I’ve had an Apple Music subscription for years and use it A LOT. I tried some alternatives (Tidal, Sirius, and maybe one other?) and wasn’t super happy with the options.
Is there a service that people recommend that is good, like $10/month or less, maybe gives better pay to artists? I’d like to spend on a better company if possible too. If Apple has enough money to buy gold trinkets for elected officials they probably don’t need more from me.
Bandcamp, then tidal. A friend works in the music industry, he said tidal can’t always pay out but they have way better rates than the other streaming services. Bandcamp is like 999x better for artists though. You get the files (for free even if you buy vinyl or cd). It’s so much better.
Qobuz has a streaming plan, and you can buy and download drm-free music. It’s a good option if you want to just stream (the app has added some nice improvements lately). Even better if you’re also looking to build your collection and looking to go the whole non-streaming route.
Purchases tend to be pricey, and there’s a slightly more expensive plan with a discount on drm-free that might make sense, depending on how often you plan to make purchases.
Edit: this currently doesn’t fall into the < $10 category but is comparable to the old Apple Music price.
I wish I could try it for free with ads or something
They used to provide like a 3-day trial, but I couldn’t find any sort of offer like that currently active.
If you are just curious about what they have on their streaming service, you can get a rough estimate by browsing their download store. It’s not a perfect match, but it’s very close. It is quite rare for an artist / studio / publisher to let Qobuz stream it but not sell a download or vice-versa.
Another fairly happy Qobuz user here. Prior to that I used Tidal, which has a better Android Auto experience, IMO. Prior to that I used YouTube Music, and technically I still have a subscription to that because I got used to YouTube Red (now Premium) when it came free with Google Music (now YouTime Music). I prefer a streaming service; I find it much easier to discover music that way.
For digital purchases, while that is possible through Qobuz, every artist I know would prefer you buy from their Bandcamp. ISTR Bandcamp might have been doing some shady anti-union stuff, but I could be misremembering and I wouldn’t know of any great alternatives.
I carry around my music as mp3 files on my phone. It’s also stored on a NAS at home and I could stream it via my own jellyfin instance, but its just more convenient to have it on my phone.
I use foldersync to download any music I add to my NAS onto my phone every night automatically.
Finamp is worth it if you’re looking for a music player behind Jellyfin, offline downloads and capable of transcoding the files down to AAC to save on storage usage.
I recommend TPB. It is a wonderful value, great selection, mediocre UI.
As much as I hate nearly everything about my job, the one thing I can get behind is that they have a rule: the first time an acronym is used in a meeting, an email chain, or a chat, it needs to be defined parenthetically so that everyone with access to the conversation knows what the fuck we’re talking about.
Because if we’re just going by what I know, OP asked where to stream music and you told them to get some comicbook TPBs (Trade Paperbacks).
🏴☠️
i buy music 🤷♀️
Many have said buy music. I agree. You own your music fully. (effectively) and don’t buy from apple. Bandcamp ftw. I’m a strange one and use Pandora for gennral vibe streaming. Then if I come across a song that resonates with me I go out and buy it. And before peeps talk bad about Pandora, I discover artists with less than 1000 views on YouTube on it that actually sound good. My only problem with Pandora is that it has a station bleed issue where songs from other stations you made will “bleed” songs into other stations. like I have a dnb station that sometimes plays hip hop instrumentals because of the jazzy vibes that dnb sometimes has. But after a few forceful thumbs down, it behaves. But don’t do Pandora if you are wanting to listen to a SPESIFIC song. Just go buy it.
i just use Soulseek and download all the music i could want onto my phone (have 1tb microsd).
best way to support artists is buy their merch
Genuine question, not trolling you.
Is there a reason owning one’s own music is so unthinkable these days? I BUY my music, I own my music. I stream it anywhere I like from my own Plex server. If I had it to do over again I’d use Jellyfin instead. A tiny mini PC with some storage, some easy setup, and you never pay monthly for access to music again?
My main source for buying music is BandCamp.
Jellyfin is so much better it’s not even funny.
YouTube Premium. No more YouTube adds.
Fuck you, Google. I refuse to pay for Premium.
Youtube ReVanced lets you use the YT Music app without ads, it also lets you watch youtube without ads
Visit the library once a month and leave with 10 CDs. Rip 'em all to mp3’s. Month by month you’ll build up a valuable collection that is yours alone. If you are an audiophile then you might not like the mp3’s but I can’t hear any discernable difference that would make me say “what poor sound quality”. If I can tap my foot or sing along then it’s more than good enough.
I mean, can always rip them to flak as well if you are worried about quality. Even still, a good high bitrate mp3 sounds perfect to me so I still use it too.
Working on reorganizing my old music collection to try to de-apple. It’s a bigger pain in the ass than I expected, and I’m missing so much that I’ve added via subscription. Gotta do it though, I’m sick of paying subscriptions for everything.
LiDARr and plexamp
all of them are the same. they dont give artists jackshit, that is the business model.
If you’re interested in a FOSS alternative, try metrolist. You can download songs and it’s a frontend to YouTube music, so you have access to their full catalogue
If you want a way that more directly supports creators, nothing is is better than buying their songs place a place like bandcamp
Piracy + iTunes + Jellyfin + Symfonium
(for me)is symfpnium like soulseek?
