Thought I remembered the name. That's where Dinosaur Jr. played a legendary set.
Also, I just realized they did another one more recently. I'll have to listen to that one, too.
In my opinion, it's harder, but not even necessarily because it's harder to do it in the end. More because it's just harder to get started.
For example, I find way more music I enjoy listening to through Bandcamp than I ever did on Spotify, but that requires having existing artists that I follow and can see their recommendations for, having a feel for which genres I actually like instead of a vague mental concept of what I like to listen to that I can then keyword search by in Bandcamp's search/discover section, and hoping that the human curators on Bandcamp's newsletter pick artists I like. Bandcamp doesn't really have algorithms, so those are my only real options.
It's more effort, but it's infinitely more rewarding.
You actually should actually try to listen to web radio. Still have a subscription with Qobuz but been listening to bytefm a lot and they have some great djs (they have different shows at different time.). I personally found there more new and great artist or songs than any personalized algorithm ever did.
One con: you’re too busy writing down the songs and you cannot really do anything while listening as you also too scared of missing something. /hj
Wasn't totally serious about my con. They do have a recently played and even an archive where you can re-listen certain shows you have missed (if you are paying member of their association).
A couple of years ago, I had a Napster subscription (the reborn, legal variant of it). At first, I was happy to have unlimited access to music, then after 2 years I realised that I was paying 120 EUR a year for music I'll never own, so I cancelled the subscription and put my yearly budget for music to exactly that amount. It yields more than enough given I buy used CDs, and then digitalise them. That way I own the physical media as backup AND am able to transfer the digital, PCM-quality tracks unfettered across my devices AND with no need for DRM or shitty proprietary applications.
I’ve been a Spotify member for 13 years and it gives me exactly what I want. Owning music is good and all, but ripping the CDs and setting it up so my family and I have access to it where ever we go is going to cost me way more than the subscription does a month, in both time and money.
I run Navidrome off a free small form factor PC recycled from work. My whole family accesses it via whatever app they like that supports Subsonic API (there's dozens), and for security it's only accessible via Tailscale, so they need Tailscale installed and connected.
Initial cost: $0. Plus cost of the apps, which is like $5 each user. Tailscale is free for up to 100 devices.
Time to set up: 1 day.
Ongoing cost: the very little electricity an energy-efficient SFF PC uses - way overestimating would be $2/month. Plus whatever music we buy on Bandcamp, physical etc that we own forever.
So it's not way more expensive in my experience, and at the end of the day I give artists I enjoy much more money than Spotify streams ever would, and I'm not supporting a piece of shit CEO pouring a billion dollars into military spending.
This would be right if not for the fact that Spotify will regularly introduce you to music that you might like and otherwise might not have heard of. That can be worth paying for.
I signed up for this about 2 months ago because someone on here recommended it. It's absolutely garbage unless you only listen to radio music. I listen to industrial hardcore and uptempo about 90% of the time, the remaining 10% are a pretty even split between hard rock and radio music. It only recommends me radio music, not a single hardcore track.
I have subscriptions for Spotify, Tidal and SoundCloud, and all 3 of them have vastly better recommendations of you listen to less popular genres
It's true, some genres are better represented than others. The user base on listenbrainz is relatively small. I hope you do keep scrobbling your listens to listenbrainz because it can still help improve the recommendations for other users after you who listen to somethings you do but know a lot less than you in the genres you listen.
I would argue that this is the entire value proposition of Spotify. I may not own the music, but I have all the artist and song names. I can always re-acquire them at any time.
Except that as part of its enshittification Spotify has intentionally changed its algo to push people into more and more homogenous "beige", nothing music. It has become so prolific that Spotifycore has become a term to describe what happens when you let Spotify autoplay.
With the rise of AI, Spotify is now producing and recommending beige music that is produced on an industrial scale, at the expense of actual artists.
This is 100% true, and the reason I left Spotify. Back to buying records and CDs online and in niche record stores (I live in a metropolis, so that works even for obscure music). I also got a tidal subscription, and I like the recommendations from there much more. Bandcamp & SoundCloud newsletters are also great for suggestions.
But now, since collecting records and CDs, I find myself spending much more time with individual albums and critical listening, and relying less on playlists and suggestions. Anyway, Spotify is just garbage now...
...are people really paying for a music subscription service to listen to the same music on repeat? I pay a service because I listen to like at least 4 new albums every week, minimum.
I pay for Apple Music (well, technically I get it as part of Apple One) for one reason: the library matching function. I have half a gig of mp3s on my home computer, many of which are not on any streaming service, and apple makes them all available to every device I own.
I've used PlexAmp. It's shit. It tries its best, but it can't make up for the flaws in plex's underlying library system. It also requires having a library host running all the time. Apple host the music for me and I can make library changes from any of my devices.
I've tried a number of other self host options, as well, and none of them come close to the feature set in Music. I even wrote my own web app to do it way back in the 2000s, just so I could implement my own UX. This is still better.
Me too. However I recognize that many people are content to listen to the same things they enjoyed in high school forever. In which case they definitely do not need streaming
this post is just to placate a group of people. i prefer streaming for new music friday. i also don't want another crate or hard drive of shit i lost interest in.
This is true, but you should really give something a good few listens before you come to a conclusion. Good things can turn bad just as much as bad things turn good.
I truly wonder where in my post I implied that I am drawing significant conclusions without giving something a good few listens. Again, I think you are making assumptions of my listening habits based on severly limited information presented to you.
No, I think you’re absolutely right and it’s comforting to know there are others who do this too. I have a kind of 3-5-7 trial period for getting into new music. If it’s crap but I want to give it a chance, I’ll do 3-5 album plays; if it’s ok but has potential I might not see, 5-7 plays. Anything challenging but enjoyable gets minimum 10 plays.
About the self inducement, that is making me question myself a little. There are things that I’ve tried over and over to get into that I just cannot no matter what, but I’m seriously questioning if it really is possible to “make” yourself like something through type of, I guess familiarity?
I think the counter argument to self inducement is that I can really go off something that I hear too many times (usually on the radio). Even if the first listen wasn't too bad.
This is making some significant assumptions, don't you think? That I sample the buffet does not mean that I don't also cherish and return to familiar recipes.
I have no kids, no pets, and a job where I can listen to music the entirety of my shifts while working. I have music on in some capacity probably an average of 12 hours a day. 4 albums a week, even when listening to them each 6 six times, is a fraction of my listening.
Music listening is my primary "hobby" and interest.
Dunno if I go actively searching for difficult music, so I may not have the best answer for that specifically, but here are 5 albums I consider hidden gems or underappreciated:
Horse Bitch - RIP Pistachio
Tattle Tale - Sew True
Gaytheist - The Mustache Stays
Codefendants - This Is Crime Wave
Irist - Gloria (actually an EP, if you'll allow it).
These probably won't take you 5+ listens to appreciate, but I do think they're smaller releases worthy of greater attention. Hopefully that's close enough for you. ✌️
Man, Spotify were the ones who did it. Like they made the service so significantly better and more convenient than pirating that most of those pirating actually switched.
Not a fan of the platform anymore since the heavy push for sponsored content, removal of audiobooks and the whole Joe Rogan thing, but still credit where it's due.
I did return to my old flac and mp3 collection. Got Foobar working again, found a nice skin and I'm rediscovering music that I that skipped over. I buy second-hand CDs when I find them. I've managed to get a digital copy of all my favourite albums and tracks.
I will keep Spotify though. A long time ago, I got friends to share their Discovery and Release Radar playlists. With my own, I have a nice spread of recommendations.
I need regular new music. Call it a search for unexpected dopamine. Spotify still picks new tracks that I really like. I also like Spotify Connect and the easily shared collaborative playlists.
The UK has less alternatives for music discovery. I don't like Radio, way too much talking and ads.
I've got rid of Netflix, Prime. I'm getting Disney+ for free at the moment. Back to physical for film and TV.
For now, Spotify recommendations is worth the cost of entry.
I am very happy with Navidrome for over a year now. It also reminds me how I listened to whole albums when I was a teenager, what I now started doing again.
Okay, but I can access my full library from anywhere at full quality from multiple devices, I have several 5,000 plus song playlists with little to no overlap between a few of them and I have had CDs lost or stolen and had drive failures delete digital libraries. But sure.
I have jellyfin for movies/tv because there isn't a more convenient option available. I am not going to VPN from my phone or anywhere to home to play music when Tidal is available.
I doubt they notice. Most artists either get income directly from fans at concerts, via merch, or through explicit patronage (Bandcamp, Patreon, etc).
The money they get from streaming isn't remotely enough to support a professional career. Streaming is more about promotion - to get you in the door at the next concert or promote a product with a real revenue stream - than actual income.
Do artists benefit more from ad-dense, algorithm gamed, corporate controlled media outlets kicking them a few bucks every month?
No idea, I don't use those.
The service I use pays (for the 2023-2024 fiscal year) around US$0.01873 per stream in royalties to labels and publishers. Spotify (as of 2025) does $0.003-$0.005 per stream, so it actually improved massively - it's only 6 times less than Qobuz (used to be 12 times less).
Or is a guerilla campaign of populist free-at-download distribution better for long term concert attendance and merch sales?
Doesn't work for small acts that don't do massive, world-wide tours. Nor for fully independent artists who just don't have the budget to do larger concerts.
The actual difference is that if you are pirating or file-sharing, you’re about 30% likelier to actually buy music
Cool. Apparently I'm not "average person", because that doesn't apply to me.
I usually have to listen to a song several times before it fully "clicks" if I like it or not, so music streaming subscription is great for being able to grab any song I think I might like and throw it in trial playlist. Back when I bought/acquired music, I would skip over most music I might like because the effort wasn't worth it for a song I wasn't sure if I liked or not. So streaming has worked really well for me for music discovery at least.
On the bright side, I'm still getting my $8 a month early adopter price for Google music all access (now YouTube music).
I think the young generation has seen the pattern of clowns generations above them, either relying on ad-radio or Spotify, and have turned to piracy or physical media for this. My BIL recently got into buying CDs from goodwill as a good example. YT video essay I lived through the consumer generation of physical hoarding so Spotifydl is fine for me.
Depends on where you are and depends on organisation. If it's a small venue and a DIY type of thing, chances are that the merch money and at least part of the entrance is going directly to the band (as opposed to the 1% kickback they'd get for streaming).
Get a library card! My local small town library has access to a surprising number of nearby libraries, and if I'm willing to wait a week or two for the item to be available and get transferred, I've been able to get some decently non-mainstream stuff for free. For more obscure stuff, bandcamp is pretty awesome.
Try thrift shops, used CD stores, etc if you want to buy.
If you're buying secondhand, that also does nothing for the artists. You might as well just pirate at that point, unless you're deeply into the vinyl scene or something
Over time the streaming options are almost certainly more expensive.
Personally I am an advocate for piracy, an economic system that requires the enforcement of artificial scarcity is not one I consent to bind me. We need a system that rewards artists without locking culture and art behind a paywall.
The only reason it works the way it does now is that music used to come from physical totems. The internet requires a new and progressive approach to intellectual products.
And WoW isn't? The big advantage FFXIV has there is dye channels on their armor instead of recolored sets (though WoW is better in the way you collect transmogs without having to actually store the item somewhere). And you've clearly never been to Goldshire or seen the lvl 1 trolls dancing naked on mailboxes in Orgrimmar. WoW is full of people ERPing.
The biggest difference between the two is that WoW doesn't give a damn about the story and each xpac is obsolete when the new one releases, while FFXIV puts the story first with each xpac being a new chapter and keeps content as evergreen as it can. WoW also caters to their endgame raiders above everyone else, while FFXIV claims to put casual players first (though whether or not this is true is hotly debated in the community at any given time).
That's the thing about multiplayer games - no matter the game, people never change. Some games incentivize different behaviors, but people will be people and will ruin any game if you let them. I think FFXIV does a much better job in this regard by incentivizing players to treat new players more nicely than WoW does, but that's my personal experience. You can meet assholes in any game.
And I wasn't claiming that FFXIV doesn't have ERP. Merely pointing out the hypocrisy of criticizing it when WoW has the exact same issues that you criticized FFXIV for having.
Besides, this is all a heavy discussion for what was just referencing two memes.
I just noticed yesterday, that existing subscribers can stay at the old price. There's an option to switch to a "basic" plan, afaik you will lose access to audiobooks, but they only give 12h of those per month, for the 2 euros extra.
Really hard to get normies to see this. They're sucked into how easy it is and soon they'll be fed nothing but ai slop music so corps dont havr to pay artists a cent. Yay future?
My favourite thing to do is use shit like Spotify and google and stores I hate to FIND the thing I want, then I go get it in a different, nicer store lol. For example I often use a place called Emag to find all sorts of products then use compari.ro and pricy.ro to find the best prices for that item.
Oh yeah I understand that. The problem is streaming commoditized music even worse than it already was, making it even more worthless. And now 99% of the population wont even buy a cd, and the artist gets even less money than before.
Back in the day, you had to get the record or cd to hear what you wanted. And to me thats what made the strong bond between artist and listener. Its no wonder a large majority of young people have no strong feelings toward music. Also, im not some old man, im pretty young, but I can see the changes.
Also, why would you replace radio with streaming services when literally thousands of internet radio stations (many donations ran only) exist all over the place?
I think people are quick to latch onto streaming because they saw ads for it and thought it was the next Big thing they had to be a part of. We have had internet radio for 15+ years.
The problem is streaming commoditized music even worse than it already was, making it even more worthless. And now 99% of the population wont even buy a cd, and the artist gets even less money than before.
All the more reason to promote services like Qobuz, which pay the artists much more than Spotify. Last I checked it was around 12 times more per track.
And I don't know if income from streaming doesn't balance out what artists used to lose to piracy.
Back in the day, you had to get the record or cd to hear what you wanted
Where I grew up there used to be a music store in the city centre. You could walk in, grab an album and listen to it for a bit in special listening stations. If you decided you liked it, you could buy it... or give the clerk an empty tape (or later CD), and they'd copy it for you for a quarter of the price.
By the time those kind of services died out, Internet was good enough that people would download music and burn it on CDs themselves.
Yeah, you had to get the CD, but it's not like every single person listening to a CD meant any money went to the artists.
Also, why would you replace radio with streaming services when literally thousands of internet radio stations (many donations ran only) exist all over the place?
Because I'd need to spend hundreds if not thousands of hours to check if I enjoy the particular brand of radio. And what if their program didn't line up with my daily commute to work? Nah, I prefer firing up "artist radio" on the train and, if I hit something I like, just quickly drop it into a playlist of things "to check out later", then grab the whole album where the song was and listen to it.
I would never buy an album after hearing a single. Twelve Foot Ninja had an amazing song, one I really, really enjoyed, but the album was - to me - completely trash. It was literally like a diamond in a pile of shit situation. Can't verify that listening to the radio.
I think people are quick to latch onto streaming because they saw ads for it and thought it was the next Big thing they had to be a part of. We have had internet radio for 15+ years.
I don't think I've ever seen an ad for Spotify in my entire life. Maybe because I browse with an ad block...
I latched on to streaming because it gave me exactly what I needed - the entirety of my discography at my fingertips and then some, no ads, no talking, and the potential to discover excellent new music - all of that while actually giving the artists something for the trouble.
Why would I ever mess with physical media ever again? What a waste of space and effort. Streaming services give me a breadth and width of options unrivaled in history. And if I dislike the streaming price (way worth it in my opinion) then digital purchasing or even pirate methods are available.
I bought my first album in 1977 for $7, which is $37 in today's money. It's pretty insane to think that the entire music industry back then was about getting people to pay $37 for a piece of plastic. Avocado toast eat your heart out.
What music is it streaming? Is it somehow piping into Spotify/Tidal/something and grabbing music from there? Or is it "my own MP3s from my own storage location somewhere"?
people pay for music? Wow at least give you something for the money, although pricey. others like RS trying to justify thier price increase without substantial increase in content.
I still pay for a Pandora family subscription, because all 5 people in my house use it; but for me - I don't like spending all the time organizing and listening to albums, so I pick a song I want - Pandora makes a mix of songs like it, and then I rip the "station" that Pandora builds for me into files and toss those files into an SD card in my car.
Honestly, I'm surprised that streaming has gone on this long before we have such enshtification taking place.
I'm basically down to just a single subscription now because the cost outweighs the ease of use and only keep my music streaming service because of work and I don't want to be using self hosting on a company network.
The game is fun, but it's now a solo game where you occasionally team up non-socially with strangers to knock out goals, rather than being the massively social game it once was. Unfortunately I think those days are over forever.
Is it? Last time I tried I was having somewhat good fun until I got the stupidest mythic dungeon group that bullied the fuck out of me as healer and stopped again shortly after that. I liked that there was just so much to do but I'm still not sure I can really enjoy the game the same way I used to now my life is so different and don't have as much time to give to it.
A friend of mine started playing again and said it was really good. Idk about the time sink though.
You gotta find a good guild to dungeon crawl or raid with. My favorite thing was being raid lead during Mists and working with a big team. I did some competitive WoW back then, and even played with Asmongold, my character is in some of his old videos. Makes me pretty sad how he turned out.
Yeah but that's where the time sink aspect comes in though, truthfully even though I also played at competitive levels back in the days (up to world top 50ish kills) and of course I miss the competitive aspect, as well as the social one that came from the guilds etc, the allure of modern wow was that I did have all these options to experience content and catch up without having to commit to a schedule. And TBH it did work pretty well last time I tried like a year ago, lots to do solo, lots of catch up mechanics, lots of ways to join random groups etc. But yeah it doesn't feel the same as playing with a committed group and that's probably what I actually miss from the game.
Funny that you played with asmon that's some lore right there lol.
I still download my music. Two pros: I have control over where, when and how I listen to it. And I only download music I actually want to listen to.
One con: Finding new music is harder (I imagine).
That's what radio helps with, there was also Pandora, but I didn't know if it is still alive after Sirius XM bought them.
Find an online radio station you like and you don't need Pandora any more.
That's not SomaFM
Shoutcast is still running strong! Also super easy to setup your own server https://directory.shoutcast.com/
And there's also Icecast! https://dir.xiph.org/genres
I have found a ton of new music through KEXP's YouTube channel.
Thought I remembered the name. That's where Dinosaur Jr. played a legendary set.
Also, I just realized they did another one more recently. I'll have to listen to that one, too.
Found the Seattleite. Can’t believe I didn’t notice your name all this time and connect the dots.
I listen to C89.5! Website and app both work flawlessly.
ListenBrainz is the solution for discovery
In my opinion, it's harder, but not even necessarily because it's harder to do it in the end. More because it's just harder to get started.
For example, I find way more music I enjoy listening to through Bandcamp than I ever did on Spotify, but that requires having existing artists that I follow and can see their recommendations for, having a feel for which genres I actually like instead of a vague mental concept of what I like to listen to that I can then keyword search by in Bandcamp's search/discover section, and hoping that the human curators on Bandcamp's newsletter pick artists I like. Bandcamp doesn't really have algorithms, so those are my only real options.
It's more effort, but it's infinitely more rewarding.
You actually should actually try to listen to web radio. Still have a subscription with Qobuz but been listening to bytefm a lot and they have some great djs (they have different shows at different time.). I personally found there more new and great artist or songs than any personalized algorithm ever did.
One con: you’re too busy writing down the songs and you cannot really do anything while listening as you also too scared of missing something. /hj
Do they not have a recently played? Can always go back through and shouldn’t be too hard to figure out the songs. Just note the time maybe atleast.
Wasn't totally serious about my con. They do have a recently played and even an archive where you can re-listen certain shows you have missed (if you are paying member of their association).
Fair, some people may just not know about it, and some places just don’t, so spreading some knowledge, cheers.
On Bandcamp you can go on your feed page which shows albums based on the genres and artists you follow, and what fans you follow have bought.
You idiots don’t have a 6 cd changer in your car? Pathetic!
I do it the old fashioned way. Giant binder of discs I get my passenger to flip through and swap in and out
Damn a 100 cd changer then, mad respect
Only one binder?
Also makes since since music has not changed at all since 2003
No, but I have a USB stick with over 100 albums on it, so I can listen to the same 5 albums all the time.
No man, my usb works perfectly
precisely
A couple of years ago, I had a Napster subscription (the reborn, legal variant of it). At first, I was happy to have unlimited access to music, then after 2 years I realised that I was paying 120 EUR a year for music I'll never own, so I cancelled the subscription and put my yearly budget for music to exactly that amount. It yields more than enough given I buy used CDs, and then digitalise them. That way I own the physical media as backup AND am able to transfer the digital, PCM-quality tracks unfettered across my devices AND with no need for DRM or shitty proprietary applications.
You gotta put in the effort, which most people are too lazy to do
Is it laziness or a lack of motivation?
I’ve been a Spotify member for 13 years and it gives me exactly what I want. Owning music is good and all, but ripping the CDs and setting it up so my family and I have access to it where ever we go is going to cost me way more than the subscription does a month, in both time and money.
Right, but you would own the music...
I don't need to "copy it for distribution" to back it up for personal use.
I run Navidrome off a free small form factor PC recycled from work. My whole family accesses it via whatever app they like that supports Subsonic API (there's dozens), and for security it's only accessible via Tailscale, so they need Tailscale installed and connected.
Initial cost: $0. Plus cost of the apps, which is like $5 each user. Tailscale is free for up to 100 devices. Time to set up: 1 day. Ongoing cost: the very little electricity an energy-efficient SFF PC uses - way overestimating would be $2/month. Plus whatever music we buy on Bandcamp, physical etc that we own forever.
So it's not way more expensive in my experience, and at the end of the day I give artists I enjoy much more money than Spotify streams ever would, and I'm not supporting a piece of shit CEO pouring a billion dollars into military spending.
This would be right if not for the fact that Spotify will regularly introduce you to music that you might like and otherwise might not have heard of. That can be worth paying for.
We had scrobbling services before Spotify and we will have them afterwards.
See Last.fm and ListenBrainz.org
I signed up for this about 2 months ago because someone on here recommended it. It's absolutely garbage unless you only listen to radio music. I listen to industrial hardcore and uptempo about 90% of the time, the remaining 10% are a pretty even split between hard rock and radio music. It only recommends me radio music, not a single hardcore track.
I have subscriptions for Spotify, Tidal and SoundCloud, and all 3 of them have vastly better recommendations of you listen to less popular genres
It's true, some genres are better represented than others. The user base on listenbrainz is relatively small. I hope you do keep scrobbling your listens to listenbrainz because it can still help improve the recommendations for other users after you who listen to somethings you do but know a lot less than you in the genres you listen.
What are some of your favourites in this category? Spotify hasn't been giving me any good recommendations on this front either.
I would argue that this is the entire value proposition of Spotify. I may not own the music, but I have all the artist and song names. I can always re-acquire them at any time.
Except that as part of its enshittification Spotify has intentionally changed its algo to push people into more and more homogenous "beige", nothing music. It has become so prolific that Spotifycore has become a term to describe what happens when you let Spotify autoplay.
With the rise of AI, Spotify is now producing and recommending beige music that is produced on an industrial scale, at the expense of actual artists.
Mood Machine go brrr
Mood Machine by Liz Pelly review – a savage indictment of Spotify | Music books | The Guardian - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/mar/05/mood-machine-by-liz-pelly-review-a-savage-indictment-of-spotify
This is 100% true, and the reason I left Spotify. Back to buying records and CDs online and in niche record stores (I live in a metropolis, so that works even for obscure music). I also got a tidal subscription, and I like the recommendations from there much more. Bandcamp & SoundCloud newsletters are also great for suggestions.
But now, since collecting records and CDs, I find myself spending much more time with individual albums and critical listening, and relying less on playlists and suggestions. Anyway, Spotify is just garbage now...
This is why I use Spotify and why it's gotten so much worse over the last year.
My blocked artists list used to be empty, but now it feels like I'm blocking every third new artist for being AI.
There's a reason music piracy is still niche compared to games or movies/tv.
Spotify is still a good deal to me. I'll gladly pay $12 a month to not have to go through the hassle of torrenting and organizing music.
I love starting out with one song and just letting the algorithm do it's thing. It comes up with new shit for me all the time.
...are people really paying for a music subscription service to listen to the same music on repeat? I pay a service because I listen to like at least 4 new albums every week, minimum.
I pay for Apple Music (well, technically I get it as part of Apple One) for one reason: the library matching function. I have half a gig of mp3s on my home computer, many of which are not on any streaming service, and apple makes them all available to every device I own.
For me, thats worth the monthly price.
Wait...that's a peak feature, rare apple W
You can host it yourself without paying apple.
You'd literally be paying yourself back after not much time at all.
I like Plex amp but there are quite a few options.
I've used PlexAmp. It's shit. It tries its best, but it can't make up for the flaws in plex's underlying library system. It also requires having a library host running all the time. Apple host the music for me and I can make library changes from any of my devices.
I've tried a number of other self host options, as well, and none of them come close to the feature set in Music. I even wrote my own web app to do it way back in the 2000s, just so I could implement my own UX. This is still better.
Me too. However I recognize that many people are content to listen to the same things they enjoyed in high school forever. In which case they definitely do not need streaming
this post is just to placate a group of people. i prefer streaming for new music friday. i also don't want another crate or hard drive of shit i lost interest in.
It took me 10 listens to get into Jimi Hendrix. You are consuming quantity but quality requires effort.
or self inducing yourself into liking by listening to it so much
I don't this works with all music.
The first few listens I thought it was garbage. But I decided it must be me who is wrong, not everyone else.
Or, that taste is subjective and that there is no right and wrong. You are allowed to not like something others do.
This is true, but you should really give something a good few listens before you come to a conclusion. Good things can turn bad just as much as bad things turn good.
I truly wonder where in my post I implied that I am drawing significant conclusions without giving something a good few listens. Again, I think you are making assumptions of my listening habits based on severly limited information presented to you.
Because if I listened to a minimum of 4 new albums a week then I wouldn't have the time to repeat any.
It was applying your statistics to my habits.
No, I think you’re absolutely right and it’s comforting to know there are others who do this too. I have a kind of 3-5-7 trial period for getting into new music. If it’s crap but I want to give it a chance, I’ll do 3-5 album plays; if it’s ok but has potential I might not see, 5-7 plays. Anything challenging but enjoyable gets minimum 10 plays.
About the self inducement, that is making me question myself a little. There are things that I’ve tried over and over to get into that I just cannot no matter what, but I’m seriously questioning if it really is possible to “make” yourself like something through type of, I guess familiarity?
I think the counter argument to self inducement is that I can really go off something that I hear too many times (usually on the radio). Even if the first listen wasn't too bad.
This is making some significant assumptions, don't you think? That I sample the buffet does not mean that I don't also cherish and return to familiar recipes.
I'm assuming you have a similar amount of free time as me and are not able to fit in enough listens to become familiar.
I have no kids, no pets, and a job where I can listen to music the entirety of my shifts while working. I have music on in some capacity probably an average of 12 hours a day. 4 albums a week, even when listening to them each 6 six times, is a fraction of my listening.
Music listening is my primary "hobby" and interest.
In that case, what are your top 5 undiscovered gems that need 5+ listens to appreciate.
What are the modern Captain Beefhearts?
Dunno if I go actively searching for difficult music, so I may not have the best answer for that specifically, but here are 5 albums I consider hidden gems or underappreciated:
Horse Bitch - RIP Pistachio
Tattle Tale - Sew True
Gaytheist - The Mustache Stays
Codefendants - This Is Crime Wave
Irist - Gloria (actually an EP, if you'll allow it).
These probably won't take you 5+ listens to appreciate, but I do think they're smaller releases worthy of greater attention. Hopefully that's close enough for you. ✌️
Never heard of any of them, so a perfect response. Thanks!
Man, Spotify were the ones who did it. Like they made the service so significantly better and more convenient than pirating that most of those pirating actually switched.
Not a fan of the platform anymore since the heavy push for sponsored content, removal of audiobooks and the whole Joe Rogan thing, but still credit where it's due.
The built a thing by burning investor money to artificially lower the price and sell out high on stock IPOs is still going strong I see.
And by massively underpaying the actual artists that create the content that fills the platform.
I only play songs once on Spotify, if you catch my drift.
I don't even play it :3
Atta boy
Level 20 baby!
I did return to my old flac and mp3 collection. Got Foobar working again, found a nice skin and I'm rediscovering music that I that skipped over. I buy second-hand CDs when I find them. I've managed to get a digital copy of all my favourite albums and tracks.
I will keep Spotify though. A long time ago, I got friends to share their Discovery and Release Radar playlists. With my own, I have a nice spread of recommendations.
I need regular new music. Call it a search for unexpected dopamine. Spotify still picks new tracks that I really like. I also like Spotify Connect and the easily shared collaborative playlists.
The UK has less alternatives for music discovery. I don't like Radio, way too much talking and ads.
I've got rid of Netflix, Prime. I'm getting Disney+ for free at the moment. Back to physical for film and TV.
For now, Spotify recommendations is worth the cost of entry.
I washed my clown makeup off with a home server
Yarrr.
Recently done the same and could not believe how easy it was too set up an *arr stack. It's like magic
I pay for the discovery features. Then I get my music locally.
Isn't the discovery free? Lol
You kinda need to listen to stuff to prime the discovery algorithms lol
Not for the real discovery (👁 ͜ʖ👁)
*laughs in physical media*
*cries in disc rot*
*wonders what disc rot is*
It’s the terrible reason CDs and DVDs don’t last forever. Curse you, oxidation!
Just the albums on my favorites list in Qobuz would have been around $10,000 USD to purchase in hi-res.
I am very happy with Navidrome for over a year now. It also reminds me how I listened to whole albums when I was a teenager, what I now started doing again.
Navidrome is awesome and super easy to set up if you use a PikaPod.
Okay, but I can access my full library from anywhere at full quality from multiple devices, I have several 5,000 plus song playlists with little to no overlap between a few of them and I have had CDs lost or stolen and had drive failures delete digital libraries. But sure.
I don't do it personally, but from what I understand, it's really pretty easy to set up your own self-hosted music server to stream from.
I have jellyfin for movies/tv because there isn't a more convenient option available. I am not going to VPN from my phone or anywhere to home to play music when Tidal is available.
That sounds like digital hoarding. Why do you need a 2 week long playlist?
Shuffle
This is why I download all the music I want. I still listen to it primarily on youtube, but it is a 'just in case'. I also never paid for music.
Artists love you, I'm sure.
I doubt they notice. Most artists either get income directly from fans at concerts, via merch, or through explicit patronage (Bandcamp, Patreon, etc).
The money they get from streaming isn't remotely enough to support a professional career. Streaming is more about promotion - to get you in the door at the next concert or promote a product with a real revenue stream - than actual income.
Sure. But getting more is better than getting less, no?
Do artists benefit more from ad-dense, algorithm gamed, corporate controlled media outlets kicking them a few bucks every month?
Or is a guerilla campaign of populist free-at-download distribution better for long term concert attendance and merch sales?
No idea, I don't use those.
The service I use pays (for the 2023-2024 fiscal year) around US$0.01873 per stream in royalties to labels and publishers. Spotify (as of 2025) does $0.003-$0.005 per stream, so it actually improved massively - it's only 6 times less than Qobuz (used to be 12 times less).
Doesn't work for small acts that don't do massive, world-wide tours. Nor for fully independent artists who just don't have the budget to do larger concerts.
Cool. Apparently I'm not "average person", because that doesn't apply to me.
I’m not sure that’s something to be proud of
I usually have to listen to a song several times before it fully "clicks" if I like it or not, so music streaming subscription is great for being able to grab any song I think I might like and throw it in trial playlist. Back when I bought/acquired music, I would skip over most music I might like because the effort wasn't worth it for a song I wasn't sure if I liked or not. So streaming has worked really well for me for music discovery at least.
On the bright side, I'm still getting my $8 a month early adopter price for Google music all access (now YouTube music).
I dunno, RJD2's Ghostwriter clicked for me immediately, among others
Yes, thats an awesome song
I think the young generation has seen the pattern of clowns generations above them, either relying on ad-radio or Spotify, and have turned to piracy or physical media for this. My BIL recently got into buying CDs from goodwill as a good example. YT video essay I lived through the consumer generation of physical hoarding so Spotifydl is fine for me.
The internet is over, you guys. We can finally switch off our devices and take a good nap.
Return it to Big Ben when you’re done with it.
That's where it has the best reception, right?
Go to concerts, buy physical.
Have you seen concert ticket prices lately?? Even small to mid size bands playing at 1500 person venues are $60+ for GA. It's nuts.
Depends on where you are and depends on organisation. If it's a small venue and a DIY type of thing, chances are that the merch money and at least part of the entrance is going directly to the band (as opposed to the 1% kickback they'd get for streaming).
I saw Castle Rat in Brooklyn the other day (great show) and it was like $25 + $10 of bs "fees".
I don't see many bigger bands anymore because the tickets are more than double that.
You can just rip it off Spotify.
Lossy
For some reason pirating music libraries is really hard. Probably bc everyone uses Spotify
Try Usenet
Get a library card! My local small town library has access to a surprising number of nearby libraries, and if I'm willing to wait a week or two for the item to be available and get transferred, I've been able to get some decently non-mainstream stuff for free. For more obscure stuff, bandcamp is pretty awesome.
https://1337x.to/ has been my piracy go-to for years and they've rarely missed.
Hint: Discography is what you're looking for if you want everything the artist made.
I do have a Qobuz subscription, I just rip whatever I want to listen and stream from my home server.
You can also do a free trial for a month and just use a disposable e-mail to redo it every month, if you don't want to pay anything.
Some of us aren’t privileged enough to buy hundreds of hours of music.
Buy? 🤨
Yarrr 🏴☠️
So what you can indefinitely subscribe though? Try thrift shops, used CD stores, etc if you want to buy.
If you're buying secondhand, that also does nothing for the artists. You might as well just pirate at that point, unless you're deeply into the vinyl scene or something
Better than indefinite subscription. Buy a shirt if you want to support the artist.
Over time the streaming options are almost certainly more expensive.
Personally I am an advocate for piracy, an economic system that requires the enforcement of artificial scarcity is not one I consent to bind me. We need a system that rewards artists without locking culture and art behind a paywall.
The only reason it works the way it does now is that music used to come from physical totems. The internet requires a new and progressive approach to intellectual products.
They mock you for subscribing to an online service. I mock you for subscribing to WoW instead of FFXIV. We are not the same.
(Insert FFXIV free trial meme here)
I've heard the plot is actually pretty good
And WoW isn't? The big advantage FFXIV has there is dye channels on their armor instead of recolored sets (though WoW is better in the way you collect transmogs without having to actually store the item somewhere). And you've clearly never been to Goldshire or seen the lvl 1 trolls dancing naked on mailboxes in Orgrimmar. WoW is full of people ERPing.
The biggest difference between the two is that WoW doesn't give a damn about the story and each xpac is obsolete when the new one releases, while FFXIV puts the story first with each xpac being a new chapter and keeps content as evergreen as it can. WoW also caters to their endgame raiders above everyone else, while FFXIV claims to put casual players first (though whether or not this is true is hotly debated in the community at any given time).
That's the thing about multiplayer games - no matter the game, people never change. Some games incentivize different behaviors, but people will be people and will ruin any game if you let them. I think FFXIV does a much better job in this regard by incentivizing players to treat new players more nicely than WoW does, but that's my personal experience. You can meet assholes in any game.
And I wasn't claiming that FFXIV doesn't have ERP. Merely pointing out the hypocrisy of criticizing it when WoW has the exact same issues that you criticized FFXIV for having.
Besides, this is all a heavy discussion for what was just referencing two memes.
I've never played any of the FFs :/
FFS
Yar what if I told yee have another option
Dont worry guys my CD collection is increasing (i extract it onto hard drives too). I'll open a free music museum when all goes to shit.
This is why I set up a Funkwhale home server
There are other ways. I've only had problems with ReVanced Music once, and there was a fresh set of patches less than a day later.
Still dependent on a service, on them (YT/YT Music and ReVanced) continuing, and YT not breaking clients.
The post is about PAID subscription models, not being dependent on something.
I just noticed yesterday, that existing subscribers can stay at the old price. There's an option to switch to a "basic" plan, afaik you will lose access to audiobooks, but they only give 12h of those per month, for the 2 euros extra.
Thanks, just switched.
Really hard to get normies to see this. They're sucked into how easy it is and soon they'll be fed nothing but ai slop music so corps dont havr to pay artists a cent. Yay future?
Ill hold onto my records and cds, thanks.
What's really hard for me personally is understanding why people see streaming services as some sort of antithesis of purchasing physical albums.
You know you can do both, right?
I listen to tonnes of music, expand my tastes via a streaming service, but when I find a band that I become a fan of I purchase their albums.
I replaced radio, not albums, with streaming services.
My favourite thing to do is use shit like Spotify and google and stores I hate to FIND the thing I want, then I go get it in a different, nicer store lol. For example I often use a place called Emag to find all sorts of products then use compari.ro and pricy.ro to find the best prices for that item.
I just don't use Spotify. I pay for Qobuz which pays something around 12x more to artists than Spotify does.
Oh yeah I understand that. The problem is streaming commoditized music even worse than it already was, making it even more worthless. And now 99% of the population wont even buy a cd, and the artist gets even less money than before.
Back in the day, you had to get the record or cd to hear what you wanted. And to me thats what made the strong bond between artist and listener. Its no wonder a large majority of young people have no strong feelings toward music. Also, im not some old man, im pretty young, but I can see the changes.
Also, why would you replace radio with streaming services when literally thousands of internet radio stations (many donations ran only) exist all over the place?
I think people are quick to latch onto streaming because they saw ads for it and thought it was the next Big thing they had to be a part of. We have had internet radio for 15+ years.
All the more reason to promote services like Qobuz, which pay the artists much more than Spotify. Last I checked it was around 12 times more per track.
And I don't know if income from streaming doesn't balance out what artists used to lose to piracy.
Where I grew up there used to be a music store in the city centre. You could walk in, grab an album and listen to it for a bit in special listening stations. If you decided you liked it, you could buy it... or give the clerk an empty tape (or later CD), and they'd copy it for you for a quarter of the price.
By the time those kind of services died out, Internet was good enough that people would download music and burn it on CDs themselves.
Yeah, you had to get the CD, but it's not like every single person listening to a CD meant any money went to the artists.
Because I'd need to spend hundreds if not thousands of hours to check if I enjoy the particular brand of radio. And what if their program didn't line up with my daily commute to work? Nah, I prefer firing up "artist radio" on the train and, if I hit something I like, just quickly drop it into a playlist of things "to check out later", then grab the whole album where the song was and listen to it.
I would never buy an album after hearing a single. Twelve Foot Ninja had an amazing song, one I really, really enjoyed, but the album was - to me - completely trash. It was literally like a diamond in a pile of shit situation. Can't verify that listening to the radio.
I don't think I've ever seen an ad for Spotify in my entire life. Maybe because I browse with an ad block...
I latched on to streaming because it gave me exactly what I needed - the entirety of my discography at my fingertips and then some, no ads, no talking, and the potential to discover excellent new music - all of that while actually giving the artists something for the trouble.
Why would I ever mess with physical media ever again? What a waste of space and effort. Streaming services give me a breadth and width of options unrivaled in history. And if I dislike the streaming price (way worth it in my opinion) then digital purchasing or even pirate methods are available.
i agree
When I was just a lad looking for my true vocation
My father said "Now son, this choice deserves deliberation...
Though you could be a doctor...
...or perhaps a financier...
My boy, why not consider a more challenging career!"
Back in the days we were paying 10$ for an album. Then Napster came.
Now we pay 100$ for a concert.
Try Metrolist maybe.
$10 an album? Before Napster there was literally a class action lawsuit against the music industry because albums were like $22
I bought my first album in 1977 for $7, which is $37 in today's money. It's pretty insane to think that the entire music industry back then was about getting people to pay $37 for a piece of plastic. Avocado toast eat your heart out.
I remember 1977. I started going to concerts and I saw the Led Zeppelin!
It was Yes ("Going for the One") for me. Led Zeppelin was for the burnouts!
Sorry, I was doing a bit from Everclear lyrics. That’s super cool that you saw Yes for your first concert. My first concert was Aerosmith in 1992.
Rimusic exists 🙄
Could you ELI5 how's it work?
What music is it streaming? Is it somehow piping into Spotify/Tidal/something and grabbing music from there? Or is it "my own MP3s from my own storage location somewhere"?
Also: does it support Last FM scrobbling?
I think it streams youtube music. You can download tracks and make playlists. Also has live lyrics for most of the tracks.
I recommend using it now. Next year google is gonna kill all apps outside play store.
That reminds me I still need to export my spotify likes and migrate all that out
That's a really narrow case.
people pay for music? Wow at least give you something for the money, although pricey. others like RS trying to justify thier price increase without substantial increase in content.
Paying for music is worthwhile. Ditch Spotify. Embrace Bandcamp.
Didn't emusic let you download 3 albums a month for $10, but stream anything?
Jokes on them, i have actually started to store my music on a 7th gen again
pw-record is gonna become the new taping songs off the radio
If those WoW subscriptions had have flopped - we'd be in a better situation now.
I still pay for a Pandora family subscription, because all 5 people in my house use it; but for me - I don't like spending all the time organizing and listening to albums, so I pick a song I want - Pandora makes a mix of songs like it, and then I rip the "station" that Pandora builds for me into files and toss those files into an SD card in my car.
What is money for if not to waste completely when you don't have to at all lol
Honestly, I'm surprised that streaming has gone on this long before we have such enshtification taking place.
I'm basically down to just a single subscription now because the cost outweighs the ease of use and only keep my music streaming service because of work and I don't want to be using self hosting on a company network.
At least wow was worth it IMO. What a fantastic game that was.
Ive only ever bought 2 CDs in my life. Have never paid to download music and never will.
Im (my wife is) paying for the convenience. The moment it feels too expensive im back to the high seas.
I did hear WoW is fun again
The game is fun, but it's now a solo game where you occasionally team up non-socially with strangers to knock out goals, rather than being the massively social game it once was. Unfortunately I think those days are over forever.
Is it? Last time I tried I was having somewhat good fun until I got the stupidest mythic dungeon group that bullied the fuck out of me as healer and stopped again shortly after that. I liked that there was just so much to do but I'm still not sure I can really enjoy the game the same way I used to now my life is so different and don't have as much time to give to it.
A friend of mine started playing again and said it was really good. Idk about the time sink though.
You gotta find a good guild to dungeon crawl or raid with. My favorite thing was being raid lead during Mists and working with a big team. I did some competitive WoW back then, and even played with Asmongold, my character is in some of his old videos. Makes me pretty sad how he turned out.
Yeah but that's where the time sink aspect comes in though, truthfully even though I also played at competitive levels back in the days (up to world top 50ish kills) and of course I miss the competitive aspect, as well as the social one that came from the guilds etc, the allure of modern wow was that I did have all these options to experience content and catch up without having to commit to a schedule. And TBH it did work pretty well last time I tried like a year ago, lots to do solo, lots of catch up mechanics, lots of ways to join random groups etc. But yeah it doesn't feel the same as playing with a committed group and that's probably what I actually miss from the game.
Funny that you played with asmon that's some lore right there lol.