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.

  • promitheas@programming.dev
    2·
    16 hours ago

    As someone from a country that Quobuz doesnt support, and someone not willing to give money to a US owned company (Tidal), what are my options for streaming music? Something that has playlists obviously, and allows me to save the stuff I like. Possibly being able to add downloaded songs if theyre not available in the services library(?)

    Is there anything like this? Most suggestions here on lemmy seem to be for Quobuz or Tidal

      • promitheas@programming.dev
        1·
        14 hours ago

        Looks interesting, but sadly its not available in my country, same as Quobuz :/

        Edit: Why are these platforms only available in certain countries?

        • loutr@sh.itjust.works
          1·
          2 hours ago

          My guess is that they have to make deals with each country’s music industry association (RIAA in the US, SACEM in France,…) which can take time or fail entirely.