this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2025
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Serious question. Who’s the alternative to Spotify?
The french Qobuz. Has close to perfect 1 to 1 match with content in my experience, and it has a service to help you transfer all playlists
Ooooh, didn't know about the playlist transfer, I've got to dig into that!
I'm looking at the reviews and they're not good. Apparently tracks just disappear from one day to the next, searching doesn't work, bad UI, hi res downloads often don't work, cancellations are being ignored, etc.
Spotify is also not good.
They arbitrarily mute playing albums instead of Spotify playlists and you can't unmute them until you skip forward or backwards.
Downloads are a total shit show to SD cards even though it has been logged as a bug for around 8+ years.
They insert AI-generated bullshit slop into Spotify playlists to avoid having to pay royalties. Especially in ambient music playlists or jazz where people are less likely to notice.
They pay artists one of the lowest (Pandora is lowest) in the industry and have arbitrary threshold to not pay artists until they hit a certain amount of streams per month. Then when they hit that threshold, they don't back-pay them for total streams, but instead begin counting streams for payment after that threshold that resets monthly.
They partner with AI "battlefield tracking" companies trying to build the tracking machine from "the dark knight". Hmm, I wonder if they will use their app in the future to further their partners' goals?
They give a bunch of money to very right wing organizations.
Really the only good thing about Spotify is Spotify connect.
Funny, because I have all those problems with Spotify! I mean, search works, but only for well known music, and every once in a while one of the tracks in my playlist will just be grayed out and unplayable.
Never had any of those problems
If true, disturbing.
They have a free trial, so it's easy to find out. :)
Lidarr, Jellyfin, and Music Assistant
Ok but serious question, I don't want to personally manage my music library on a server. For movies and TV this is fine, I consume a couple of these a day but if I want a steady stream of new music streaming apps have made all this very easy and very convenient.
When my 4 year old yells out in the car for a specific song, will these cover it?
I might be in the wrong place for this sentiment, but I also seriously want to pay for my music.
Buy directly from the band to support them because streaming services pay pennies. That's my excuse to buy merch from artists I love. Concert ticket sales don't have very high margins, either.
🏴☠️
Soulseek
Spotube uses Spotify and gets the music from YouTube. It's a little slow.
Qobuz !
Not available in my country (eu)
It's french so that's weird, what is your country?
Yeah, I was surprised as well, I'm in Hungary. Based on their TOS it's not available in a lot of eastern EU countries unfortunately.
Qobuzz?
I can survive using a different service for my podcasts. So this sounds like a good shout. But I’m impressed by the fact they supposedly have as many tracks as Spotify.
Will chase this down.
I think using anotger service for podcasts is important. Podcasts are free, but Spotify has been trying to hijack the scene and ruin it for everyone.
Personally I like AntennaPod.
AntennaPod is great, been using it for about 6 months
@[email protected]
Deemix
and Lucida
What the actual fuck? How did I not know about this? I mean… I want to pay for my music streaming, but for downloads this has changed my fucking life.
THANK. YOU.
Which one did you take?
Wut, bud? Haha. I don’t understand the question.
Edit: I mean Lucida is service I didn’t know existed and I will now use. I dunno if that helps
Jep, I wanted to know which of those two got you that excited
Buying from, and supporting the artist directly, IMO.
Many European metal bands host their own webshop selling their merchandise, records, cassettes and CDs; many small and independent musicians sell their songs on Bandcamp (US based website that does take a cut from each payment, 15% I believe goes to Bandcamp, so that is something to keep in mind)
Honestly, the benefit of streaming services is not being able to listen to music legally. It's discovery. Playing a song I like and getting recommended a similar song turn an artist I've never heard of has introduced me to a lot of great music. That's not something you can replicate by going to the webshop of your favorite band and buying their newest album.
That's something you could recreate with a scrobbling service like last.fm (don't use last.fm though, they are owned by CBS).
A quick Google search leads me to ListenBrains, which is also American, but operated by a non-profit.
I've used neither service and my music listening habits never relied on algorithmic recomendations, so I could totally be talking out of my ass here. But it could be worth a look.
The problem there is that scrobblers aren't nearly as convenient as a streaming service. With a scrobbler I have to actively check out recommendations. With a streaming service I can just have it play related songs until I get one I really like.
Does anyone here remember radio?
Radio has been mostly bought out by corporations which seem to air more ads than music.
I've got a college radio station for alt rock in my area though that has great music with lots of variety and very few ads.
Fuck. I remember taping radio.
You'd have your favorite mix tape with a bunch of radio announcer clips because they kept talking over the song intros
Drove me INSANE this fucker yapping over the end of Black hole sun. I NEARLY had a clean record, you bastard.
I prefer Pandora's algorithm for music. But I haven't looked into their skeletons yet.
Just noticed what community this is. Pandora might also be US-based.
I believe they are owned by siriusXM since like 2019