I would like to switch away from Apple Music, and Spotify despite being a European company, is not a desirable option for me. What music streaming services would you recommend?
I managed to download a text-only list of the albums in my Apple Music library, so if there's a simple library import option then that would also be very helpful.
If you are technically inclined: self host Jellyfin, use one of the various music streaming apps for it. Put the money you would have paid for x years of subscription into buying the albums.
Ideally not much more than I currently pay (€10.99/mo).
I'm not sure what risks you're referring to, but I'm not going to download linkin_park.mp3.exe from Limewire if that's what you mean.
I have about 1000 albums in my library and I mostly just play my entire library on shuffle. I don't want "mood" or "genre" playlists when listening, but I do like recommendation systems that just tell me what artists are similar to the ones I'm listening to (without auto-playing them).
If you're okay doing a little bit of legwork:
Whatbox.ca as a remote service that you can upload (or download torrents) directly to it. I think they're Canadian but I'm not 100% - just has a lot of good guides to get you up and running.
I'm a fan of Plex, but they are an American company and they continue to enshitify with their policies - I bought a lifetime pass a long time ago because I really enjoyed their music player plexamp.
Jellyfin is the free and open source option, but I don't think you'll get some of the nice features like music analysis and a library radio that tries to pull things together in a somewhat comprehensive way.
This is my music solution. If you're listening at lossless and only have 1000 albums their smallest option is 2tb(€14/mo) server slot which would likely be hosted in NL.
RE: risk tolerance if you've got the know how you can set this up on a locally hosted server using Jellyfin and torrent directly to it. Advantage of a seedbox is the transfer of risk.
pirate for offline storage, and use what you'd pay for the subscription to buy an album on Bandcamp if you really like it. you get to keep your music forever, and your favourite artists get to eat.
To be clear, music streaming companies don't actually award any money on a per-stream basis - license holders get a fraction of the sum of subscription- and ad-revenue proportional to the share of total streams that happened on that music streaming service.
Since these companies all have fairly similar pricing, it's mostly just a matter of the amount of consumption that happens on each platform.
That one streaming service would be better than the other with regards to paying license holders is largely a myth. If you think music streaming is unfair to artists, you might want to just hand them money instead.