I’m in a dilemma, I think ownership of media is important, but the convenience of Spotify and the algorithm of new music that it suggests has helped me find amazing artists that I wouldn’t have heard of otherwise.
Fellow sailors, what are your thoughts, and how do you personally listen to music?
Maybe its a generational thing but I prefer having a Plex / Plexamp serveur with all my music as FLAC on my home server. I can better curate my collection and it’s available everywhere.
Plexamp is awesome, and the UI/UX is gorgeous in my opinion!
Support your favourite artists by buying their merchandise and going to shows.
I have Ampache running on a self hosted server, which has desktop and mobile apps.
I don’t know why you were down voted but thanks for this. I’m doing some research on it now. So here take this upvote
Not being an avid consumer of music, I only use Spotify.
Specifically to listen in my car or at home. I don’t use it anywhere else, so I don’t need to keep a offline library.
Give ViMusic (for Android) a try. It’s free in F-Droid. It’s like Spotify but uses Youtube Music for the backend.
I have a Spotify account and never use it anymore. ViMusic is great.
Local library for me for sure!
I discover new music through friends, Shazam, and browsing Youtube Music.
With ~6k songs I don’t get bored that fast.
I stream because it helps me discover new artists, and makes it effortless. I do have my own library though.
https://github.com/Team-xManager/xManager/releases Free Spotify
Mostly, I’ve downloaded all my music and stream through Navidrome. But I’ll use above in a pinch.
Personal library is 0 compromise, except for the convenience. There are plenty of songs in my library that aren’t on Spotify or any other. All my music is FLAC. Uncensorable. I get star ratings and favorites.
I stream music because you can get just about everything with any service you choose at a reasonable price. I don’t do the same for movies and TV shows because that option isn’t available. If it was, my laziness may get me to stop pirating.
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I had 500 songs downloaded for offline listening, but had an issue with my carrier in the middle of a work day which left me without an internet connection… And this freaking app didn’t let me listen to the songs I already had downloaded. Noped right out of there.
Dude that sucks! This is one of my greatest concerns as we enter web 3.0 and give control over to companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc.
I now use this library of FLAC files on Music Bee, a free software that looks awesome. When I connect my phone to my PC, Music Bee converts all songs to high bitrate MP3 and syncs with the phone - I then use an open source music player to listen to them.
It must be a nice feeling having high quality flac files that you can play without any DRM nonsense when you want and how you want. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
I agree with OP that it is best to have DRM free files. For music recommendations, I use a Scrobber plugin for Last.fm.
Local library. I don’t want to pay for things I don’t own. Streaming services also can remove/ disable music any time. I also don’t need recommendation algorithms I think they are biased. I can easily discover new artists on blogs
Streaming for discovery, private tracker to get it in FLAC.