I’ve had YouTube Music since it was Google Music, but the price has recently doubled and at the same time I’ve started noticing my “Radio” keeps playing the same dozen songs over and over again. Started to feel like I was listening to Triple M.
Yesterday was the final straw as every song played on repeat until you manually skipped which is just… wtf? How does that even happen?
I have jumped on to Spotify for the minute, but find it is too heavily focused on “pop” music - it seems to choose songs that are broadly more popular, but aren’t really the same as what I’m choosing to play. I somehow always end up back with top 50 chart artists in the queue, even if I started on like bluegrass or hillbilly or something. Also if I select a song or artist and choose “Radio”, it always the same 50 songs and then just stops which doesn’t seem like what “Radio” should be at all.
What other options are there that are accessible from Australia, and preferably have a decent amount of Australian local content? I have zero interests in podcasts being jammed in, I just want music. And preferably music that I can just say “play stuff that sounds like this” and it’ll go on a deep dive to focus on things I haven’t heard before.
Critical:
- No ads
- Able to actually choose the music and skip and what not, so not Sirius or similar
- Good catalogue of Australian artists
- Android and Desktop clients
- “Family” plan or similar for 2 people
Budget not really an issue.
What’s your home internet like? Got an old PC you can use as a server?
Like you, I’m refusing to cop that massive price increase and I’ve decided to ditch yet another monthly sub.
I’ve dropped my old MP3 collection into Jellyfin and started streaming myself. Using my “liked” song list to slowly update my collection.
Actually, just fired up Subsonic again for fun. Man it hasnt changed in years, but the server software still works perfectly on my test box here at work that has ~5k tracks. The OG Android app hasnt been updated since 2018 yet works flawlessly. Maybe I will just end up hosting the damn tunes myself again.
I ran Subsonic for years, and now run Plex for other stuff which is fed by - among other things - Lidarr, but honestly having to chase down my own stuff sucks. I’ll never match the millions of songs they have on offer.
I took the view that I don’t need to match the millions of songs offered by streaming services, I had a liked list of about 800 songs and rarely play anything else.
If I wasn’t moving between devices and locations; I could probably go back to just filling my phone with music.
I’m still in the experimental stage and I’m not 100% sold on the way Jellyfin handles music. Using Symfonium as the front end and it seems to get around the weirdness of Jellyfin, especially on the car, since Android Auto is a must.