Technology

I've been running Navidrome + Symfonium for over 3 years and it replaced Spotify. The only thing they have over my setup is a near infinite number of playlists. But I do everything myself now, I've reconnected with my music.

My main issue with Spotify was no lossless audio at the time, and many tracks weren't on there, if they were they had a habit of disappearing. Now I can listen to any track, remix, bootleg, and even the 1700+ tracks my friend digitised from his vinyl collection until perpetuity.

Symfonium, btw, is truly the best music streaming app, the customizability is beyond anything I've seen

🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️

My conscience has never been more free

I moved to Qobuz where I am slowly buying my music to fill in my Navidrome server which is my main driver. They support and pay artists substantially more.

Lidarr, prowlarr, qbit and navidrome do wonders

Qobuz bruv. Pays artists more and has easy peasy playlist migration.

YouTube music better not be on that list. I have problems with it adding generated music to radio stations all the time (stuff that's unlabeled but that I know is AI from lists I've seen floating around the internet). I went through one ai "artists" whole catalog and downvoted every song they made and still sometimes I catch them slipping.

Tidal, Qobuz, Bandcamp, and Deezer are the ones if recommend.

Consider buying and/downloading your favorite tracks to make an offline library. In my case it was totally worth the effort. I get to keep it forever, everything plays instantly and I need no subscription or internet connection. Also I can still pay to stream for a month from time to time.

I have tried: Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, You Tube Music, Tidal

I now stick with Tidal. Started by (very rich) artists. They pay musicians 3-4X more than Spotify. Highest sound quality available. Good app and works with smart speakers.

BTW with Soundiiz it is easy to sync you playlists across multiple platforms, so no friction with switching.

I've been using Qobuz for the past few months and it's pretty good. The playlist limitation sucks but they recently made it easier to shuffle tracks marked as favourites. I also find it easier to discover new and indie artists on there. I wish someone would make a TUI player for it an I imagine i'll eventually just make my own (haven't looked at their API yet so not sure if it's possible) but there is a Linux GUI player called QBZ.

I love Poweramp for listening to .flacs on android, best 8€ i've spent on an app

Honestly, some are better than others depending on priorities, but literally anything is a better option than Spotify on most fronts these days.

bandcamp is all i need. if an artist only sells music on corporate sites, they're a sellout and part of the problem

Bandcamp or qobuz. They actually pay the artists a lot better. Especially bandcampfridays

My biggest thing is discovering new music in line with my broad tastes. Anything do that that well? Then im off.

I am really liking Qobuz

I've used Qobuz for years and have zero complaints.

I've used Qobuz for a long time, and it's been great.

Something free/open that basically just hit-n-runs YouTube and doesn't serve any ads.

Examples: Kreate (or a similar fork), Metrolist, etc.

Downside is that YT will push deliberate updates that break these types of apps occasionally and you may have to wait a few days for them to be fixed. It is a cat and mouse game.

Use these apps for music discovery. If you like a particular artist, buy the album directly from them and cache it digitally on your intended listening devices. Or go see a show or buy merch directly from the artists website. The artist makes more margin on those than they will make for thousands of Spotify streams.

Plexamp and a well maintained library.

I used to have Spotify Premium, on the family plan. My wife almost never used it, but she had it. I put it on her phone, made her an account, added her to the family plan. So she had access. She just didn't use it.

I left because, at the time, Spotify was not engaging with the Japanese market. About 10-15 years ago, the big western record labels in the US, UK, et al stopped signing new rock bands, stopped promoting rock music, and rock radio was quickly dying. Meanwhile, Japan was taking rock music and running with it, and a lot of the popular acts were singing in English, or mixed Japanese and English. And Spotify was not biting. You could get a couple Japanese bands on Spotify, if they were huge, but most of them? Not up there. I wanted rock music. Culturally, rock music moved east, and Spotify mostly refused to follow.

Apple Music had a six month free trial (this was... 2018?) and we dropped Spotify to Free and went with that. Worst case scenario, I figured, I'd just get six months of free music and go back. Now for background, I'm an iPhone guy, my wife uses Android. Even with an iPhone, I was using Spotify, because, at the time, it was just what you did. No one cared about Apple Music, it was a cash grab, it wasn't taken seriously. But I checked it out, I imported all my playlists, it had everything I wanted... and it had all the Japanese stuff I was looking for. We never paid for Spotify again.

Best of all, my wife actually uses Apple Music. Apple Music is fine on an Android phone. She got a new Android phone at one point and was told her old one wasn't worth anything. I took it, wiped it, and put a few apps on it. Of course I have Apple Music on it. Even on a 2019 Galaxy S10, it still runs. I've also got a 256GB SD card in it with a backup of all my music, so it has the streaming, and it has offline playback (via an app called Poweramp, but any offline music player would work).

I wouldn't mess with Amazon or YouTube for music streaming. If I had to choose an alternative to Apple Music, I'd only consider one where their primary business was music, like Qobuz is a new one that looks promising, or maybe Tidal. Ironically, last I heard, Napster pays artists the most per stream, but it's not the filesharing Napster. That app died almost 20 years ago. A streaming service (Rhapsody, I believe) just bought the name and logo.

I'm one of those guys who doesn't need to pay for music streaming. I have a massive collection and I have room to expand it. I know how to take a CD and get the second best digital copy (the best being lossless) from it. My computers don't have optical drives, but I have a USB-powered one that, with an adapter (USB A to USB C) works just fine on my laptop. Haven't plugged it into the desktop yet. Ports are all in the back, it's a pain in the knob, I'll just use it on the laptop. I pay for music because I love music. More than movies, more than TV shows, more than books, and more than video games. I don't see paying for streaming as a bad thing. Pay for what you love, if you can. A lot of people pay for services they don't use. My wife insists on paying for Netflix. I never use Netflix. I think she uses it sometimes. I think it's a waste of money. She doesn't. So she pays for it. I pay for Crunchyroll because we both love anime, and I do it through Apple TV so everyone on our family plan can access it. I would not pay for streaming of dumbed down TV shows, but that's just me. I pay for what I love.

I made a video on this topic several months ago.

TLDW: Metrolist and Outertune

(But would appreciate a like to help with the algo if you try these out and like them. Thanks!)

I'm on my trial month with Deezer before I buy the family subscription and get rid of Spotify. My experience so far is positive, but their search seems not to be as good as spotify's and their catalog is more limited. Still worth it if they pay more to the artists and they are not led by Daniel Ek