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.
My biggest thing is discovering new music in line with my broad tastes. Anything do that that well? Then im off.
Lidarr, prowlarr, qbit and navidrome do wonders
This, plus if you love a smaller artist and want to support them you can buy their music from qobuz, download it (it’s drm free), and import it into Lidarr.
Qobuz bruv. Pays artists more and has easy peasy playlist migration.
I wanted to use it, but a Facebook tracker in the app is a hard no for me.
https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/769361/
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.
Bandcamp is good for this. You can stream stuff you bought on there for free through the app if you want to. I download my purchases and add them to my enormous library that I started in the late nineties.
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
I’ve been trying to tell all my friends who are self-hosting curious when they see my setup that the feeling of reconnecting with your library is worth all the work alone. It’s like having your old iPod with YOUR library. Adding more to it, reassessing what’s serving you or what can be trimmed, making sick playlists that mean something to you. It’s all so intentional. Algorithmic music is incredible for discovery and that’s about it.
Algorithmic music is incredible for discovery and that’s about it.
This may be true for most but was not for me. I was on streaming services for two years and discovered maybe five new bands. I went back to my old process of discovery (reading magazines, reading online reviews) and discover many more every year.
Algorithms tend to pump you full of similar sounding artists. I’d rather be challenged as a listener and grow than be stuck in a same sounding culdesac.
Couldn’t agree more! Although I always wish the barrier for entry to be lower for self-hosting.
Literally the only thing about Symfonium that’s lacking is having to manually scan the library when adding new music. I use Feishin on my desktops, which some manages to do it in the background.
Yeah that’s true. But once metadata is cached, it takes like a minute to scan my entire library!
Symphonium is the goat. Using it with Jellyfin.
Altho what I miss as well is the big data driven recommendation of new, niche music. I tried new compilation albums, I tried recommendation by genre/tag but nothing quite hits it like spotify 'discover weekly".
Also my listenbrainz doesnt really scrobble while listening offline (downloaded) playlists on symphonium, so its not really an option.
Anyone with a solution to this?
I use Symfonium and sync it with Jellyfin. It really is amazing
🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
My conscience has never been more free
Yeah, but are the artists getting paid?
The artists weren’t getting paid when you were using Spotify. The shareholders were.
If you want artists to get paid, you have to buy direct or support them indirectly via merch/tickets/buying streams, etc.
Yeah I do, that’s what I’m saying
Gotcha. Thank you for clarifying.
The ones I really like I will still buy something from. The others I don’t listen to enough for them to even make $1 from streaming anyway.
I use the money to go to concerts and buy merch!
bandcamp is all i need. if an artist only sells music on corporate sites, they’re a sellout and part of the problem
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.
I’d do the same, yet Qobuz is not available in my country, despite being in EU…
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.
Soundiiz nuts
Sorry…
They make you pay if you want to import a playlist more than 1000 songs. that really upset me and prevented me from proceeding with starting a tidal subscription.
I definitely don’t have that problem 😂.
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.
There is this one https://github.com/SofusA/qobine
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.
I’ve used Qobuz for years and have zero complaints.
I love Poweramp for listening to .flacs on android, best 8€ i’ve spent on an app
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!)
