Sorry, I couldnt find a specific enough instance for this so here goes:
What have you guys been using instead of spotify? For me, I haven’t had it for years and have been using bandcamp, the archive, and just youtube with ublock among a few others, as well as my large home music collection.
My SO has had a spotify/Hulu bundle for a long time (which we hardly even use, Hulu and all streaming is shit now) and they of course want to raise the price. I said now is the time to drop that shit and have 0 streaming.
I have always hated Spotify for their shitty practices, and now they want to start shoving garbage ai music in our faces. Hell no. All SO cares about is their playlist, which i can export, and they do like the discover stuff but its not totally necessary (imo, not a fan of these algorithms controlling what we listen to but whatever).
Are Tidal and Quobuz really the only choice? I do “self host” but they would want more than whats in our music collection. Plus hdds are fucking spendy now. Man I miss the old days of cheap hardware.
The other caveat: it really has to run on their spyware locked down win 11 laptop for work (we are forced to use it). Work will block any site that seems scary. Or potentially their phone, but they have their computer hooked to their office speakers and prefer listening that way.
Quitting Spotify for me was like cigarettes lol
I need to be so for real right now. Nothing beats Spotify in terms of speed, catalogue, and features. But every other service blows them out of the water because Spotify is just that bad with AI and artist abuse. I still use Spotify for searching for songs because its search is still bar none so far, but I don’t listen to tracks or have premium anymore
The closest alternative is Tidal, it’s fast and has third party integration that leaves much to be desired but it’s there. Still janky but closest you can get to Spotify or Apple Music and it’s a good service on its own.
If you like music discovery and good taste and hate AI, Qobuz is pretty great. But it’s not a replacement, Qobuz is new, slow, and lacks features. I can’t block artists in Qobuz yet so I don’t do a lot of listening there. If that feature is in and they make it faster I’d use it full time
Honestly, the entire way we use the web has regressed a bit and I had to mourn it honestly cause through and through the internet sucks now. But smaller web has charm that I’ve missed, only constant in life is change or w/e
Yes, Qobuz definitely needs an artist blocking feature. It’s been putting Taylor Swift in my daily playlists ever since I listened to a Feist album and I am actually pretty fucking offended by that, to be honest.
I mostly like Qobuz, though. It’s been a solid Spotify replacer outside of a few issues.