So, imagine I’m using any sort of streaming server. Is there ANY of them that have the ability to suggest new stuff, which is the number 1 and only reason I still use Spotify?
If anyone could answer this including the setup they have to run it, that would be awesome.
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It’s quite unlikely that a self-hosted music streaming server could give you suggestions of music not in your library without an external service. But there might be some alternatives to Spotify that can address some of the economic injustices in music streaming, just like self-hosted and free/libre/open-source software can address some injustices that damage user privacy and data sovereignty in centralized services.
While not strictly about streaming, I find Bandcamp quite nice for discovering new music. As a bonus, bands receive much more money if you purchase their music than what they’d get when streamed on a service like Spotify. (Note that, in aggregate, a band may nevertheless earn more from mainstream platforms if they are streamed a lot but listeners aren’t willing to purchase. Be sure to buy music that you like if you have the means to do so! Not only it helps bands to create more awesome music, you can also listen to downloaded digital files after the demise of centralized streaming platforms.)
Worryingly, Epic Games purchased Bandcamp last year. However, the fate of the platform looks at least somewhat safe, since its workers recently managed to unionize despite initial union-busting by corporate.
Another laternative would be Resonate, which is run as a co-op and has a novel approach to music purchases and paying bands. However, their collection can currently be a bit sparse, depending on which genres you’re interested in.
Bandcamp are also one of the few that sell lossless FLAC files, and while I don’t really care about listening to FLAC directly, it makes sense as an archive format.
@erisir @maikelthedev I missed that Bandcamp got purchased. That is kind of worrying.
Although everything I’ve bought off bandcamp is safe in my own library, I would be sad to see it disappear as a good source of music.
It’s unusual in that its good both to artists (transparent artist compensation) and listeners (downloadable drm-free music files in multiple formats, minimal js on the website, no bs, just music).
It’s been ~1 year since the purchase, I hope the same bandcamp is here in 5 years
Plex does alright at suggesting music from your own library, and also has some really nice DJ-like song transitions that are legitimately way better than any other track fades. However, Plex users have been frustrated with the company’s slow response to fixing long-standing bugs, and some of the features are paid. It’s also not open-source.
No idea if it can suggest music that isn’t in your library; I know that they integrate with Tidal though, so maybe if you have that it’ll also suggest stuff from Tidal?
Ditch Plex and get Jellyfin. Use Symfonium to play your music on your phone.
I’ve used Plex, Jellyfin, and Navidrome. I’m currently using Navidrome, but Plexamp is a massively better product for discovering/interacting with your library. The sonic analysis really takes it to another level.
There isn’t really anything like Spotify. There were attempts to use a service like Last.fm (which isn’t self hosted) or libre.fm (which is self hosted but development has been stopped) to track your listening data. Then there were a couple discovery projects that worked with Navidrome (don’t really remember the name but they’re probably somewhere in r/selfhosted) but they haven’t been very succesful.
Even if you somehow managed to solve those problems you’ve got the next problem which is the fact that you don’t have the recommended song available in your library. Perhaps it could be solved wit Lidarr.
Personally I think Spotify is worth $10 a month.
Personally I think Spotify is worth $10 a month.
While I agree that there aren’t any great self-hosted solutions, more diversity in the music space is important. I refuse to use Spotify, and for me it’s not about price. In fact, if they charged more and actually paid their artists more I would probably hate it less. But overall I mostly refuse to use it for other reasons:
It couples the company that delivers your music with the app you must use to stream your music. In my opinion these should be separate - perhaps an open protocol that streaming companies can all use and open source clients that can connect to one or many of them?
Spotify made it clear that they don’t care about Linux users when they killed their Linux client. Yes I know about librespot, it’s only a trivial decision away from Spotify killing it. And unlike Reddit’s API changes, the backlash would be minimal since most people use the official one.
It strongly relies on network effects to get everyone on the platform and keep them there. As mentioned above, this hurts independent artists because they are forced to publish their music on a platform that doesn’t pay well just because everyone is on that platform. But there are more than just network effects between artists and consumers: Spotify relies on social-network style antipatterns to keep users in their ecosystem. I’ve been told by my friends that I am “difficult” because I don’t use Spotify and they want to share something with me. That is Spotify’s manipulation
Their official client is electron, I don’t want to have to run a whole browser stack to listen to music. Not to mention the fact that npm is plagued with supply chain problems and unless the Spotify devs manually audit every dependency of every dependency of every dependency any time they add or update one (doubt it), users are one attack away from being compromised.
When I did briefly use Spotify many years ago I took the time to build up some playlists of music and randomly songs would disappear from the playlists when Spotify lost rights to stream it.
I personally use Bandcamp for recommendations/discovery, and then purchase music I like to listen to and self-host it with MPD. It works great.
I’m not saying this is for everyone, obviously streaming has its merits. But in my experience most people self host not because something costs money, but because they have zero control of the actual experience, and they want to avoid the vendor lock-in issue.
