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.
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.
No. Buy their CDs and rip them into something like Jellyfin.
That’s not realistic. I have a CD collection, but that took decades and thousands of dollars. Plus I had access to Columbia House (if you know, you know) and a robust used market. That doesn’t exist anymore.
I don’t think a person who’s sensitive to $11 a month is going to be interested in a collection of $25 CDs.
Exactly this. A music collection is expensive. Even more so if your tastes change over time.
Even more so if your tastes change over time.
This is a challenge. I’ve grown on hip-hop and rap, and finding the media is a struggle. For example, the first 'Run the Jewels" album is basically unavailable on CD.
I’m thinking of the other end of the equation: I don’t listen to a lot of the artists I liked twenty or thirty years ago. I’d be annoyed if I spent a bunch of cash on their albums only to have them be coasters now.
The robust used market does still exist. eBay, and Discogs should be all you need. Bonus points if you have a local record store.
Buy used. OP can probably pick up five used CDs a month and stay under budget.
Of course the artist isn’t paid here, so you might as well pirate at this point.
Yeah, eBay is a great for used cds & dvds
Pirate flac files and burn your own CD’s.
Interesting, I do the reverse and go to the library and rip CDs to FLAC.
While I don’t disagree with your comment, this part:
and a robust used market. That doesn’t exist anymore
isn’t as bad as you might think, at least where I live. Used CD sales are the highest they’ve been in over 20 years. Sure, it’s not like it was at its peak, but it’s coming back in style again. The rest of your comment is definitely true though.
A $10 a month streaming service without ads that is fair to artists isn’t realistic either to be fair
I feel like that’s a couple levels of effort more than I’d like. As good as it would be to support the artists by buying CDs I don’t want to buy more plastic and clutter the house. I could also do the same from the library, but that’s not supporting artists either.
That is what we did before streaming made us lazy.
And I just had to go and remove the CD player from my old car. Sigh…
Idk but I recently stumbled on https://freefy.app/. i used it to play a song I was showing to a friend vs YouTube. Looks promising from there very short time I used it.
I mean, if you were happy with the service at 10.99, is one dollar that much of a deal breaker?
If you didn’t already know, the subscription comes with Apple Music Classical for free. Maybe look at that as a mandatory $1 add-on.
I mean, if you were happy with the service at 10.99, is one dollar that much of a deal breaker?
It kinda is. Lame of me maybe, but it’s not like Apple is paying out more to the artists or making the experience better. Just shaking us down for more money. Idk how many people use AM, but it’s gotta add up.
I do like the positivity of your silver lining though!
Maybe not specific to this price increase, but the service does in fact improve over time. They were the first to add lossless music (no cost increase at the time IIRC), the first to add atmos, and then they added Classical for free.
You should take a look at Apple Music Classical, it’s really good and actually the only reason I subscribe to Apple Music in the first place. Classical is what I pay for, the pop music is bonus.
For what it’s worth Apple Music has much higher payouts than other platforms like Spotify, Pandora or YouTube Music. Like 4x higher. I dont know if 0.8 cents is a fair price for compensation, but it doesn’t seem terrible… if you listen to an hour of music per day that’s maybe 15 cents to artists per day? That doesn’t sound like a ton but that’s about $4.50 per month to artists. Meanwhile according to the BBC artists get like 13% of CD sales so at $20 that would be a $2.60 cut. Meaning unless you were buying 2+ albums a month streaming on apple music gives as much money to artists as buying physical media.
I think thats my takeaway from the streaming era - its a lot less money per listen, but people are listening a lot more.
Well, a few years ago it was $9.99, and in a few years it’ll be $12.99. That extra dollar indeed is a problem.
That’s just inflation though, at a normal 3% a year you should expect a dollar increase every 3 years. And inflation has been running higher than that.
+1 for Qobuz.
I have my own media server where i host everything that I buy digitally in the qobuz store to support artists and I use the streaming part to discover new things , or at parties etc. Its not the cheapest, but that’s kinda contradictory to supporting artists anyway. Its a good combination since a subscription gives you a bit of a discount on digital purchases as well.
Purchasing flacs between Qobuz and BandCamp is my preferred option.
I wrote a blog post about this
https://medium.com/@fftublog/topic-music-or-how-i-learned-to-delete-spotify-and-love-mp3s-b4c31354d3fcBandcamp + Navidrome
Same
IMO the best combo is pirated Youtube Music (e.g. via OpenTune) for music discovery, then Bandcamp to buy albums you enjoyed.
That way you’re not paying subscription to the giant corpo sucking life out of musicians, you get to actually own the music you buy forever, and in great quality (as long as you archive it properly), and a significant proportion of your purchase goes to the artists who created the things you enjoy!
Soulseek and musicbee
I’ll just have the old one please. (Just kidding, I don’t have any apple stuff)
Gonna be honest …you want a cheaper service that pays artists better, those two things don’t connect.
On a side note I just use morphine to get free YouTube and YouTube music premium. I don’t pay for them because I refuse to pay $15 or whatever when someone in india is paying $1.25. Either their fucking you by charging way to much, or I’m paying for someone else who can’t afford it to have it. Either way I’m not paying.
They pay in converted money less.
But their salary is also 10x less vs yours.
Do they not deserve the distraction?
Apple Music has the second highest payouts to artists, only behind Tidal which is much more expensive.
You really can’t have it both ways. You either want artists to get paid, in which case you’re paying more, or you want it for cheap and artists get paid less.
Oh great, 0.25 instead of a 0.1 cent per listen what a great payout.
Yeah, I’ll continue buying the CDs/individual songs (assuming they make it not too annoying)And how much do you think the artist gets from the CD sale? Listen to it more than a handful of times, and it’s a lower payout than streaming.
Bandcamp? Pretty much 100% (excluding deals with a label)
Any other CD label? I don’t care what the artist negotiated with their label. That is their own problem who they chose to do business with. But Spotify/Apple can’t skim of 30% of the sale price.And I don’t buy on iTunes.
I buy on OTOTOY and other sites I can get FLAC files from.Bandcamp is great for extremely underground artists, but that’s about all that is on there.
You call labels like Monstercat underground?
Damn, okay buddy.Like yeah, mainstream artists are less likely to publish there but established artists have published songs on it.
LiDARr and plexamp
Yarrrr!
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
