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alternatives? tidal / apple music / deezer

1 tidal's share feature links to other music services too (you get the option to pick whatever when you share something so no one gets left out) granted, they use a service to scrape other services to know what's where and who has what, but still

2 I have both tidal and apple music, and used to have spotify - imo the former two are just better at recommending new stuff close to your preferences as well as adjacents. you also get recommendations for stuff you don't normally listen to in a separate playlist, so the spread is there. people just haven't tried to live with them long enough, or just refuse to believe there are other things out there that can be better, or both

3 tidal is, apple music is, and also deezer

Discover Weekly feature has been quite effective.

That used to be me.

I listen mostly to old swing, jazz, etc. It was fine. How can you mess it up?

And now I'm getting damn AI slop, pretending to be 1930's music.

For me it's all of these plus the ICE recruitment ads.

Haven't watched it either, but it's a great list. I'd add

• the embracing of AI slop
• the great algorithm relentlessly pushing the same 10 tracks down my throat in a library with 10000+ songs

Spotify has also pushed AI music more, as it means they don't have to pay the artists.

don't forget they gave $250m to Bro Rogan. weird priorities for a music streaming service.

Plus above, increased move to ownership/physical media as people realize continued monthly costs are not worth it.

For me it's the opposite. I tend to get really into a pandora station for a few months, then get tired of it and it's almost permanently played out to me. Even going back to it years later it will feel old. For someone like me, physical media just doesn't make sense. Paying pandora $5/month to have ad free (and DJ free) music when I'm driving or exercising is worth it to me.

I've been happy with Tidal. Their library is extensive, you get better sound quality and it's cheaper than Spotify. No podcasts or audiobooks but I use different services for those anyway.

This question deserves better reaponses. If you can't or don't want to self host, Tidal and Qobuz are probably the best alternatives. Tidal doesn't do podcasts though so if you need to replace that as well, take a look at Antenna pod which as a bonus is available on F-Droid.

MP3s and FLAC. The only thing the services offer that's even remotely useful is finding new music that I might like but.... gasp I was doing that before the internet, too.

If you mean another streaming service and not just hosting music yourself like others are suggesting, I’ve heard good things about Quboz.

Tidal. It's okay but the windows desktop app is buggy. Keeps playing a different track than it shows on the UI. Search isn't great. Android app lacks voice input support.

I set up a Plex server with all my old media, I downloaded my old music collection from my google data (if you ever had your own files stored in Google Play back when it wasn’t just a store but also a media player, it’s still downloadable from Google). I use the plex amp app, it looks like a Spotify skin but works with my personal collection. It’s been pretty great, I run it off an old beat up gaming laptop and 20tb USB drive.

A couple of weeks ago I opened Spotify and SoulSeek on split screen and began the process of looking through my library and downloading all my music. Then once I was done, I went on Bandcamp and bought a few albums from some of my favourite artists that I couldn't find on SoulSeek.

It took me a couple of hours over the course of about 3 days, but it was well worth it in the end. I now have everything I had on Spotify saved onto my phone and PC. It feels very liberating, and I can now delete my Spotify account.

I have gone with a combination of buying/downloading music that I really enjoy and using Qobuz. The quality of music is great, but the selection and discovery just aren't as good as Spotify.

I have been self hosting since 2008. Went through around 7 different apps since then, and I am currently using Navidrome, which is a fork of Subsonic with the android phone app Symfonium. For a while there self hosting looked pretty bleak around 2020, but it seems to have found a resurgence which I love because the development has been big again leading to more modern looking players and a lot of great new functionality.

I like this line of thinking. I’m upgrading my network soon. This might be an addition.

Love this.