Sorry, I couldnt find a specific enough instance for this so here goes:
What have you guys been using instead of spotify? For me, I haven’t had it for years and have been using bandcamp, the archive, and just youtube with ublock among a few others, as well as my large home music collection.
My SO has had a spotify/Hulu bundle for a long time (which we hardly even use, Hulu and all streaming is shit now) and they of course want to raise the price. I said now is the time to drop that shit and have 0 streaming.
I have always hated Spotify for their shitty practices, and now they want to start shoving garbage ai music in our faces. Hell no. All SO cares about is their playlist, which i can export, and they do like the discover stuff but its not totally necessary (imo, not a fan of these algorithms controlling what we listen to but whatever).
Are Tidal and Quobuz really the only choice? I do “self host” but they would want more than whats in our music collection. Plus hdds are fucking spendy now. Man I miss the old days of cheap hardware.
The other caveat: it really has to run on their spyware locked down win 11 laptop for work (we are forced to use it). Work will block any site that seems scary. Or potentially their phone, but they have their computer hooked to their office speakers and prefer listening that way.
I buy all my songs from iTunes, I have have never even installed Spotify on my phone.
I refuse to rent my music.
My thinking is that should I end up in hard times, nothing will change for me with regards to my music, I have no subscription to get rid of, I won’t experience more ads, I can just keep listening.
That’s awesome! I’m the same way. During work, I listen to bandcamp and youtube, but on my own time i almost always listen to music i physically own.
SO doesn’t want that though. They like the ability of streaming and finding new music.
I switched to Qobuz, their playlist migration process from spotify was seamless. However, i’m finding the recommendations and discovery lacking, and there’s not any kind of “radio”. On spotify I would just hit play and let it do its thing with Qobuz I have to be much more deliberate in finding music, when an album or playlist ends it just stops playing and it’s back to searching around for what I want to listen to next.
With all that said it’s still a solid option, their catalog is pretty large, they seem to have a lot more genre diversity, anything lossless sounds great, and their editor curated playlists have introduced me to some good music. It’s worth doing a trial run to see if it’s right for you.
I heartily endorse Qobuz and had a similar experience. Heartily endorse it! The only thing I miss is wrapped, but I know that’s largely spotifys way of promoting itself, so…
The YouTube with ad block sounds like the best option if there is a way to easily import the playlists to Youtube’s playlist feature. I might consider a new account dedicated solely to music. SO can take advantage of the algorithms suggests for discovery (When it’s not trying to grift them).
I’m actually curious, do you know of a good way of migrating playlists to YouTube?
Soundiiz and tunemymusic work fine
As someone from a country that Quobuz doesnt support, and someone not willing to give money to a US owned company (Tidal), what are my options for streaming music? Something that has playlists obviously, and allows me to save the stuff I like. Possibly being able to add downloaded songs if theyre not available in the services library(?)
Is there anything like this? Most suggestions here on lemmy seem to be for Quobuz or Tidal
Deezer is French.
Looks interesting, but sadly its not available in my country, same as Quobuz :/
Edit: Why are these platforms only available in certain countries?
My guess is that they have to make deals with each country’s music industry association (RIAA in the US, SACEM in France,…) which can take time or fail entirely.
YouTube premium has the benefit of removing YouTube ads in addition to access to the music.
What is youtube doing to combat ai music?
So far, nothing at all. The slop has completely overtaken my “recommended” feeds and autoplay with no way to filter it out. I really want to support an alternate like Deezer/Tidal/etc but unfortunately have not yet found a viable replacement for my use case. A large portion of what I listen to is not formally released by labels/distribution, rare live performances, etc that only seem to be on YouTube.
Did the same move recently and am currently using qobuz. Higher price aside, it’s great and I think worth it.
My one caveat is that the android app has something seriously wrong with it where one of my two phones battery drain like crazy, and a search indicates this seems to have been a recurring issue for years…
My only issue is Chromecast bugs out occasionally. I got one of the few missing obscure albums added to the catalogue just by messaging the record company!
Discover page is the tits, so many good new albums i would’ve missed.
