I used to use Rhapsody until it turned in to Napster, then bought out by crypto bros who broke it, then just fucking gave up.
If there’s a better alternative beyond going back to pirating, I’d love to know.
I’m more than happy to spend my money on a quality service but beyond a few niche players with limited catalogs, there aren’t lot of good alternatives. Qobuz and Tidal are nice, but when they have 20% of the catalog of Spotify, it’s not very useful.
Honestly, this is the eventual fate of every corporate streaming service.
The only reliable answer is to self-host it via Jellyfin or (if you have a Plex Pass already for cheaper than it is now) Plex, or another similar system. PlexAmp’s suggestion system, self-hosted “radio,” Sonic Adventure and other features really leave me quite content to never waste another second on streaming services that aspire only to be the biggest leech that is hardest to remove and has access to the most customer blood.
If you have an issue with piracy, you can still buy MP3s or FLACs from many services, or rip your own CDs. Unless you have a local, DRM-free copy, it’s always one expired license away from disappearing forever, and one ambitious employee away from being overrun with ads and your private details sold.
I spent a few years buying all my music and putting it on Dropbox and hooked up Evermusic to it. It’s basically custom Spotify using my own library. Artists are usually extremely cheap to buy their music from. We’re talking $1 per song in most cases. Not a perfect replacement, since there’s no discovery, and it was hard work tbh, but it works for me.
There’s always physical media purchased at a record store… If you are lucky enough to have such a store within reasonable distance and the hardware necessary to play the physical media.
Honestly it’s not the same as being able to listen to what you want when you want but radiodroid on fdroid lets you listen to just about any station in the world. I work a gig app and after listening to every song I already liked I had to find novel sounds
I used to use Rhapsody until it turned in to Napster, then bought out by crypto bros who broke it, then just fucking gave up.
If there’s a better alternative beyond going back to pirating, I’d love to know.
I’m more than happy to spend my money on a quality service but beyond a few niche players with limited catalogs, there aren’t lot of good alternatives. Qobuz and Tidal are nice, but when they have 20% of the catalog of Spotify, it’s not very useful.
I pirate big label stuff and get smaller artists off band camp to throw them a few bucks
Honestly, this is the eventual fate of every corporate streaming service.
The only reliable answer is to self-host it via Jellyfin or (if you have a Plex Pass already for cheaper than it is now) Plex, or another similar system. PlexAmp’s suggestion system, self-hosted “radio,” Sonic Adventure and other features really leave me quite content to never waste another second on streaming services that aspire only to be the biggest leech that is hardest to remove and has access to the most customer blood.
If you have an issue with piracy, you can still buy MP3s or FLACs from many services, or rip your own CDs. Unless you have a local, DRM-free copy, it’s always one expired license away from disappearing forever, and one ambitious employee away from being overrun with ads and your private details sold.
I spent a few years buying all my music and putting it on Dropbox and hooked up Evermusic to it. It’s basically custom Spotify using my own library. Artists are usually extremely cheap to buy their music from. We’re talking $1 per song in most cases. Not a perfect replacement, since there’s no discovery, and it was hard work tbh, but it works for me.
There’s always physical media purchased at a record store… If you are lucky enough to have such a store within reasonable distance and the hardware necessary to play the physical media.
Honestly it’s not the same as being able to listen to what you want when you want but radiodroid on fdroid lets you listen to just about any station in the world. I work a gig app and after listening to every song I already liked I had to find novel sounds