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.
I bought an actual MP3 player and download music. I know it sounds like a pain in the ass, but it makes you think much more intentionally about the music you listen to and you engage a lot more and get a better sense of your preferences. This is also makes it way easier to listen to whole albums the way the artists intended and give a much better experience overall than just listening to whatever random mix of songs the algorithm wants to throw at you.
It also means I can have real outputs and use better and more inexpensive headphones and can listen wherever and whenever I want without needing to worry about internet access or data usage and I can pick it up and listen to music without having to read whatever bullshit notifications or communications are on my phone at any given time.
I have found that making decisions that minimize how often I have to look at my phone has made my mental health a lot better. I read books with real books or on a separate e-book device, I listen to music with a music player, I play games on a handheld console, I watch video entertainment on a TV. I use my phone for communicating and reading the news, that’s about it, and I think its a lot better that way.
Hey you and me agree very much!!
SO isnt quite in that mindset. They still like things easy and convenient. Its a slow process to get people away from corporate addiction but I did get them to switch to Linux and use signal so its working step by step!
Honestly all they want is to be able to listen to music while working all day, access to their Playlist and then recommendations to new music sometimes.
If you are still willing to go further, there are self hosted services.