I’m in a dilemma, I think ownership of media is important, but the convenience of Spotify and the algorithm of new music that it suggests has helped me find amazing artists that I wouldn’t have heard of otherwise.
Fellow sailors, what are your thoughts, and how do you personally listen to music?
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I had 500 songs downloaded for offline listening, but had an issue with my carrier in the middle of a work day which left me without an internet connection… And this freaking app didn’t let me listen to the songs I already had downloaded. Noped right out of there.
Dude that sucks! This is one of my greatest concerns as we enter web 3.0 and give control over to companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc.
I now use this library of FLAC files on Music Bee, a free software that looks awesome. When I connect my phone to my PC, Music Bee converts all songs to high bitrate MP3 and syncs with the phone - I then use an open source music player to listen to them.
It must be a nice feeling having high quality flac files that you can play without any DRM nonsense when you want and how you want. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Sounds like a great solution. How do you find new artists? One of the advantages of a streaming service is the recommendations . . I’ve found a lot of new music that way.
Maybe its a generational thing but I prefer having a Plex / Plexamp serveur with all my music as FLAC on my home server. I can better curate my collection and it’s available everywhere.
Plexamp is awesome, and the UI/UX is gorgeous in my opinion!
I absolutely agree. Android Auto / Apple Car Play (or whatever the name) is awesome as well
Spotify to find artists
Plex/VLC/winamp to continue listening after discovering them.
Nice middle-ground!
https://github.com/Team-xManager/xManager/releases Free Spotify
Mostly, I’ve downloaded all my music and stream through Navidrome. But I’ll use above in a pinch.
Personal library is 0 compromise, except for the convenience. There are plenty of songs in my library that aren’t on Spotify or any other. All my music is FLAC. Uncensorable. I get star ratings and favorites.
Local copy for life. Streaming is just renting by a nicer name. I don’t want to pay for the rest of my life to access the same content. I’ll buy CDs and I’ll buy DRM-free FLAC files if available, but otherwise I’m pirating the FLAC copy or, if worst comes to worst, ripping the audio from YouTube (too many new artists/YT artists don’t offer lossless downloads). I’m not paying for something I don’t get to keep.
i use spotify premium (on someone else’s family account). it’s… a close thing really. i definitely wouldn’t pay for it if i weren’t getting it for free
for:
- it’s the best option for music discovery
- out of
- youtube music
- deezer
- local music
- i have so many songs in my library i never would have heard without spotify, and when i stopped using it for a while my intake decreased drastically
- this is due to
- being able to follow artists, and get notified of new releases
- their "enhance your playlist feature (and the ai dj i guess, but it’s shit)
- quickly adding songs to a playlist i can listen to later, if i get recommendations off a friend
- out of
- handy if using a friends phone, i can just open my playlist and add stuff to a queue
- it’s also easy for friends to send me links to songs
- quick and easy to add new or remove old songs, if you have a high library turnover
- (i probably add ~30 songs / month)
- easy to sync library between devices
- very easy to add a song that isn’t in your library to the queue
- most songs have time-synced lyrics, if you’re a karaoke fan
- songs come with correct id3 tags, if you care about that
- although this means there’s no way to edit them yourself
against:
- the app is really, really bad, and spotify doesn’t allow 3rd party clients
- it often stops playing when not connected to internet
- it’s very laggy and slow to load
- i can’t reorder the queue when listening to their suggestions
- can’t select multiple songs on mobile (to add to playlists
- only just got a sleep timer, and doesn’t support “wait until end of track”
- has unnecessary data wasting, like canvas and “explore your genres”
- seems to use some weird custom ver. of the android music api, often doesn’t display correct information on speakers with a display, and doesn’t play nicely with klwp
- the desktop client is better, but still worse than any other music player i’ve used
- it’s an electron app as well (possibly the android one is as well, judging by performance)
- limited library. it has more than one might expect, but not everything
- songs are often removed from my library, or replaced with inferior versions (e.g. british way of life)
- you can sync your local music to it, but only using the desktop client and it then doesn’t work if you use any spotify features (e.g. playlist blend, spotify connect, remote queue, etc.)
i’ll edit with more if i think of anything else
Very detailed! I agree with everything, but I especially dislike the data usage aspect of it, it just eats up data like crazy, especially on a 5G network, oh and the battery drain on my phone too.
yeah it’s dumb, i’d rather just search for a song but i can’t do that without loading about 7 ads, 3 of which are reasonably high def animated images
i don’t usually search for new songs when i’m out and about, but if i did this would probably put me off completely
- it’s the best option for music discovery
I’ve got a local library that I stream with using Subsonic/Airsonic-compatible APIs.
Local library. I don’t want to pay for things I don’t own. Streaming services also can remove/ disable music any time. I also don’t need recommendation algorithms I think they are biased. I can easily discover new artists on blogs
Nice! Any suggestions on what blogs I should go to for some recommendations?
Mixing and matching is the best option, mostly.
I like to have my personal favorite albums and non-streaming albums in my drive, but if i download something new, most of the time it will just stay there and i’ll never listen to it.
Streaming is wayyy better for discovering music (and also not making your hard drive full). If for every album you want to listen to you need to download, it sometimes lets you out of great music because of simple lazyness lol
I have Ampache running on a self hosted server, which has desktop and mobile apps.
Ampache with dsub has been my good enough solution for years.
I don’t know why you were down voted but thanks for this. I’m doing some research on it now. So here take this upvote
I have a library of albums that I like and that I want to support the artists. It’s all uploaded to YouTube Music (CD rips and purchased files) so I can stream if I want to but for listening at home it’s all local.
I stream because I like discovering new artists that I don’t know about. Otherwise keeping everything on a drive is probably better considering that you have full control over it.
I agree with OP that it is best to have DRM free files. For music recommendations, I use a Scrobber plugin for Last.fm.
Local library for me for sure!
I discover new music through friends, Shazam, and browsing Youtube Music.
With ~6k songs I don’t get bored that fast.
Support your favourite artists by buying their merchandise and going to shows.
