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!
Wow. Thanks for writing this guide! I have a local music collection I have been maintaining since the days of dial-up, and have an aversion to ads running while listening to music, so I don’t use any streaming service.
Building on top of your solution with Tailscale would allow me to stream from my home computer to anywhere there’s Internet.
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
Exactly how I do it, Plexamp plays nicely across all my devices/car
Plex is still a closed source program and you have to pay to use all features. Jellyfin is a better alternative.
Streaming for discovery, private tracker to get it in FLAC.
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.
Where do you purchase DRM free flacs?
Soulseek ftw
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?
Support your favourite artists by buying their merchandise and going to shows.
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.
I’ve got a local library that I stream with using Subsonic/Airsonic-compatible APIs.
Could you please elaborate a bit more?
I get my music with Soulseek via nicotine-plus, then self-host LMS. On my phone I use DSub. Otherwise I’ll use LMS’ web interface.
I stream because it helps me discover new artists, and makes it effortless. I do have my own library though.
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 stream music because you can get just about everything with any service you choose at a reasonable price. I don’t do the same for movies and TV shows because that option isn’t available. If it was, my laziness may get me to stop pirating.
I use streaming for music these days. For one, I’m able to get either cheap or free premium services via some tricks (Apple Music currently has an exploitable, constant free trial through Shazam). I’d still consider paying for a service, though, if I had to.
For me, I consume music much differently than other media. For shows, movies, and literature, I typically only watch or read something once ever, at the most once every year. This means I don’t feel the need to retain or backup most things. I still keep what I acquire while I have space on my NAS, but there are no backups and if I ever need to free up space, I know the first volume to clean up.
Music I constantly listen to over and over. If I go through the effort of acquiring something, I’ll need to make sure the metadata is consistent. When I had my old collection, I’d have to make sure it was backed up to cloud storage because I couldn’t risk losing all that music I had found and curated. I found I was approaching the point where my monthly costs of backing up to Glacier-like services was beginning to approach the monthly cost of streaming. Plus, despite some of the discovery algorithms being terrible, it’s still been a useful tool for discovering new music. I’m also able to take streaming on the go, I cannot take the entire library I curated. I’m not someone who knows ahead of time what I’ll want to listen to.
I suppose this was all a long-winded way to say the cost-benefit analysis no longer made sense for keeping local music files for me. Part of it is streaming music services roughly have everything I want to listen to. I don’t need to subscribe to 5 different services like video platforms. Music streaming services, at least now, mostly understand that they need to be more convenient that pirating.
You can stream but not subscribe in a few ways.
You can build a collection of music on your own server using Navidrome, Nextcloud Music, Jellyfin, or Plex (proprietary) and then stream it to devices. You can find music with Soulseek (Nicotine+), torrent, and other methods.
You can stream Spotify, Youtube, Soundcloud, Bandcamp and others without any account or advertising. Many of these tools for doing so also allow you to download the music. Newpipe, Nuclear, Spotube…
I am progressively more inclined to download my music. Streaming leaves you open to the whims of random app developers and companies while the Internet in my country is becoming shitier by the month.
Owning your own media gives it value, rather than it being a convenient commodity at a click. And it’s something Big Music Corp. cannot take from you once it’s yours. It’s yours forever.
Edit. I’ll add to that that when you own the media you can then convert it to whichever new device/format/quality is trending on the day.
I do both. It doesn’t have to be one or the other.
