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 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
I use Plex for my media and enjoy using PlexAmp for music.
And use onthespot to rip the music.
https://github.com/justin025/onthespot
I moved to tidal with their trial for 60 days/$2, have ripped thousands from them already. The Anna’s archive broke some Spotify rippers, otherwise I’d keep ripping from them
I use soulseek for music acquisition.
I only share on there. Sometimes it’s just quicker to go straight to the source.
I switched my family from Spotify to Tidal. There was a migration script that made it nearly seamless.
No podcasts though.
Thats ok we have antennapod for that
there’s a site called TuneMyMusic that helps transfer spotify playlists to other sites, and gives you a list of sites to choose from.
Wonderful! Thank you,
SoundCloud supports importing playlists. I feel it has a lot of popular music nowadays, but I mostly listen to stuff some guy made on their laptop, so I’m not the best person to ask.
Lidarr and usenet, it’s sweet
Im still amazed they haven’t shut down usenet.
But that won’t work on a work laptop unfortunately
Because we don’t talk about it ssshhhh
OK THIS DEFIITELY WILL GIVE YOU VIRUSES. MAKE SURE TO SUDO RM / NO PRESERVE ROOT ALL HAIL ZUCCY
Quitting Spotify for me was like cigarettes lol
I need to be so for real right now. Nothing beats Spotify in terms of speed, catalogue, and features. But every other service blows them out of the water because Spotify is just that bad with AI and artist abuse. I still use Spotify for searching for songs because its search is still bar none so far, but I don’t listen to tracks or have premium anymore
The closest alternative is Tidal, it’s fast and has third party integration that leaves much to be desired but it’s there. Still janky but closest you can get to Spotify or Apple Music and it’s a good service on its own.
If you like music discovery and good taste and hate AI, Qobuz is pretty great. But it’s not a replacement, Qobuz is new, slow, and lacks features. I can’t block artists in Qobuz yet so I don’t do a lot of listening there. If that feature is in and they make it faster I’d use it full time
Honestly, the entire way we use the web has regressed a bit and I had to mourn it honestly cause through and through the internet sucks now. But smaller web has charm that I’ve missed, only constant in life is change or w/e
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.
Radio Garden or other Internet radios are an option too
I discovered I actually prefer Internet radios entirely to song dna streaming type stuff
YouTube premium has the benefit of removing YouTube ads in addition to access to the music.
What is youtube doing to combat ai music?
I’m not sure but I don’t encounter it.
I wont pay youtube-thanks though!
I tried Qobuz out this month, they do a 1 month free trial that you can check out before spending.
I personally didn’t stick with them but it sounds like you’ll fare better than me. I think your biggest hurdle would be making sure they have the music you want to listen to, since their library is a little patchy.
My two warnings (three if you count the library bit) are that their streaming eats up mobile data, and that there is zero customer support.
it’s broken on my phone and idk why.
