I’m in a dilemma, I think ownership of media is important, but the convenience of Spotify and the algorithm of new music that it suggests has helped me find amazing artists that I wouldn’t have heard of otherwise.
Fellow sailors, what are your thoughts, and how do you personally listen to music?
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I had 500 songs downloaded for offline listening, but had an issue with my carrier in the middle of a work day which left me without an internet connection… And this freaking app didn’t let me listen to the songs I already had downloaded. Noped right out of there.
Dude that sucks! This is one of my greatest concerns as we enter web 3.0 and give control over to companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc.
I now use this library of FLAC files on Music Bee, a free software that looks awesome. When I connect my phone to my PC, Music Bee converts all songs to high bitrate MP3 and syncs with the phone - I then use an open source music player to listen to them.
It must be a nice feeling having high quality flac files that you can play without any DRM nonsense when you want and how you want. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Local library. I don’t want to pay for things I don’t own. Streaming services also can remove/ disable music any time. I also don’t need recommendation algorithms I think they are biased. I can easily discover new artists on blogs
Nice! Any suggestions on what blogs I should go to for some recommendations?
Support your favourite artists by buying their merchandise and going to shows.
Maybe its a generational thing but I prefer having a Plex / Plexamp serveur with all my music as FLAC on my home server. I can better curate my collection and it’s available everywhere.
Plexamp is awesome, and the UI/UX is gorgeous in my opinion!
Local library for me for sure!
I discover new music through friends, Shazam, and browsing Youtube Music.
With ~6k songs I don’t get bored that fast.
I’ve got a local library that I stream with using Subsonic/Airsonic-compatible APIs.
Give ViMusic (for Android) a try. It’s free in F-Droid. It’s like Spotify but uses Youtube Music for the backend.
I have a Spotify account and never use it anymore. ViMusic is great.
I have Ampache running on a self hosted server, which has desktop and mobile apps.
I don’t know why you were down voted but thanks for this. I’m doing some research on it now. So here take this upvote
I agree with OP that it is best to have DRM free files. For music recommendations, I use a Scrobber plugin for Last.fm.
i use spotify premium (on someone else’s family account). it’s… a close thing really. i definitely wouldn’t pay for it if i weren’t getting it for free
for:
- it’s the best option for music discovery
- out of
- youtube music
- deezer
- local music
- i have so many songs in my library i never would have heard without spotify, and when i stopped using it for a while my intake decreased drastically
- this is due to
- being able to follow artists, and get notified of new releases
- their "enhance your playlist feature (and the ai dj i guess, but it’s shit)
- quickly adding songs to a playlist i can listen to later, if i get recommendations off a friend
- out of
- handy if using a friends phone, i can just open my playlist and add stuff to a queue
- it’s also easy for friends to send me links to songs
- quick and easy to add new or remove old songs, if you have a high library turnover
- (i probably add ~30 songs / month)
- easy to sync library between devices
- very easy to add a song that isn’t in your library to the queue
- most songs have time-synced lyrics, if you’re a karaoke fan
- songs come with correct id3 tags, if you care about that
- although this means there’s no way to edit them yourself
against:
- the app is really, really bad, and spotify doesn’t allow 3rd party clients
- it often stops playing when not connected to internet
- it’s very laggy and slow to load
- i can’t reorder the queue when listening to their suggestions
- can’t select multiple songs on mobile (to add to playlists
- only just got a sleep timer, and doesn’t support “wait until end of track”
- has unnecessary data wasting, like canvas and “explore your genres”
- seems to use some weird custom ver. of the android music api, often doesn’t display correct information on speakers with a display, and doesn’t play nicely with klwp
- the desktop client is better, but still worse than any other music player i’ve used
- it’s an electron app as well (possibly the android one is as well, judging by performance)
- limited library. it has more than one might expect, but not everything
- songs are often removed from my library, or replaced with inferior versions (e.g. british way of life)
- you can sync your local music to it, but only using the desktop client and it then doesn’t work if you use any spotify features (e.g. playlist blend, spotify connect, remote queue, etc.)
i’ll edit with more if i think of anything else
- it’s the best option for music discovery
Not being an avid consumer of music, I only use Spotify.
Specifically to listen in my car or at home. I don’t use it anywhere else, so I don’t need to keep a offline library.
Spotify to find artists
Plex/VLC/winamp to continue listening after discovering them.
I stream because I like discovering new artists that I don’t know about. Otherwise keeping everything on a drive is probably better considering that you have full control over it.
I used my local library for most of my life. Grew up with crappy internet so that necessitated downloading everything to make sure I got no hiccups when it finally came time to listen. Since starting work I began using Spotify (as a way to take all my music with me, had no alternative at the time) and continue to alternate between both. Streaming is nice and all but dependent on internet and given my experience, it’s better to have a local library. It’s just more reliable. Spotify’s great for music discovery though and has made my local library grown significantly.
I have tens of thousands of songs in my home computer but I prefer to just use Spotify when I am outside.
