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 Last time I bought an album directly from an artist was Madeon in 2019, and that’s now an archived page you have to go out of your way to find.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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Bandcamp is still OK for me and I listen to some fairly obscure stuff.
Just to offer a heads up - there’s a new solution/site which is currently in Beta but is backed by good people (musicians). It needs an influx of music diversity (lots of metal at the moment) but if it gets that when it comes out of beta then it could very well be a good Bandcamp replacament - Ampwall
I’m probably not going to pay $10 a year with additional fees to have my music on a website unless a lot of people are already using it
Also faircamp and mirlo.space
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’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.
I use Jellyfin and Finamp and they work fine. All the old navidrome and airsonic solutions seem to be dead, and I never liked Funkwhale. Who wants all of their music in encrypted block storage?
I also like the quality bump. When I’m not streaming, my music is in FLAC on a DAP with some high quality cans. I can’t get that with Spotify on a phone, and I camp and hike a lot in areas without cell service, so having it with me is a plus.
Music sits in between storing movies and books. I have less than 2TB in total but the amount of albums is more than the amount of films that I have, and that’s 7TB+. Music, even FLAC, isn’t terrible on space, unless you’re a 24-bit fiend.
The music being removed from your account shit shouldn’t be legal. You paid for it they should be refunding you if they are removing access, in a perfect world anyway.
Assuming the US when I say this but, some year we’ll have consumer protections, I’ll likely be dead by then but hopefully the day will come to light.
That being said I have never heard of soul seek, it sounds like a limewire spinoff? I agree music industry has /sucked/ in terms of obtaining stuff
I don’t have my self-host my music streaming currently (lack of funds) but I’m planning to in the future. I live in a large city and borrow CDs from the library to rip at home. This might not work for more obscure stuff or if you don’t have a good library in your area, but this way I don’t need to make more space for CDs and I support the library doing it. If I want to support artists, I get merch and/or go to concerts.
I buy phisical media and lately I’m listening to internet radio again. There are streams in flac even.
I still use bandcamp a lot. Rip CDs I get from other artists directly. Rutracker for stuff that’s unavailable from the artist or label. On my PC I use jriver to organize and listen to my digital audio library. I use syncthing to send selected files to my mobile. On my mobile I use SicMu player. This system works pretty well for me and it strikes the right balance - supporting artists when I can, getting a variety of high quality files, not paying for any streaming service, not having physical clutter… and it’s fun to curate my mobile playlist. Feels like the good old ipod classic days.
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.
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.
Like you I try to support artists by purchasing physical media or releases on Bandcamp. Outside of that I get my music on Soulseek, through torrents, Usenet, and occasionally XDCC. I don’t need lossless files and even if I download FLACs I transcode them to 320kbps MP3 before they go on my iPod anyway. The harder it becomes to acquire music legally the less bad I feel about downloading with abandon.
Public libraries often have CDs tout can borrow.
Straight up piracy at this point.
I have vanilla-ass white boy musical tastes, so I’ve had little issue finding what I want on Soulseek.
That said, there is one thing about Soulseek that’s not advertised: there’s a freaking enormous list of “blacklisted” terms that won’t return search results even if the data is there.
Lots of banned artist and album names that will return zero results, unless you do something like search for a song or two that’s on the album you want and finding the data that way.
Might be worth seeing if changing what you’re specifically searching for improves your results, since I was dealing with like 70% completion until someone told me about that ah, feature.
Edit: and you can have my iPod from my cold dead hands.
Lots of banned artist and album names that will return zero results, unless you do something like search for a song or two that’s on the album you want and finding the data that way.
The only objectionable hurdles are the insurmountable ones
Why are they blacklisted?
Yeah, I’ve had to use that blacklist workaround on many occasions, lol
Wait like what is on this blacklist?
it’ll usually be the artist’s name. Like if you search for “Taylor Swift”, you’ll get exactly zero results because that phrase is blacklisted due to a complaint from the label. If you instead search for a specific song, you will see results, and can work backwards from there to find the album you’re looking for.
Not gonna lie, that must be one hell of an obscure (or new) song if it’s not available on Soulseek. If your song happen to be Japanese, try Ototoy.jp. That’s where I get most of my FLAC albums.
The last time I had trouble finding something on Soulseek, it was an album that had released a month or two ago, so it might’ve still been too new.
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.
Lucky bastard.
