen as to on all my devices (as lossless CD quality FLAC files) inside of a few minutes after purchase. Plex paired with plexamp on devices for ease of use. Replace with Jellyfish in a pinch. MPD might work, but you’d need to be better at networking than I am, also you’d need a steady internet connection at both ends.
Self-hosting is not piracy, it’s fair use. Piracy is when a fool that only bought a license to listen instead of buying the actual media decides they want to listen on another device.
Self-hosting is work, though. I cannot guarantee quality service, I don’t think. I mean, I do have an old laptop acting as a server, of sorts. Pi-hole and all. But I don’t use it for much else cause I don’t trust meself. Only a matter of time until I lose all files on server or something. Or suddenly unable to hear music on the go or whatever. I’d be more likely to have the files on my phone than to self-host
Plex is very accessible I feel. It’s how I got into self hosting. I loved the idea of having the iTunes airplay experience on my phone everywhere.
Its definitely worth trying
Yeah, I think self-hosting can be overkill for music, for most people most of the time. If you’re an average 2/3 device user like me, copying the files around isn’t too bad.
Either way though, +1 to both buying and ripping CDs, and buying from Bandcamp. It takes some effort, and isn’t as good in terms of trying new music. But it’s nice to have some limitations sometimes. Having almost every album and song right at your fingertips is great, but the amount of choice can be overwhelming.
I can’t say much because I mostly use Spotify too. But it’s also just nice to have local files as an option.
I suggested Plex because it syncs local copies on a per device setting so you can stream and sync pretty seamlessly. I haven’t copied a file around except for making backups for nearly a decade now. It does audiobooks with saved progress inside the files too.
Gotta agree on the overwhelm of options. I indeed find limitations interesting in that regard. Maybe streaming services for trying stuff, and then buying anything worth buying. Too bad physical tends to be quite expensive. At least from the last time I’ve seen vinyls in a general tech and other stuff store. Is online cheaper?
Dunno, usually seems about the same. Sometimes you can get cheap ones by browsing vintage used records, but then condition is hit or miss. And of course it’s near impossible to find any particular thing you’re looking for.
I try to approach it in tiers - streaming for broad strokes, trying things, listening casually.
If there’s a song/album/band that I decide I really like, maybe buy some songs on Bandcamp or CD to add to my digital collection; either can usually be pretty cheap.
Then vinyl I look at as a prestige format, and just want to get a few favorite albums there.
I was thinking online as in digital download, instead of vinyls. I don’t have a CD player. I think digital downloads could be interesting, though I am tasked with not łosing the files. Unless they allow me to download it again, unlike Google Play Music, that vanished off the face of the web along with the songs I purchased for 0 monies back in the day on lucky deals and whose more recent download I managed to lose, probably due to poor backups in one of many system reinstalls
Ah, gotcha. Yeah, online should be a more affordable option then.
I was thinking online as in digital download, instead of vinyls. I don’t have a CD player. I think digital downloads could be interesting, though I am tasked with not łosing the files. Unless they allow me to download it again, unlike Google Play Music, that vanished off the face of the web along with the songs I purchased for 0 monies back in the day on lucky deals and whose more recent download I managed to lose, probably due to poor backups in one of many system reinstalls
Gotta agree on the overwhelm of options. I indeed find limitations interesting in that regard. Maybe streaming services for trying stuff, and then buying anything worth buying. Too bad physical tends to be quite expensive. At least from the last time I’ve seen vinyls in a general tech and other stuff store. Is online cheaper?
Gotta agree on the overwhelm of options. I indeed find limitations interesting in that regard. Maybe streaming services for trying stuff, and then buying anything worth buying. Too bad physical tends to be quite expensive. At least from the last time I’ve seen vinyls in a general tech and other stuff store. Is online cheaper?
You can download mp3s off of YouTube Music using yt-dlp or even ytmdl, this is what I do, though I don’t care about syncing across devices or good audio quality.
No piracy either (it’s illegal).
Are things bad because they’re illegal? Piracy being illegal is basically irrelevant, since you’re not gonna get fucked for doing it; the question is if it’s bad. Just wanted to point this out, sorry about the tangent!
YouTube Music, IMO. You have basically every song you’ll ever want, and then some. YT Music Premium does also pay artists, I believe, since you’re interested in paying.
YT Music also comes free with YT premium.
I have YouTube music and… It’s pretty awful. Ytmusic will sync your liked YouTube videos with your liked music playlist. So I’ll shuffle my playlist and get this or like a 10 minute music video where half of it is just people talking.
So I’ll shuffle my playlist and get this or like a 10 minute music video where half of it is just people talking.
It doesn’t sync your liked YouTube videos unless they’re tagged as music, to be fair… But yeah, I mean, that’s a thing. I’ve only ever liked music videos myself for some 10+ years, so that doesn’t really matter to me much.
You’re right tho, if you want to start a “liked music” playlist you should just do that instead of using the default liked videos playlist. If someone is coming over from Spotify, I guess that wouldn’t be much of a problem? Not sure, tbh.
I just switched to Qobuz and I like it a lot.
It’s French, and they pay artists like 4 times as much as Spotify, Apple, and Amazon.
They have a huge library, the only issue I’ve had is sometimes I need to input the full artist name and song title in search for the song to come up.
Also, it’s a music storefront as well. You can purchase songs from them to download and do with as you please. As an added bonus, subscribers to the streaming service get 60% off all music purchases. So if you ever want to think about branching off into self-hosting, Qobuz is a great place to start.
Interesting. I’ve seen Bandcamp, I think, having days where artists get all the money from sales.
I’d considered Qobuz before, having heard of its better artist payment. It’s unfortunately not available on Linux, which is a shame :(. I do have Android, though, which they probably support. Also difficult doing the switch when you’re in a family plan, cause either it ends up costing you separately, or the whole family must move. Not sure I can get everyone on board, unless they see a benefit themselves
You could use the android app in waydroid if you want to torture yourself setting that up.
They have an app on Android, and their family plan is about as cheap as Spotify’s (from what I saw).
AFAIK their website works well for streaming music on PC, and you can also download any songs you buy.
I switched to it. Not bad, but it’s music discovery is awful compared to Spotify.
Do any of the platforms have an ‘instumental’ tag for music? Feels like it should be a basic feature…
Buy CDs and rip them
I have a Plex pass already, so I have my own music and use PlexAmp. Currently 375k songs in my library, so I’m good on my own service.
Deezer
Then while using that, learn to self host Lidarr + deemix + navidrome or jellyfin
Use tailscale to connect remotely very reliably and securely.
Use Symfonium app to stream your whole catalogue.
This is not what I would consider a difficult setup and it is incredibly reliable once deployed - I have had zero downtime in terms of being able to access and listen through Symfonium in over a year. You can download for offline use through Symfonium too.
Lidarr currently has an indexing issue to do with their metadata servers and musicbrainz changing stuff - they are testing the fix as we speak and it will be back up and running soon. This doesnt affect music you already have, just your ability to search new music.
