I have never been a fan of streaming services, especially music streaming services. They never made sense to me.
Why should i have to pay for a "service" that can take away my music from my library at any moment, requires me to be constantly connected
to the internet, lose licenses to albums, never has what i actually want available to because it is too obscure, and on
TOP OF ALL OF THAT, pay their artists absolutely nothing?
I live in a country that consists of 90% mountains. Any bus travel or car travel will have shoddy internet that makes
the music unlistenable. And you expect me to pay 8 dollars a month for this experience? No thanks. Locally stored music is the way. Nothing else makes sense.
However, you are too used and familiar to what is convenient. Music streaming serviced were once ok for the majority of people.
However, as with many things, they have fallen pray to enshittification, and the common man is too much of a coward to dare have standards
enough to switch to something else. That would mean that you are slightly inconvenienced. And nothing is worse in life than being slightly
inconvenienced. I can already hear it, "but they aren't doing anything wrong! They are just doing their own thing!"
It truly is sad to see how "just doing something" has become passable for people. They are DOING a BAD JOB. Have
some standards and demand something better.
But you are here. So therefore, i imagine you must be looking for alternatives being fed whatever some robot thinks you should like.
I hope that what i have here will be interesting for you to stop using these anti-consumer """""""""services"""""""""" and it inspires you to
explore and go beyond your comfort zone when discovering new music.
This is an amazing website and good starting point for you to jump in and reach your hand in a grabbag of music.
Here you will find a mile-long list of every genre that you could possibly dream of. Click on a genre, and you
will get a random song from this genre. Click the >> arrows and get a bunch of bands in this genre. It does not
get any easier than this.
One of the biggest music databases out there. Here you can search any album, any band, any label.. you are
guaranteed to find something of note here. They host interviews with artists and feature other people's reviews
on their front page. They also provide their own selection of music, and allow you to collect and review any music
that interests you.
Local radio
Yes thats right. Your local radio might have something that interests you. Radio is not only for boomers!
But why stop there? You can use websites like RadioGarden,
SomaFM, AccuRadio or
Radio Caprice and explore to your heart's content. Or just have it on
while you work. There are lot of genres to chose from here. I also have some other radio sites linked
on my main page under the music section. Shoutout Radio Palle.
Bandcamp has been around since 2008, and has a TON of independant artists new and old. You get a good sense
for discovering new music via this site. Artists are allowed to entirely customize their own webpage, sell
merch directly via bandcamp, and post like a blog. Bandcamp offers it's own app so you can stream
the music you purchased if you so desire, but you should download it instead. It offers you to download
the music in a ton of fire formats, including FLAC/ALAC. The best part is bandcamp labels. These sites are a treasuretrove
of good music.
MusicBrainz is one of the biggest muic encyclopedia's out there. It is a
HUGE source of music information and has a GIGANTIC library to chose from. A lot of services take
their information from MusicBrainz for this very reason. They also have music festivals and
other events in their database too, with really well documented info about the lineup. The best part
is that a huge part of their library is in the public domain, and can be downloaded for free.
Soulseek is one of the most popular peer 2 peer filesharing platforms where you can download and discover other people's
shared music libraries. Make sure that you select a folder of music to share of your own when using this software,
as this is good practice, and many won't let you download from them if you dont.
Mixtapes and compilations
People release mixes all the time, and it is great for music discovery. I personally love to listen to Café Del Mar's
chillout mixes, lounge mixes, and their compilation albums. I found tons of artists via this method. Using Rate Your Music
or MusicBrainz is great for this, because the artist's page lists every album they ever appeared on. Other people
make their own mixtapes as well. You can check out the playlist i got over on my
summer page.
A site that lets you generate playlists for music you love. Input a song name, and let the site make you a playlist of similar
music.
See what kind of music is currently trending in different countries, on different services. What album is
italy so obsessed over right now? is it good? Let's find out.
Methods for listening
Locally stored music.
Gentlemen, it's time to return to what once was. You can get a used android phone with 256 gigabytes of space, plus a micro sd
card holder which you can get an additional 256 gb card in. That alone is a lot of space for your music, and more!
if you have enough money to shill out then get a phone with a lot of storage in general. You can use it's native stock
music player to listen to your work, offline, anywhere, any time. For free. You can even go a step further and get a modern
MP3 player, like a walkman.
Local media players
If you have a lot of locally stored music on your phone or computer, use literally any music
player, but i recommend WinAmp. See also it's successor, WACUP.
Other really good media players are Foobar2000 and VLC.
VLC can play literally ANYTHING.
Jellyfin is a really good app for letting you stream your own locally stored music (and other things) and sync between
your own devices. Tired of all these streaming services? Make your own! With blackjack and hookers included. Another good
alternative to this is ibroadcast.
Cracked youtube apps
If you absolutely HAVE to use youtube on your phone or like listening to youtube music, stop using the main app and
suffer trough ads and no background play, when there are better alternatives out there that has been there since forever.
For android, use ReVanced. For iOS, there is YTLitePlus,
uYou, or YoutubePlus. (Find these in telegram.)
Resources
Big github thread full of music resources like alternative music clients, tools, streaming apps, phone apps,
audio tools and more. It does not get any easier than this. It's all right there for you to play around with.
A site that lets you know whenever an artist releases new music. You can just connect your music streaming account
and then you can import your artists. The site does the rest. For phones, check out
What i feel is an often overlooked art form is cover art. I have a whole wall of cover art which i personally love as a giant
moodboard. Using this site, you can search for almost any cover art you want, from the good people at Musichoarders. Has a
robust search engine with a lot of filter options.
See also: albumart.digital and artwork.thekvt
Are you REAAAALLY into music hoarding and metadata editing? Do you love spending hours of your time maticulously
organizing your music library to your exact specifications? are you a turbo music nerd? Then this is for you.
It features a cataloger, tag editor, cd ripper, audio converter, mp3 and flac analyzer,
duplicate finder, player and music scrobbler - all in one.
See also:
A complete guide
to quitting spotify - by bloodinthemachine
Spoty alternative webzine: "wrapped."You can print it too!
