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.
Edit: Thanks for all the responses. Some good ideas for sure. Gonna start with qobuz and band camp. Cheers!
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).
🏴☠️
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.
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.
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 use Pandora because they have a cheap no ads plan. You can’t choose individual songs but I think it’s only 5 US bucks per month.
Youtube ReVanced lets you use the YT Music app without ads, it also lets you watch youtube without ads
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.
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 YouTube 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 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.
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 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
i buy music 🤷♀️
I use Spotify or torrent albums. I’ll buy an album every now and then to support the people I listen to but I mainly just download discographies. Donald Fagen is still singing IGY with or without my money.
I use music.youtube.com. I do not download the app to my phone or PC. I use it with firefox and add blocker on PC and use it with brave browser on my phone. You can also upload your own music library to it. So all my CDs were converted to digital files and I uploaded it.
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.
Yeah, given the chance like I said I’d go with it. I’m comfy with what I have and admit it’s not superior, but it’s functional and I was fortunate enough to buy the lifetime license years before they turned the situation into a laughing stock. Maybe one day I’ll make the change.
Apple Music is actually such shit. Echoes of iTunes in a way.
I have been on the free trial for three months and, although I can find everything I want, and I can’t notice the difference in sound quality, even as a former live sound guy, I have gripes:
The web app is buggy. I’ll hit play and it doesn’t seem to immediately register. Sometimes it flashes play/pause a couple of times.
Search is garbage in that it sometimes shows things I’ve listened to before, sometimes not.
I have been listening to a podcast. I cannot specify a date range and need to keep. Scrolling. Back in time. Twenty times. Before I can find the episode bell that I’m up to. Because each page of results is like 20 podcasts.
There are penalty of reasons to dislike Apple Music. These are just a few. I’m would never normally drag a company but this is shockingly bad for a company based on the idea that the customer is right.
There was even an you outage a couple of days ago.
I’m cancelling before my free trial ends because it really is bad. I recommend you never sign up.
YouTube Premium. No more YouTube adds.
Fuck you, Google. I refuse to pay for Premium.
Fair enough. But as far as streaming music options go, I’m not sure how much worse it is. But I respect your stance and in another world, I would share it.
I do not download the app to my phone or PC. I use it with firefox and add blocker on PC and use it with brave browser on my phone. You can also upload your own music library to it. So all my CDs were converted to digital files and I uploaded it. So you can make it add free without paying.
Metrolist for the win
A couple of years back I gave up streaming for ownership. The main driver was the utterly unfair deal artists get, and the lack of ownership for my hard earned dollars.
At first, it felt like I was missing out, and I missed the algorithms that helped me find new music. Determined, I stuck at. Discovering BandCamp, and rediscovering CDs was instrumental. For algorithms, I actually found forums to be better, and connected to more amazing artists than before.
Where possible, I buy CDs. If not, I buy FLACs. From BandCamp, you can often get both. The CDs get ripped and stored unless I got FLACs too. I use MusicAssistant for streaming my own collection, and automatic file sync to keep a copy on my phone while on the go.
At the end of the day, I’ve a sizable collection, spend less than streaming (overall, obviously not up front), I have ownership, and artists get a much better deal 😃.
Fuck streaming from apple/Spotify or similar.
CD sales from the big labels also screw the artist. Buying merch and going to shows benefits them far more.
CDs and Bandcamp are also my way to go.
In my case, the main driver was disappearing songs. I hate it when I have a great playlist or collection of albums and some of them mysteriously disappear without notice. Or worse, they get replaced with a different version.
sigh so back to CDs we go… luckily second hand discs are dirt cheap, and even new albums are quite cheap (inflation-wise) compared to their prices in the 90s
What about 24/96 or other HiFi? CD quality isn’t really that great, even losslessly copied when higher quality is available.
Usually with BandCamp, you’ll get higher quality FLACs, although CDs are considered lossless despite the smaller sampling rate. Also, I like having a physical item 😃.
