I stopped paying for Spotify after the Rogan deal, instead using these APKs on mobile and ublock on Firefox since I wasn't ready to transition off the service. But the quality has dwindled and I'm...
I stopped paying for Spotify after the Rogan deal, instead using these APKs on mobile and ublock on Firefox since I wasn't ready to transition off the service. But the quality has dwindled and I'm looking into alternatives. What do y'all do for music?
I'll likely go back to local files over streaming. I can buy albums from indie and local folk on Bandcamp to give them more money than they'd ever get from my streams and I usually just repeat the same albums any way. Could probably augment it with last.fm scrobbling to help with artist discovery, my main method has been finding a music map site and typing in an artist I wanted a similar vibe to.
I'm one of the few YouTube Music users and have been fairly happy with it. Having experimented with Apple Music and Spotify, YouTube Music's algorithm seems to understand me best. I'm someone who...
I'm one of the few YouTube Music users and have been fairly happy with it. Having experimented with Apple Music and Spotify, YouTube Music's algorithm seems to understand me best. I'm someone who prefers primarily listening to songs on my liked songs playlist with a few new songs here and there to break things up. I also often just listen to new songs I like on repeat for a while before I just add it to my usual listening rotation. Spotify and Apple Music would take that to mean I like every song from that artist so my recommendations would only be filled with them. YouTube doesn't and will mix that artists songs with other recommendations for me, which I prefer.
I'm also a big fan of the fact that you can add most YouTube videos to your liked songs playlist. I find this helpful because I often listen to a lot of video game soundtracks and there are many games where the soundtrack only exists as videos someone uploaded 10-15 years ago. For example, I'm a big fan of the original Forza Motorsport soundtrack by JunkieXL but it only exists as a YouTube video playlist.
I'm also a big YouTube watcher so the rather high price tag for YouTube Premium+Music is worth it to me.
Second for YT music. I feel like their algorithm gets my music taste more than apple music, and I had no interest in even trying spotify because of Joe Rogan.
Second for YT music. I feel like their algorithm gets my music taste more than apple music, and I had no interest in even trying spotify because of Joe Rogan.
Yeah, I use YouTube enough that the ad-free videos would've been worth it even without YouTube Music, but I do genuinely think their recommendations tend to be better. Plus, you can play YouTube...
Yeah, I use YouTube enough that the ad-free videos would've been worth it even without YouTube Music, but I do genuinely think their recommendations tend to be better. Plus, you can play YouTube videos with music like songs, which is handy for more obscure stuff where the album isn't on most streaming but is likely to have been uploaded as a YouTube video.
I briefly used Spotify back in 2019, but I've been largely ride-or-die for local media. I've got MP3s from 2005, they're backed up several ways, and as long as a solar flare doesn't hit us or...
I briefly used Spotify back in 2019, but I've been largely ride-or-die for local media. I've got MP3s from 2005, they're backed up several ways, and as long as a solar flare doesn't hit us or whatever could cause a global EMP I'll be listening to them until I die. The only way I'd ever change is if a streaming service let you locally download the raw files, and not restricted/secure files.
I have a local library of music, organized using Picard. I sync it to my phone with rsync, where I play it back with VLC. For discovery beyond reading up on the musicians and labels I mostly use...
I have a local library of music, organized using Picard. I sync it to my phone with rsync, where I play it back with VLC. For discovery beyond reading up on the musicians and labels I mostly use YouTube, which seems to have a good idea of what I like at this point. On the PC I use fzf for quick search in the library, which then launches Audacious.
I mostly listen to music release-by-release, but VLC ought to support most playlist formats.
Oh my God thank you for the Picard rec!! I was fighting Lidarr yesterday trying to make it tag according to MusicBrainz and it has some problems (admittedly some of these problems are on my files,...
Oh my God thank you for the Picard rec!! I was fighting Lidarr yesterday trying to make it tag according to MusicBrainz and it has some problems (admittedly some of these problems are on my files, turns out rips from over 20yrs ago aren't labeled the best, whoda thunk it). This is exactly what I needed. I've actually already found a release I have that MusicBrainz doesn't.
The only problem I ever have with Picard is that the MusicBrainz database doesn’t always have the info for some of the less common albums I buy. Especially when it comes to recordings of musical...
The only problem I ever have with Picard is that the MusicBrainz database doesn’t always have the info for some of the less common albums I buy. Especially when it comes to recordings of musical soundtracks. I actually had to submit my own info for Sondheim’s Old Friends. You’d think it would be there because it’s Sondheim and has a ton of famous people on it, but I guess it hasn’t really made it big - or at least international, since I think the performance I was watching was the first run in the US.
Yes, it's frequently a problem with fresh or obscure stuff I buy on Bandcamp, though those are usually tagged well enough that I can still use Picard just to organize them into the directory...
Yes, it's frequently a problem with fresh or obscure stuff I buy on Bandcamp, though those are usually tagged well enough that I can still use Picard just to organize them into the directory structure I've set up without re-tagging anything.
I grew up in the late 90's early 00's so I am quite used to having my own media library stored locally and I have a large amount of media that I have acquired over 30-ish years of collecting. As...
I grew up in the late 90's early 00's so I am quite used to having my own media library stored locally and I have a large amount of media that I have acquired over 30-ish years of collecting. As such I use Plex, I can stream it from my home server anywhere and I can queue up to 40 songs at a time in case I lose connection temporarily. All of my stuff is stored locally (my home network). So access can never be taken from me by some greedy suit who thinks they need another gold plated humvee. That also means if I wish I can just load the music or video files directly on my phone or laptop as well if I choose because I have direct access to the storage.
I never understood why anyone would agree to recurring payments for something that used to be free or a one time payment and I refuse to even consider it now despite everyone's insistence that things like spotify are more convenient or you can discover new artists and so on blah blah. Handing over control to someone who only cares that "line go up" is never a good idea.
For $17/month (less since bundled with Apple One), everyone in my family can access whatever songs they want from wherever they want. Cost-wise, it roughly breaks even with acquiring songs...
For $17/month (less since bundled with Apple One), everyone in my family can access whatever songs they want from wherever they want. Cost-wise, it roughly breaks even with acquiring songs legally, but now I don't have to worry about CarPlay integration or punching a hole in my network.
i use deezer and spotify. i prefer spotify for discovery and the generated playlists, but the quality on deezer is proper lossless. transferring playlists is a breeze, too. really, you could have...
i use deezer and spotify. i prefer spotify for discovery and the generated playlists, but the quality on deezer is proper lossless. transferring playlists is a breeze, too. really, you could have spotify make playlists and then sync them over automatically. win win.
tidal is the first of everything. they’re moving away from their folding, but i don’t trust them. their discover is terrible, too.
I moved to Tidal after the Rogan deal and haven't had any issues with discovery or library breadth. I'm not sure what you meant by folding and why you don't trust them.
I moved to Tidal after the Rogan deal and haven't had any issues with discovery or library breadth.
I'm not sure what you meant by folding and why you don't trust them.
i think they’re fixing it, but Tidal claimed to be lossless from the get-go, but all of the MQA stuff was actually lossy. plenty has been written about it, the highest non-MQA was actually...
i think they’re fixing it, but Tidal claimed to be lossless from the get-go, but all of the MQA stuff was actually lossy. plenty has been written about it, the highest non-MQA was actually lossless, i believe.
Ok, I didn't realize the issues with their compression. I never subscribed to their lossless tier anyway as my main goal was escaping Spotify, so they've served me well in that sense.
Ok, I didn't realize the issues with their compression. I never subscribed to their lossless tier anyway as my main goal was escaping Spotify, so they've served me well in that sense.
I keep all my music on my server, which is backed up. Then also "backed up" via my phone on an SD Card, so I can play anything I have locally off that. I buy a vast majority of my music on...
I keep all my music on my server, which is backed up. Then also "backed up" via my phone on an SD Card, so I can play anything I have locally off that.
I buy a vast majority of my music on Bandcamp, some on Amazon, which is usually DRM-Free.
I’m still on a three month trial of Apple Music. Honestly, I kind of think it’s meh. It’s not a bad service, but I really don’t think it’s worth paying for. I don’t care about the latest music....
I’m still on a three month trial of Apple Music. Honestly, I kind of think it’s meh. It’s not a bad service, but I really don’t think it’s worth paying for. I don’t care about the latest music. And in all honesty the music I am most interested isn’t on it.
Local is king. And if you have more music than can fit in your device (lack of microSD in modern phones is a real tragedy), then rent online storage of some sort.
For streaming, Apple Music is a good alternative. Higher artist payouts Lossless and hi-res streaming included without upcharge More complete library As of last summer, a better recommendation...
For streaming, Apple Music is a good alternative.
Higher artist payouts
Lossless and hi-res streaming included without upcharge
More complete library
As of last summer, a better recommendation algorithm than Spotify
Separate dedicated app for navigating their classical music library (iOS and Android only for now)
Of course, nothing really beats supporting artists directly by buying albums on Bandcamp and Qobuz, but that isn't a great way to discover new music.
In terms of raw value, YouTube Music is hard to beat simply because it comes bundled with YouTube Premium.
I’ll add a few bonuses for Apple Music. Excellent third party app support on iOS, including Albums, which I personally use, and Mavis Pro, which I don’t use but is highly recommended. Excellent...
I’ll add a few bonuses for Apple Music.
Excellent third party app support on iOS, including Albums, which I personally use, and Mavis Pro, which I don’t use but is highly recommended.
Excellent support for adding your own music to your library. Once you upload it from a computer, the file lives on Apple servers and is treated exactly the same as the native music library. The only other service I have seen that does this was Google play music which no longer exists.
Has an Android app. No idea how good it is though.
Android app works just fine, pretty much indistinguishable from the iOS one. Also worth noting: If you're on Windows or Linux, Cider is an independent app that runs Apple Music on those platforms....
Android app works just fine, pretty much indistinguishable from the iOS one.
Also worth noting: If you're on Windows or Linux, Cider is an independent app that runs Apple Music on those platforms. I subscribe to Apple Music because I think it's the best music streaming service, but I don't have a Mac so I use the Android app on my phone and Cider on my Linux PC.
Cider is free but has a "supporter version" with a one-time payment that gets early access to updates and new release versions--which means any bugs or feature requests get pushed out faster, and I have found it to be worth it. It's only $3.50 on itch.io which I recommend even if you're on Windows, as the Microsoft Store version always seems to lag on updates and I've always found it to be oddly unstable in general.
I do pay for Apple Music, but I also use and recommend (at least as a stopgap until you decide what you want to do) Spotube. It's a FOSS Spotify client available for every platform that uses your...
I do pay for Apple Music, but I also use and recommend (at least as a stopgap until you decide what you want to do) Spotube. It's a FOSS Spotify client available for every platform that uses your existing login and settings/playlists, but pulls music from the YouTube API for audio. As such, it's technically legal as I understand it, for now.
I will warn you that it can be a little janky. But it does work, and since recent updates have improved the stability a lot, I find myself using it more often to the point that I will probably cancel Apple Music. If you want a paid solution, Apple Music IMO is the best of the bunch between audio quality, song availability, artist payments, and algorithmic recommendations. I think it's a great service. But its cost keeps going up, I'm now paying over $35/mo for my Apple One scrip and I barely use any of it.
Spotube is "good enough" if you want to avoid paying for a streaming service and don't want to mess with local files. Be prepared for a occasional instability, but it's trivial to deal with. Personally, I don't have a huge ethical problem with it as the artist payments are so low in streaming anyway that you're better off supporting your faves via ticket and merch purchases, which I do, often--this month I've tickets to two shows for bands that I discovered via the Spotify algorithm while using Spotube, and I will almost certainly buy merch, so I think this is a fair tradeoff.
Local files with Lyrion (previously named LMS) on my home server: local playback with a good DAC and speakers control through the material UI in the browser + Squeezer android app Squeezer allows...
Local files with Lyrion (previously named LMS) on my home server:
local playback with a good DAC and speakers
control through the material UI in the browser + Squeezer android app
Squeezer allows to download albums to the phone's storage for offline listening while on the go. I read them with VLC
One great feature of Lyrion is the "random albums" folder: it will show you 50 random albums to chose from depending on your mood. Reduces the friction to start listening
I use plex on my NAS for music streaming. I've looked at other setups, but plex simply provides the best-looking UI for playing music on mobile (plexamp), and that's important for me. Though I...
I use plex on my NAS for music streaming. I've looked at other setups, but plex simply provides the best-looking UI for playing music on mobile (plexamp), and that's important for me.
Though I admit I don't use too many features. I pretty much exclusively listen to music album-by-album, so I don't have experience with playlists and the like in plexamp.
Playlists is one of the highlights for Plexamp for me, if not for the simple fact that it adds a button to add to your last added playlist. Makes things so much easier on mobile than most other...
Playlists is one of the highlights for Plexamp for me, if not for the simple fact that it adds a button to add to your last added playlist. Makes things so much easier on mobile than most other players I've used where creating playlists is more of a chore.
The artist radio works pretty well, though most of my library is metal so of course I'll enjoy it all. I did try the AI DJs or whatever and they were hit or miss. Some weird recommendations like Taylor Swift in the "aggressive" mood AI playlist. To be fair, I was using the default settings (not sure if that is a local very light model doing the work or it goes to Plex servers) without any API access for advanced recommendations.
Overall a solid second from me for Plex and Plexamp. It's also free now (used to be paywalled behind PlexPass) and agree that it's also a very solid player (though why won't you respect my hardware media keys!!).
Does anyone have information on what Play Integrity attestation level is currently required? If it's BASIC or DEVICE, there are likely to be workarounds for rooted devices by mounting over the...
Does anyone have information on what Play Integrity attestation level is currently required? If it's BASIC or DEVICE, there are likely to be workarounds for rooted devices by mounting over the original app.
I'm using GrapheneOS and a fresh install of Spotify from the Play Store is working with no problems. Graphene only passes BASIC, and I didn't receive a notification about Spotify using the Play...
This might be relevant to people who are using this but perhaps end up being unable to use it after Spotify blocks them. Before I was using the modded Spotify, I was using privacy.com and signing...
This might be relevant to people who are using this but perhaps end up being unable to use it after Spotify blocks them.
Before I was using the modded Spotify, I was using privacy.com and signing up for Pandora free trials. I was doing family trials and then adding my original account onto the family plan to try to keep my songs and what not, and it worked initially then towards the end I was having issues, not sure if I screwed something up or what. I'd make new accounts on Pandora by doing myemail+march2025@gmail.com in there, and then in 2 or 3 months I'd do myemail+may2025@gmail.com and so on. There was one time where their system glitched somehow and I had the free trial for over a year. That has actually happened to me on another service too when I used privacy.com, I set the card limit to $1 total and then when the trial ended for NBA League Pass (which is something close to $200 for a whole season), the charge failed to go through as expected but the service did not end until the end of the season. Then privacy.com apparently has a blocklist where they eventually block you from using their temp cards for certain services, so I could no longer use it on NBA League Pass (I'm assuming that NBA threatens them with legal action or something).
I'll admit, it's not a strategy for everyone because there's a bit of nuisance management, but just figured I'd mention it for anyone who ends up in a situation where they don't know what they want to do.
They might also be ass-covering themselves without NBA ever getting in touch, because what you described sounded somewhere between piracy and fraud. (Note that these words might come with implicit...
Then privacy.com apparently has a blocklist where they eventually block you from using their temp cards for certain services, so I could no longer use it on NBA League Pass (I'm assuming that NBA threatens them with legal action or something)
They might also be ass-covering themselves without NBA ever getting in touch, because what you described sounded somewhere between piracy and fraud. (Note that these words might come with implicit judgement, but I am in no way shedding tears for NBAs bottom line. I’m generally in favour of piracy, maybe a little iffy on fraud myself, but you do you)
It's probably a violation of their 1000 page Terms of Service but I don't know that it's piracy or fraud. The card information provided to them is valid, it doesn't matter what name I give them. I...
It's probably a violation of their 1000 page Terms of Service but I don't know that it's piracy or fraud. The card information provided to them is valid, it doesn't matter what name I give them. I don't give my real name when creating an account on most sites but even if I did it wouldn't materially impact their ability to detect or block the accounts. The name also wouldn't materially impact their ability to identify me as the person behind the account, because they don't ask for social security or any unique identifying information so I could be one of hundreds or thousands of people with the same first and last name. Beyond that I don't know what laws would actually be broken.
Without actually going to research what the NBA pass is, exactly, and without knowing the details, I’m definitely speculating. But it sounds like the trial is intended as a one-trial-per-person...
Without actually going to research what the NBA pass is, exactly, and without knowing the details, I’m definitely speculating. But it sounds like the trial is intended as a one-trial-per-person kind of thing, and they have some inadequate technical requirements to try to vaguely enforce that, and then you’ve found a way to circumvent their inadequate technical limitations.
Putting the inadequacy of their technical barriers aside, if the intention (however poorly implemented) is for one-per-person and you’ve found a way around that, and you’re deriving financial gain[1], then that kinda sounds close to fraud to me, who is not a lawyer at all.
[1]: (in the sense that you access for free to a service that’s usually paid for, and you’re demonstrating it has at least marginal value as indicated by the effort you’re going to)
Sounds like a similar situation to adblocking at that point. Their intention is that the person visiting the site is viewing the ads, and adblocking is finding a way around that and deriving...
Putting the inadequacy of their technical barriers aside, if the intention (however poorly implemented) is for one-per-person and you’ve found a way around that, and you’re deriving financial gain[1], then that kinda sounds close to fraud to me, who is not a lawyer at all.
Sounds like a similar situation to adblocking at that point. Their intention is that the person visiting the site is viewing the ads, and adblocking is finding a way around that and deriving financial gain without 'paying'.
I stopped paying for Spotify after the Rogan deal, instead using these APKs on mobile and ublock on Firefox since I wasn't ready to transition off the service. But the quality has dwindled and I'm looking into alternatives. What do y'all do for music?
I'll likely go back to local files over streaming. I can buy albums from indie and local folk on Bandcamp to give them more money than they'd ever get from my streams and I usually just repeat the same albums any way. Could probably augment it with last.fm scrobbling to help with artist discovery, my main method has been finding a music map site and typing in an artist I wanted a similar vibe to.
Local files and Navidrome server.
Same! Navidrome is awesome!
I will never pay for music streaming again. Would rather just buy the music directly
I have a similar set up but use Gonic instead to keep it lightweight.
I'm one of the few YouTube Music users and have been fairly happy with it. Having experimented with Apple Music and Spotify, YouTube Music's algorithm seems to understand me best. I'm someone who prefers primarily listening to songs on my liked songs playlist with a few new songs here and there to break things up. I also often just listen to new songs I like on repeat for a while before I just add it to my usual listening rotation. Spotify and Apple Music would take that to mean I like every song from that artist so my recommendations would only be filled with them. YouTube doesn't and will mix that artists songs with other recommendations for me, which I prefer.
I'm also a big fan of the fact that you can add most YouTube videos to your liked songs playlist. I find this helpful because I often listen to a lot of video game soundtracks and there are many games where the soundtrack only exists as videos someone uploaded 10-15 years ago. For example, I'm a big fan of the original Forza Motorsport soundtrack by JunkieXL but it only exists as a YouTube video playlist.
I'm also a big YouTube watcher so the rather high price tag for YouTube Premium+Music is worth it to me.
Second for YT music. I feel like their algorithm gets my music taste more than apple music, and I had no interest in even trying spotify because of Joe Rogan.
Yeah, I use YouTube enough that the ad-free videos would've been worth it even without YouTube Music, but I do genuinely think their recommendations tend to be better. Plus, you can play YouTube videos with music like songs, which is handy for more obscure stuff where the album isn't on most streaming but is likely to have been uploaded as a YouTube video.
I briefly used Spotify back in 2019, but I've been largely ride-or-die for local media. I've got MP3s from 2005, they're backed up several ways, and as long as a solar flare doesn't hit us or whatever could cause a global EMP I'll be listening to them until I die. The only way I'd ever change is if a streaming service let you locally download the raw files, and not restricted/secure files.
I have a local library of music, organized using Picard. I sync it to my phone with rsync, where I play it back with VLC. For discovery beyond reading up on the musicians and labels I mostly use YouTube, which seems to have a good idea of what I like at this point. On the PC I use fzf for quick search in the library, which then launches Audacious.
I mostly listen to music release-by-release, but VLC ought to support most playlist formats.
Oh my God thank you for the Picard rec!! I was fighting Lidarr yesterday trying to make it tag according to MusicBrainz and it has some problems (admittedly some of these problems are on my files, turns out rips from over 20yrs ago aren't labeled the best, whoda thunk it). This is exactly what I needed. I've actually already found a release I have that MusicBrainz doesn't.
The only problem I ever have with Picard is that the MusicBrainz database doesn’t always have the info for some of the less common albums I buy. Especially when it comes to recordings of musical soundtracks. I actually had to submit my own info for Sondheim’s Old Friends. You’d think it would be there because it’s Sondheim and has a ton of famous people on it, but I guess it hasn’t really made it big - or at least international, since I think the performance I was watching was the first run in the US.
Yes, it's frequently a problem with fresh or obscure stuff I buy on Bandcamp, though those are usually tagged well enough that I can still use Picard just to organize them into the directory structure I've set up without re-tagging anything.
I grew up in the late 90's early 00's so I am quite used to having my own media library stored locally and I have a large amount of media that I have acquired over 30-ish years of collecting. As such I use Plex, I can stream it from my home server anywhere and I can queue up to 40 songs at a time in case I lose connection temporarily. All of my stuff is stored locally (my home network). So access can never be taken from me by some greedy suit who thinks they need another gold plated humvee. That also means if I wish I can just load the music or video files directly on my phone or laptop as well if I choose because I have direct access to the storage.
I never understood why anyone would agree to recurring payments for something that used to be free or a one time payment and I refuse to even consider it now despite everyone's insistence that things like spotify are more convenient or you can discover new artists and so on blah blah. Handing over control to someone who only cares that "line go up" is never a good idea.
For $17/month (less since bundled with Apple One), everyone in my family can access whatever songs they want from wherever they want. Cost-wise, it roughly breaks even with acquiring songs legally, but now I don't have to worry about CarPlay integration or punching a hole in my network.
i use deezer and spotify. i prefer spotify for discovery and the generated playlists, but the quality on deezer is proper lossless. transferring playlists is a breeze, too. really, you could have spotify make playlists and then sync them over automatically. win win.
tidal is the first of everything. they’re moving away from their folding, but i don’t trust them. their discover is terrible, too.
I moved to Tidal after the Rogan deal and haven't had any issues with discovery or library breadth.
I'm not sure what you meant by folding and why you don't trust them.
i think they’re fixing it, but Tidal claimed to be lossless from the get-go, but all of the MQA stuff was actually lossy. plenty has been written about it, the highest non-MQA was actually lossless, i believe.
Ok, I didn't realize the issues with their compression. I never subscribed to their lossless tier anyway as my main goal was escaping Spotify, so they've served me well in that sense.
I keep all my music on my server, which is backed up. Then also "backed up" via my phone on an SD Card, so I can play anything I have locally off that.
I buy a vast majority of my music on Bandcamp, some on Amazon, which is usually DRM-Free.
I’m still on a three month trial of Apple Music. Honestly, I kind of think it’s meh. It’s not a bad service, but I really don’t think it’s worth paying for. I don’t care about the latest music. And in all honesty the music I am most interested isn’t on it.
Local is king. And if you have more music than can fit in your device (lack of microSD in modern phones is a real tragedy), then rent online storage of some sort.
I buy CDs or FLAC online and run Jellyfin and OpenVPN on public IP. That way I own my collection and I can stream it over the intetnet.
For streaming, Apple Music is a good alternative.
Of course, nothing really beats supporting artists directly by buying albums on Bandcamp and Qobuz, but that isn't a great way to discover new music.
In terms of raw value, YouTube Music is hard to beat simply because it comes bundled with YouTube Premium.
I’ll add a few bonuses for Apple Music.
I use the Android app on my HiBy R4 (an Android-powered digital audio player) and it's great. It even properly supports hi-res playback.
Android app works just fine, pretty much indistinguishable from the iOS one.
Also worth noting: If you're on Windows or Linux, Cider is an independent app that runs Apple Music on those platforms. I subscribe to Apple Music because I think it's the best music streaming service, but I don't have a Mac so I use the Android app on my phone and Cider on my Linux PC.
Cider is free but has a "supporter version" with a one-time payment that gets early access to updates and new release versions--which means any bugs or feature requests get pushed out faster, and I have found it to be worth it. It's only $3.50 on itch.io which I recommend even if you're on Windows, as the Microsoft Store version always seems to lag on updates and I've always found it to be oddly unstable in general.
I do pay for Apple Music, but I also use and recommend (at least as a stopgap until you decide what you want to do) Spotube. It's a FOSS Spotify client available for every platform that uses your existing login and settings/playlists, but pulls music from the YouTube API for audio. As such, it's technically legal as I understand it, for now.
I will warn you that it can be a little janky. But it does work, and since recent updates have improved the stability a lot, I find myself using it more often to the point that I will probably cancel Apple Music. If you want a paid solution, Apple Music IMO is the best of the bunch between audio quality, song availability, artist payments, and algorithmic recommendations. I think it's a great service. But its cost keeps going up, I'm now paying over $35/mo for my Apple One scrip and I barely use any of it.
Spotube is "good enough" if you want to avoid paying for a streaming service and don't want to mess with local files. Be prepared for a occasional instability, but it's trivial to deal with. Personally, I don't have a huge ethical problem with it as the artist payments are so low in streaming anyway that you're better off supporting your faves via ticket and merch purchases, which I do, often--this month I've tickets to two shows for bands that I discovered via the Spotify algorithm while using Spotube, and I will almost certainly buy merch, so I think this is a fair tradeoff.
Local files with Lyrion (previously named LMS) on my home server:
I use plex on my NAS for music streaming. I've looked at other setups, but plex simply provides the best-looking UI for playing music on mobile (plexamp), and that's important for me.
Though I admit I don't use too many features. I pretty much exclusively listen to music album-by-album, so I don't have experience with playlists and the like in plexamp.
Playlists is one of the highlights for Plexamp for me, if not for the simple fact that it adds a button to add to your last added playlist. Makes things so much easier on mobile than most other players I've used where creating playlists is more of a chore.
The artist radio works pretty well, though most of my library is metal so of course I'll enjoy it all. I did try the AI DJs or whatever and they were hit or miss. Some weird recommendations like Taylor Swift in the "aggressive" mood AI playlist. To be fair, I was using the default settings (not sure if that is a local very light model doing the work or it goes to Plex servers) without any API access for advanced recommendations.
Overall a solid second from me for Plex and Plexamp. It's also free now (used to be paywalled behind PlexPass) and agree that it's also a very solid player (though why won't you respect my hardware media keys!!).
Does anyone have information on what Play Integrity attestation level is currently required? If it's BASIC or DEVICE, there are likely to be workarounds for rooted devices by mounting over the original app.
I'm using GrapheneOS and a fresh install of Spotify from the Play Store is working with no problems. Graphene only passes BASIC, and I didn't receive a notification about Spotify using the Play Integrity API. So it seems that part of the article is bunk or they're not enforcing it on all users yet.
It's unlikely they'd require STRONG, since it requires Android 11 or later and Spotify still claims to support Android 7
This might be relevant to people who are using this but perhaps end up being unable to use it after Spotify blocks them.
Before I was using the modded Spotify, I was using privacy.com and signing up for Pandora free trials. I was doing family trials and then adding my original account onto the family plan to try to keep my songs and what not, and it worked initially then towards the end I was having issues, not sure if I screwed something up or what. I'd make new accounts on Pandora by doing
myemail+march2025@gmail.comin there, and then in 2 or 3 months I'd domyemail+may2025@gmail.comand so on. There was one time where their system glitched somehow and I had the free trial for over a year. That has actually happened to me on another service too when I used privacy.com, I set the card limit to $1 total and then when the trial ended for NBA League Pass (which is something close to $200 for a whole season), the charge failed to go through as expected but the service did not end until the end of the season. Then privacy.com apparently has a blocklist where they eventually block you from using their temp cards for certain services, so I could no longer use it on NBA League Pass (I'm assuming that NBA threatens them with legal action or something).I'll admit, it's not a strategy for everyone because there's a bit of nuisance management, but just figured I'd mention it for anyone who ends up in a situation where they don't know what they want to do.
They might also be ass-covering themselves without NBA ever getting in touch, because what you described sounded somewhere between piracy and fraud. (Note that these words might come with implicit judgement, but I am in no way shedding tears for NBAs bottom line. I’m generally in favour of piracy, maybe a little iffy on fraud myself, but you do you)
It's probably a violation of their 1000 page Terms of Service but I don't know that it's piracy or fraud. The card information provided to them is valid, it doesn't matter what name I give them. I don't give my real name when creating an account on most sites but even if I did it wouldn't materially impact their ability to detect or block the accounts. The name also wouldn't materially impact their ability to identify me as the person behind the account, because they don't ask for social security or any unique identifying information so I could be one of hundreds or thousands of people with the same first and last name. Beyond that I don't know what laws would actually be broken.
Without actually going to research what the NBA pass is, exactly, and without knowing the details, I’m definitely speculating. But it sounds like the trial is intended as a one-trial-per-person kind of thing, and they have some inadequate technical requirements to try to vaguely enforce that, and then you’ve found a way to circumvent their inadequate technical limitations.
Putting the inadequacy of their technical barriers aside, if the intention (however poorly implemented) is for one-per-person and you’ve found a way around that, and you’re deriving financial gain[1], then that kinda sounds close to fraud to me, who is not a lawyer at all.
[1]: (in the sense that you access for free to a service that’s usually paid for, and you’re demonstrating it has at least marginal value as indicated by the effort you’re going to)
Sounds like a similar situation to adblocking at that point. Their intention is that the person visiting the site is viewing the ads, and adblocking is finding a way around that and deriving financial gain without 'paying'.