This post is mostly just me bitching about the music industry but also genuine interest in what other people in this community do when it comes to music streaming. Apologies if this is an incomprehensible wall of text.
My favorite self-hosted project is Navidrome. I’ve been running it for years and it’s been absolutely perfect the entire time. Related clients like Supersonic and Tempo have been fantastic as well. More than half of my donations to open source software have been to music related projects like these, I use them for multiple hours every day.
I’m giving up on using them though, because actually obtaining the music to stream has become harder and more expensive every year. Unlike self-hosted movie/tv streaming, the primary reason I self-host music is to support the artists. I feel better paying $10 for an album I enjoy compared to the artist getting pennies from me streaming it. I’m sure as hell not doing this to save money, I spend around $30/month on average on new music.
My only criteria for buying music is that it’s at least CD-quality. Going back a few years, my options (ordered by preference at the time) were Bandcamp, Qobuz, 7Digital, the artist’s own website, physical CDs that I’d rip myself, then finally giving up and using Soulseek. Bandcamp and Qobuz would typically cover 95% of what I was looking for, I’d rarely need to use Soulseek.
But over the course of those past few years…
Bandcamp was bought by Epic, then sold to Songtradr, half of its staff were laid off, and it’s been a shell of its former self ever since. It seems like Bandcamp is now mostly ignored by artists, with albums rarely releasing or releasing far later than other platforms. It’s genuinely a surprise when I find the artist or album I’m looking for on Bandcamp at this point.
Qobuz has been experiencing rapid enshittification as they try to get people to subscribe to their streaming service. Dark patterns added throughout the purchase and download process, albums being pulled from my account, and albums becoming more expensive (I’m seeing a whole lot more $15-$20 albums than $10 albums now).
7Digital is dead.
Artist websites rarely offer lossless downloads anymore. Last time I bought an album directly from an artist was Madeon in 2019, and that’s now an archived page you have to go out of your way to find.
CDs are somehow still a reliable option, but I just cannot justify this anymore. At some point having a collection of 250 plastic discs that I rip precisely once and then store forever just doesn’t make sense. I’m tired of buying physical clutter to get digital files. I sold a sizable chunk of my collection a few months ago.
Soulseek, the “fuck it I’m pirating it” option whenever I can’t buy an album through any available means. Surprisingly even Soulseek seems to be suffering, I used to be able to find anything, but now even a slightly obscure release can be hard to find.
So now, my preferred options are Bandcamp, Qobuz if the album is less than $15, then Soulseek. I’m using Soulseek a hell of a lot more now, which defeats the point of why I do this in the first place. So fuck it, I subscribed to Tidal.
But like, what the fuck? Why is it so hard to give artists more money?
So, for others who self-host their music collection, or even still rock an iPod or something, what do you do? Do you buy lossy releases? Do you pirate everything? Is there a magical website that has every album for sale that I just don’t know about? CDs? I can’t be the only one with this problem, but I haven’t seen anyone else talk about it.
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I personally have been trying to setup a music library just for my ipod classic, and no matter what I do I keep finding duplicate songs. I also plan to self host my music library to access from my phone when I don’t have my ipod, but first I want to get rid of dupes which makes this so frustrating.
I enjoy a program called Alldup. It’s quite nice for my uses
Minidisc
My MD players still play but no longer record. I can’t find anyone in my country to repair / replace the record head.
Plenty of player/recorders cheap out there on eBay and elsewhere. Guess it’s a gamble at this point though.
Typically the ones advertised as “tested” or “working” have only had the player tested. Not the record functionality.
Lucky bastard.
The answer to your question of why it’s so hard to give artists your money is exactly the same as it has been for ages for all media. The few companies who survived the consolidation of the industry have done everything in their power to make sure they are the gatekeepers of content. They buy and merge or kill off any competing companies or technologies.
They weren’t successful with MP3s or with streaming because they didn’t bother to understand the technology or that the Internet was the new marketplace and thought they could just do what they had done with physical media and pay for laws that protected their interests and sue everyone, but they ultimately lost control because you can’t sue hundreds of millions of people like you can sue a few thousand stores. So they had to give the people what they wanted for a while so they could have time to buy up all of the companies.
But they’ve now done that and paid enough to get the laws and precedents on interpreting those laws that they wanted, so courts are becoming better at enforcing those laws more quickly. So they can pressure new tech that pushes the limits on interpreting the laws to not last long enough to get people hooked. And now that they’ve reconsolidated most of the market and technologies as capitalism tends to do if you’re patient enough and there’s no possibility of monopoly regulation or market disruption, we’re stuck with pirate or use the garbage they feed to us and most artists are back to having to sign their art away and sleep with executives to get the marketing and distribution from the gatekeepers just to get a chance at success. The rest have to rely on word of mouth and self distribution which even online can be expensive without the advantages of centralized hosting providers, merchant accounts, and bandwidth.
I mostly use Spotify, but have the flacs of a few albums I really like on navidrome. As for how I got them… Yeah. I do have the for CDs a few of them but I don’t have a CD reader and most of them are completely destroyed, so I feel like piracy is justified for those.
For ripping from Tidal/Qobuz, use Lucida.to I use an iPod Mini, a Jellyfin server and I either rip / dl from slsk/ rip w lucida I also use a modded YT client on my iPhone
CDs for me. If you buy a big disc binder they really don’t take up that much room. Its about the same size as the 1971 compact OED that sits on the same shelf.
If I really wanted to get rid of them I’d just donate them to the local library system. The ones they don’t want they’d resell as a fundraiser.
Do they make USB C CD players? I’d unironically use that with the linkin park re-issue albums and the upcoming new one lol
So there’s things like this, where it’s a portable cd player (so it outputs line audio) https://a.co/d/j5AmTd0
And then there’s also a bunch of external usb-c cd drives that plug into your computer. And those range in functionality/price all the way from basic cd drives to Blu-ray readers/writers.
You mean like this?
Annnd saved lol. I think my car would pick it up as a media device….maybe?
Pirate the music and send $20 to the artists venmo
I know this is a joke, but honestly, this would support the artist more than the past 75 years of labels and streaming corps, which is IMO high seas piracy in itself.
i host a funkwhale pod and load content to it off qobuz and deezer.
So mostly I try to get my music from Bandcamp, artists’ websites, or iTunes. With these methods I don’t have to correct any info through Kid3 and normally have the correct album art for Navidrome.
If they don’t have an option to purchase their music I’ll use soulseek or yt-dlp to download it. That’s normally for obscure artists, music that can’t be sold due to Copyrights, or sanctioned countries (for example Russian musicians).
I’ve found that self-hosting my music has helped me slow down my music consumption and be more picky about what I listen to. I’ve also found good quality applications such as Feishen (macOS), play:Sub (iOS), and Symfonium (Android).
I buy music, at least CD quality. I might splash out for 24-bits if given the choice (only because it seems to be standard on Bandcamp so for consistency I aim for the same in other stores), but not for > 48 kHz.
I upload to my server for archival purposes, but will convert to mp3 to sync to my devices. I buy CD quality poorly for archival purposes. I can’t tell the difference. Plus I have navidrome and I can stream, but having my entire library available at all times, even when offline, is very important to me.
I buy, in order of preference, from Bandcamp, 7digital, and only as a last resort from Qobuz. If even Qobuz doesn’t have something then I go on Amazon to buy the CD. I hate Qobuz ever since they removed the download all button. I remind them of it with the feedback form with every purchase. It was the reason I will prefer 7digital over Qobuz. I don’t know why you say 7digital is dead. They have up to date titles for the music I care about (metal). The only thing I dislike about 7digital is the http (no https) download, but I’d rather risk that than support Qobuz with its dark patterns.
Jellyfin, I host all my media there. And Symfonium as a player getting media from Jellyfin.
brother I don’t think you read the post at all
Jellyfin + Finamp on mobile.
Thr only missing feature would be casting media to my castable devices.
Piracy. I’d buy albums if I had money, though. I’ll slowly phase into getting them once I get some more cash.
I can find most stuff I listen to, and I rarely grow my music library. I mostly listen to 20-30 albums, with some more mainstream music peppered in.
My music library currently sits at 90 gigabytes (mostly flacs), so quite small compared to others I’ve seen around here. Still, I have plenty of variation to keep me entertained :D
If you have Tidal, aren’t there some apps to rip the lossless audio from there? You could get most of the stuff that you need, and then cancel the subscription. If you feel bad, maybe order some merch from the band, haha.
I buy phisical media and lately I’m listening to internet radio again. There are streams in flac even.
If I can, I buy direct downloads.
If I can’t do that, I’ll buy the CD (as long as its direct or a small label).
If I can’t, or its one of the big labels, I’ll find it elsewhere. I’d rather buy merch to support the artist directly than buy anything that goes through the big labels.
i’m waiting until there is an AI like suno but much better that i can selfhost. it will recreate the songs i remember from how people were describing it online.
