What's a good alternative to spotify

Quantum

2days Not sure if it's allowed to post those types of links here, but it's websites that rip it from the streaming services. So I'd rip from sites that offer FLAC.

Quantum

There should be a subreddit for ripping with a link to a collection of links to sites that do different things depending on your needs

DeletedUser499

I also left Spotify, months ago. I have a catalogue of mp3's on external ssd storage, that I transfer to my phone and use on an ad hoc basis

2days

I'll look into this. I mean there are many new or non mainstream music I enjoy so it may be very hard to find some new stuff or unusual stuff

Are there any decent streaming services that are less invasive than Spotify or is it only really worth going the route you all mention?

Quantum

2days fmhy.net/audio#audio-downloading

If you scroll down you can see ripping sites

krysor

For Podcasts, AntennaPod is imho best option and it's FOSS.

For music I've used RiMusic (available on Accrescent) but the development stopped and the last time I checked it wasn't working more often than not.

What you definitely SHOULDN'T do is trying to find a way to buy the Spotify subscription in another country using a VPN, potentially using a website like Gameseal.

thure

I mostly use VLC with a local library on my phone. This way, I always have access to my music and I don't have to share my listening habits. It also makes things easier since I listen to a lot of bootlegs that aren't accessible through streaming anyway.

As for streaming alternatives, there are Tidal and Qobuz. I've tried both apps: Tidal is terrible, but Qobuz works well and is slightly more expensive. Both offer significantly better sound quality than Spotify. I don't use audiobooks, so I can't say anything about them.

For podcasts, I agree with AntennaPod. It's a great app that just works perfectly and is easy to use.

schweizer

thure Tidal is terrible, but Qobuz works well and is slightly more expensive. Both offer significantly better sound quality than Spotify.

Really? I never had the impression Spotify was bad in terms ouf sound quality. But now they have FLAC too. So there shoudn't be a difference.

Spotify is nice for Spotify connect and the jamming mode.

LeslieFH

I use Shuttle player with local files for music and Podcast Addict for podcasts. When I did the research, Tidal seemed the best for music quality and actual payments to the musicians, if you prefer streaming instead. :-)

spl4tt

I'm using tidal through roon. Works quite nicely.
spotify still has the best recommendations for my music taste tho. I hope roon will get better with time

paprikatongue

In all transparency I haven't tried them yet, but you might want to check out the Accrescent appstore. They've got a couple relevant apps like RiMusic and Auxio. Like I said, I haven't used them but I've had good luck with everything else I've downloaded from Accrescent

W1zardK1ng

2days if you want a free alternative try SimpMusic, its works well but sometimes yt music break things.
Or Apple Music is a good choice for high quality music.

2days

W1zardK1ng wouldn't apple music be privacy invasive similar to spotify?

W1zardK1ng

2days its just better than spoify. You can either read both of them or ask any ai tool to compare both.

elbert

schweizer Really? I never had the impression Spotify was bad in terms ouf sound quality. But now they have FLAC too. So there shoudn't be a difference.

According to their website, Spotify offers a maximum sound quality of 24-bit/44.1kHz, whereas Qobuz claims up to 24-bit/192kHz. Whether or not that's actually noticable (especially with the sound processor of a smartphone) is another story, but at least on paper, Qobuz still has better audio quality.

thure

schweizer

I sometimes had the impression that some songs sounded less rich on Spotify. But I didn't get the news that Spotify offered lossless audio as well, so that argument isn't valid anymore.

DeletedUser495

elbert there a few human ears that can process sounds upward of 20kHz, especially older.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearing_range
By the way media streaming is not particularly environment friendly and eats up to 80% of all internet traffic.

goskm75f

OuterTune

elbert

DeletedUser495 You're confusing two different things here: I was talking about the sample rate, while the article you linked is about the frequency of the sound wave. Just because they're both measured in Hertz they're not the same. Hertz just means "x per second" where x can be literally anything periodic (like heartbeats, CPU ticks, or oscillations of a wave). The sample rate refers to how many times per second the audio wave is captured digitally (called "sampled"). The frequency of a sound wave refers to how many times a sound wave oscillates per second (determines the pitch of the sound).

Basically, the sample rate has to be at least twice the audio frequency you want to record in order to be able to fully capture the wave (see Nyquist-Shannon theorem). Therefore 44.1 kHz and 48 kHz are two commonly used sample rates (as that's roughly twice the upper limit of human hearing mentioned by you). As far as I understand even higher sample rates are mainly useful for editing so you still have enough quality even after applying many effects (note I'm not an audio engineer so take this last part with a grain of salt).

Nettishrin99

I also saw app Metrolist mentioned somewhere for music. However, I don't understand why something like AntennaPod is universally mentioned and agreed as the best podcast app, yet there are no music streaming equivalent?

Even something like NewPipe or Grayjay are strong alternatives for YouTube. However, music streaming alternatives or more private front-ends are scarce and the apps come and go.

W1zardK1ng

Nettishrin99 there are hell lot of private music streaming apps.
Innertune, outertune, opentune, spotube, simp music, bloome, vivi, kreate.......
But just like NewPipe sometimes it stops working because Google changes something in the background because they provide it for free which is usually a paid service.
I used to use innertune then switched to outertune once it stopped working now im on simpmusic.
The beauty is you have the option to choose the app which you like most based on ui and features.
Don't wait for someone else's suggestions, try it yourself. I use F-Droid to discover new apps but just use obatinium to install them from their source.

n3t_admin

DeletedUser495 what kind of answer is that? It was a friendly explanation (and a correct one at that). No need to be so rude.

elbert Sorry if my wording came across as arrogant, that was not my intention.

Trust me, it wasnt.

W1zardK1ng there are hell lot of private music streaming apps.

Problem is, they all (most?) piggyback off of YouTube Music. If you don't like any aspect of that (and the still potential tracking that is going to be present from your listening activity), you're SOL. There is no truly private music streaming service that I am aware off, like you'd find with other services like VPNs.

Apple Music has been mentioned before and I also see that as one of the strongest contenders to Spotify, in terms of features, catalogue size and audio quality.
In the end, you'd have to compare privacy policies of all of the services and decide which one is the least malicious, which is not even close to being optimal, if you ask me.

Nettishrin99

The biggest issue for me is the lack of consensus of these apps across a longer timeframe. Some apps I used did break or stopped being actively developed (like RiMusic) and then it's another cycle of research and testing until next breakage. Older threads on Reddit are full of suggestions that are no longer working.
The other root issue is because they can break or become abandoned, it's difficult to export/import all playlists, collections and favourites each time.
Say if I use Metrolist now and in 10months it becomes abandoned, I'll have to move but I don't think they offer suitable export format and it's likely that the new app of choice will not allow their format to be imported.

For something like AntennaPod, there is a lot of confidence that they will be around and worst case scenario, I can at least export my podcast list to another app - it may not contain favourites, archived or played podcasts but the main data will be there. Same for Grayjay or Invidious, you can expect them to keep being around and, if needed, to transfer data over without too much hassle.

Please educate me if I am wrong, but this was my experience. I struggle to find reliable and resilient service and app that can allow easy means of data import and export. I'd gladly pay for these benefits. I do keep my Deezer subscription for now because some times you just want to listen to music and not spend time tinkering around settings or forum issue trackers. I also would like to keep my favourites, at least.

Once I find a (private) alternative, I'd gladly transfer the fees to that service, I am still trying to find a reliable, functional alternative that can support required export import formats. Especially if I could recommend the service to my friends.

To add, I spent couple hours last week trying to export Deezer music data (I know, it's Deezer locking in their users) but eventually did it via suggested websites. Tried to import to Metrolist and it keeps crashing, their forum page has similar reports but I don't think it's resolved. Tested another import with 30songs and it worked; tried to edit main file to make it smaller, Metrolist can't accept the edited csf file etc. I may persevere and keep trying to import the favourites list (_1k songs) but then I don't see that their export option can be imported to other apps.

W1zardK1ng

Nettishrin99 oh man thats a big issue. Most of these open source apps are made by hobbyists and they won't make any money from it. Once they can't afford to spend time on it the apps goes unmaintained. That's why its important to donate to these cool devs.
I would still recommend apple music over Spotify if you just want something that works always and don't want to spend time testing things and as always you can download songs and keep locally. There are websites that allow you to download songs as flac files.