So I want to swap off of Spotify. Most of the time it works great, but the annoyances with their UX are starting to build up. From not ordering albums in release order on certain screens, to having to wait a good few seconds before turning off their shuffle+, and their shuffle not being very shuffle-y to begin with.
I have a couple of requirements:
- A decent Linux client.
- Be able to easily select playback device from other devices (for example start playback on my PC from my phone).
- Preferably pretty straightforward UX philosophy, i.e. haven’t started going down any enshitification with AI, “we know best” kind of elements.
I don’t particularly care for the highest of lossless quality audio. I don’t posses any audio equipment where I would have any shot of telling the difference. As long as its not the experience I had with YouTube music where some random persons heavily compressed upload of a song would start playing.
My main contenders are Tidal, Qobuz, and deezer. The latter two I have very little experience with.
I’ve tried Tidal before, but my main gripe with it was scrolling through large playlists (about 2000 songs) was very slow, as it loaded in songs as you scrolled through (think endless scrolling on ddg or Lemmy) making it tedious to go to artists starting with a later character in the alphabet. Maybe it was just the Linux client, an issue on my machine, or if they’ve fixed it since, would be great to hear if any of you have had the same issue.
Qobuz and deezer I haven’t really tried or heard much about from a users perspective.
I know some people swear by buying (or ship in under the jolly roger) all their music and use jellyfin or just local files for playback. I’m not very keen on that idea, the convince and discoverability of music on a streaming platform is what made me go to Spotify and away from winamp in the first place.
Navidrome.
Depends on if I want to listen to music or just have a radio on.
If I’m listening to music, I’m using Jellyfin. But I also have a large music collection.
If I just want a radio, it’s either Spotify or Amazon Music depending on where I am.
I use Apple Music cuz they have Hi-Rez Lossless!
Edit: just read that you don’t care about that hahaha. Nevermind!
I have heard very good things about Apple Music to be fair. With them it’s more about staying away from the big guys you know and give the smaller guys some room, although I generally trust Apple to be more on the decent sides of things than other large tech companies.
While it’s not off the board, I’m unlikely to try them out 🙂
I had deezer for a while and it was pretty good. iirc, they don’t have a linux client though.
There is an unofficial flatpak client. Spotify is in the same situation, so that wouldn’t be a downgrade at least 🙂
Spotify has an official linux (electron :( ) app.
It’s kinda offical but not quite. It’s ported over and distributed by some Spotify engineers who wants to use it for Linux, but as far as I can tell, officially as a company Spotify don’t support Linux as a platform. Source: https://www.spotify.com/us/download/linux/
Browser works great
As a community radio manager I wish just one of them would allow us to broadcast from their service. Since we aren’t allowed to, I can’t see how we can hope to get many younger presenters since most don’t have physical media or purchased tracks.
I know some stations including the ABC cheat and use it anyway.
Hm, yeah that sounds like a big missed market! I love tuning in to live DJ’s on twitch sometimes. Would be really cool to have some of that directly in a streaming platform. Now you’ve made me really sad it’s not a thing.
We can manage by buying each track off Apple music, but that’s a pain.
Tidal I believe has what you’re looking for and may be worth a shot.
Deezer is non American and I think it’s worth a shot to try if you wanna give that a shot as well as the seem the least shitty.
That said, Plex/emby/Jellyfin although lacking discoverability is what I used to transition off Spotify in conjunction with tidal. Eventually found out the local library had CDs and used that to discover new music, started buying CDs I liked and enjoyed and have been very happy since since I don’t have a month subscription now as I don’t need to rent my music.
(if you’re the type to be sailing, you could also copy CDs from the library)
I’d say your best shot is to just experiment around, Spotify is always going to be the most convenient. Deezer (as far as I know) the least shitty, and tidal the best quality.
Tidal is Australian
Isn’t it owned by square?
Oh you are correct, I was mistaken.
I switched to Tidal recently; it feels a bit featureless in some areas. No Mono Audio mode (i frequently have 1 earbud in at work, don’t like hearing only half the audio.)
Shuffle is either on or off, theres no way i see to set it by playlist/album
I used it as a way to discover music not as my main player as I said but that’s also probably not a common issue (even if it is at its heart an accessibility issue for the partially deaf). I’m not sure if Deezer solves that issue but it also will feel shallow, but idk if it solves that issue.
Plex has gone kinda stupid lately. However Plexamp is very very feature heavy if you wanna own instead of rent the art you consume though. If you want a tier down from Plex, jellyfin with Finamp worked well for me as well when I switched. Emby isn’t feature heavy so maybe about Emby.
Personally though if you wanna get away from streaming I’ll throw in my two cents: an old iPod or iPhone would work great, have decent battery life, and allows you to listen to music without buffering. Takes a bit of getting used to but once you’re on it, you’re on it and it’s unfathomable for me to go back now.
Having a local (well local as on my Jellyfin instance) might be an end goal for me. I have started buying and playing LPs recently, it’s a good vibe to have it physically spinning next to me. I only really look for what I already know when I go into a record store, maybe time to expand when I next go into one.
I’ve over time accumulated a record player, cassette, and CD player for my deck that I love. (I also have a decent 8-track and DCC for novelty purposes lol). It’s really nice being able to go into a record store and the format not be a hindrance.
That said it’s out of scope for the convo I think so I left it out. It also wasn’t something I got into until I was able to acquire some disposable income as I got older. But I will say, Thrift shops and broad horizons are your friend :)
I have not personally got to the point of trying any yet, but I have heard several times about plugins for Jellyfin that add discoverability and recommendation features.
You still have the issue of actually tracking down the music, which Jellyseer or similar can help with. But if one of those plug-ins were to interface with Spotify or YouTube for preview purposes, that would be pretty slick!
Emby does as well. That said once you live without discover features and unshackle yourself from algorithms I will say … It’s really not that big a deal lol
I used to go hard finding new shit on Spotify and YouTube etc, but eventually word of mouth with friends and the library really solved the issue. Also changed how I consume music from songs in a playlist to looking at every album as one solid work of art to be understood.
Now I hit up my friends when I want new music recs, they hit me up. It’s a good ice breaker. The library is also mad under used as a resource, they love supplying new shit if people are wanting it.
I got to a point where I am now where I carry around an iPod, and some CDs for the car lol may be weird however works for me and I paid zero dollars for music the last couple months cause now I have a solid personal library.
I hear you on the algorithm stuff. I normally find most my music through more organic means anyway, like soundtracks in games and movies, word of mouth from friends, or youtube/twitch. So maybe discoverability wouldn’t be so bad for me if I do decide to go for a local collection at some point.
That’s how I did it before streaming and how I do now. Fortunately I got my friends to go down this road too and we’re all sorta healthier with it.
Will say, the library is an awesome resource if you start a local collection. It can be a good resource while you bridge the gaps. Most libraries also run their own streaming service for free it’s not feature rich usually but ours is very simple and very stable.
Like I said generally experimenting is best. Different people have different needs :)
Trust me, I hear you on the algorithmic shit.
I dont think i have a single playlist set up, and almost exclusivly listen to albums cover to cover. All I really want is for a service to occasionally say “Hey you spent 60 hours last month listening to these 3 bands… check out these guys if you want something fresh with a similar vibe”
Spotify did a semi decent job of that, and it’s how I’ve discovered a few new bands, but paying $18/mo just to discover a few per year is not a great value proposition. I’d rather torrent a random album and then pick up some merch or concert tickets if I end up liking them.
I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying.
I wish there was the infrastructure for that without Spotify like what radio used to be, or when the average person had nueanced opinions and it was easier to get recommendations from everyone.
However we don’t live in that world so there’s nothing to judge anyone on atm until Spotify collapses under its own weight.
I just listen to music on YT in a browser with uBlock Origin.
I’ve been using RiMusic
Foobar2000
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I use Qobuz, and I like it a lot. You can easily download music for offline listening, there’s a lot of high def on there, and from what information is known about how much streaming services pay back to record labels, Qobuz appears to be the biggest payer per stream.
The app is no frills, they only added auto generated playlists a year or so ago. Their recommendations are less tailored, but high quality if you’re wanting to explore outside your usual tastes.
Plus, it’s just music. No podcasts, no audiobooks, no games, no generative ai for some reason.
I kinda love YouTube music.
It has heaps of unreleased stuff as well. It has every obscure thing and all the well known stuff.
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I mostly listen to DJ mixes on SoundCloud.
I’m in a similar boat. Spotify is infuriating for a variety of reasons. For one, I just cannot understand how they screw up their android app so frequently. It’s constantly riddled with new bugs almost every update. And I hate how little they pay the actual artists.
I’ve been reading the buzz about music streaming services for a long while now. Qobuz is what I’m going to try next.
I also keep Pandora because their recommendations algorithm is the best in the business, in my experience.
