It's Not Just You: Music Streaming Is Broken Now

A long time ago, you could go to a special store and trade government paper for music disks and tape that you got to keep forever.

Well hey old man, go to bandcamp and pay a quarter or an eighth of the price of that frisbee to get lossless audio files that you can download and backup to your heart's content.
Spotify was always for chumps.
- Alright, I got an eighth. How do I trade it for music?
- This one time at band camp...
I remember that time and it was kind of awful. It was brutal in terms of packaging, and lugging around all those cds sucked. It was way more expensive and the money still all went to record companies, not to mention how terrible it felt to pay full price for a mostly garbage cd just for one song (singles existed though but not for everything).
Records companies also had final say on who we listened too and completely controlled the whole scene essentially.
I get the nostalgia but it was 100% worse both for artists and consumers. Well it has always been rough for artists tbh, I don't know if it's harder right now or not.
- The contracts that steal music from artists haven't changed one iota. Unless you've got juice like Paul McCarty, Beyonce, or Taylor Swift, and even then it can be a fight that takes years.
- They want fuckin 40 bucks for a vinyl these days and they don't even throw in a digital download for that price, and the radio is owned by like three companies unless you live near a college station.
When I discovered that it was possible to buy and download drm free lossless flac-files i went back to buying music again. Never looked back tbh.
- Where do you buy them from?
- honestly, most of my CDs have been used once: Put in a PC and ripped (to 96kbps MP3s, of course!)
- I'm starting (a little late) to build my music library this way too. I self host jellyfin , for which there are some nice music players. But, I still have my Spotify account currently while I gradually build my personal library. I'll admit tho, I will miss the algorithm and artist suggestions
- Same but I have a huge collection of digital media.
- I find it funny that I have those examples in my "huge library of physical media."

What in the tech world isn't broken? Besides older consoles and computers disconnected from the internet.

My GOG games aren't, my Steam library's still chugging along after 11 years, my Linux installs haven't failed or started spying on me and my offline, modular 3d printer still works.
It's all about understanding what you're using/buying and what's the incentives for those on the other end. We shouldn't have to think about that all the time, but on the bright side there are cool things happening outside of enshittification by publicly traded corpos.
Also VLC is free and is one of the best media players there is, and yt-dlp is so easy to acquire music with I'm surprised people thought spotify was a good long term idea for their music consumption.
- steam will go to shit soon as we lose gaben
- Steam will do a rug pull one day. You purchase a license to their games, you do not own them.
My Internet-connected Linux computers are pretty fucking rad.

Eh, I switched back to running my own server like five years ago. Sure, technically I'm not giving individual artists their $0.0005 a stream, but nowadays I discover more music, attend more shows, and buy more merch.

During the couple of years I spent streaming, I discovered like Alvvays and Yumi Zouma. Nowadays, I discover new bands monthly if not weekly.

Like AI, streaming recommendation engines are mediocrity machines. All they can do is find you things that sound like the things you already listen to. Sometimes, if you're adventurous, you find things you love that sound unlike anything else you listen to. If you find a great thing like that, it can change you. Unlike recommendation engine music, which will try to keep you the same forever.

What's your discovery means now? How do you get exposed to things not currently in your wheelhouse? And once you find that thing, how do you integrate that into your library for listening on an often enough basis?
I find that I binge explore, grab 12 new artists like an old mix CD and see what sticks, but then feel like a hoarder when it sits unplayed in my library for a year.
- I use https://www.albumoftheyear.org/ and I subscribe to pitchfork and the rolling stone in my RSS feed.
  I also Shazam when I'm out and hear something I like.
- Not who you asked, but I can tell you where I'm at with that. My primary listening is on an mp3 player, and I also use a home server for listening on speakers/tv. Switching to a separate device used only for music has made my listening far more deliberate. When I pick up the player, I'm making a point to listen to music, not just have it on in the background like I used to. It's also a pain in the ass (comparitively) to make playlists on it (I purposely chose a scroll-wheel style and no touch screen) so I'm listening to a lot of full albums now, which I never really did before, exposing me to a lot more than I used to since I don't just throw the song or two I like on a playlist and leave the rest.
  There's been an interesting side effect that I didn't expect: Being more deliberate with my listening has sharpened my ear to music, I hear music in movies and shows in a way I never used to, I'm beginning to recognize voices and band styles by ear, I actually focus on music now instead of it just being part of the background. As such, I find a lot of new music these days by looking up songs from movies and tv. For example, the most recent:
  I completely devoured the Sinners soundtrack. (Ludwig Göransson is a fave and I've always been a fan of Buddy Guy)
  Watching Dope Thief, I realized I never skipped the intro. Got me hooked on Little Simz
  James Gunn has some great taste. Beyond season 1 of Peacemaker, Season 2 has already got me absolutely loving Foxy Shazam, and after the latest ep I've been getting into Hardcore Superstar.
  Strangely enough, Rick and Morty has some bangers in the later seasons, and got me listening to stuff I never would have like Kishi Bashi.
  Additionally, there's the news. I've been listening to Bob Vylan and Kneecap, and only heard of them because they stood up to support Palestinians.
  Not only has my listening become more deliberate, but my sourcing of new music has as well. No longer relying on an algorithm to do the work for me has allowed me to hone a new skill and learn how to find new music myself.
- can't speak for OP but for me, surprisingly, youtube shorts. Once that damn thing gets your algo figured out for you suddenly you can start finding bands that are in your wheelhouse. Start by looking for shorts on your current favourite bands and eventually new stuff will start popping up that should be similar to your taste.
  Honestly for all the crap that's on youtube, shorts has been one of if not the best tool for me to find new music/bands. Once I find something I like then it's off to SoulSeek/Nicotine+ to add it to my server.

I love seeing this. As someone who has kept his own library of music since 2004 and went through the peak of local libraries to it almost being dead after like 2012, this is a day I never saw coming! When it started declining, home hosting solutions were already sparse, but then some more threw in the towel as well. Right now, I use Navidrome as my server and Symfonium for the app and has been an incredible 2 years using it. If people start coming back, I feel like it will only drive more creativity and new features as it will be worked on more than it is.

I also use Symfonium, it is just awesome
- Yeah! I've been using it since the first month, and it has been released and has come a long way in only 2 years. Funny enough, I used to use his other app, Yatse, way back in like 2010 for a while, and I also have nothing but high praise for it as well. It was a remote control app for Kodi, and the things he added to it were impressive. Who knew you needed tons of features in a remote control app!
Navidrome + ListenBrainz + Bandcamp (and a little Soulseek) = unshittification

Sorry, I can't hear it over the sound of all these downloaded MP3s I still keep around

Nah bro, device storage is cheap nowadays. CD readers/burners to USB are also cheap. Just buy music and put it on your device of choice.

You can also just buy digital downloads from sites like Bandcamp and Quobuz, and even iTunes if you click past the Apple Music streaming part.
Why would you not stream that to yourself? No need to buy additional hardware to get in the way.
- I mean most phones have +64gb of memory, no? With that space I can have hundreds of songs that I can listen at any time without having internet connection or not. Why would I stream it to my self (which requires internet connection) if I can just have it in my phone or computer?
- Because there is no need to send music over the internet when you can just save it locally and have it everywhere and always with you.

That's typically the kind of videos I will never watch. The thumbnail is ridiculous (as per YouTube's guidelines), the title is vague and clickbait. For those who did, what made you click?

PS: thanks OP for adding details

I refuse to use YouTube without sponsorblock and dearrow. I use Firefox on android with extensions and make a YouTube PWA because thumbnails in the official app are ridiculous.
Even good channels like Veritasium have completely irrelevant titles make me skip videos I would've watched
I clicked on it because I knew a lot of things with Spotify are broken and I am interested in it. I have a lot of friends on there and I like having good arguments against it. Also I just like this channel and my mood did very much fit the "we're fucked" part of the title 😅

Fuck streaming. I've had my local mp3s for decades.

Damn, I'm jealous, I just started collecting.
- I ripped 100s of CDs back at least 2004.
Same. I’ve got most of my downloads on my phone with VLC to play them
- If you can get Poweramp player I highly recommend.
  Great custom options like: crossfade control, replay gain... so many options.

As much as I know Spotify isn't great for artists, I do find it to be the best streaming option for how I enjoy music. Next to Winamp of course.

Unfortunately, Spotify's streaming quality is rather low, even if you pay for a monthly subscription.
I switched to Tidal when I bought a dedicated DAC and a pair of very highend headphones and have not regretted it - you can hear the difference on good gear.
- I listen to punk music recorded on crappy gear, so I prefer not to hear it hi-fi.
- Yeah but Spotify does now offer 24-bit/44.1 kHz FLAC as their highest now, which is fine for most any system. And they have 30+ million more songs. Using both is probably the best option in many ways, but for my tastes Spotify hasn't been beat. I can find things on Spotify I can get on other platforms and that's important to me.
It really whips the llamas ass.
- You are goddamn right it does.

You need ID to for adult sites like discord or twitter but you did a cover with Drake? We trust you...

Do you want to buy bread? Show me your ID! I don't get it, why isn't your ID on your body like other people? You're an outlaw!!!
- Why come you don't have a tattoo?

Just use nicotine(the soulseek client), and you will have 0 problems. If you want to support the artist, purchase their stuff on platforms made for that, get the .flac

Noob question, should I use a VPN for Soulseek?
- It's peer to peer so it depends on what you're concerned about. It shouldn't raise any flags with your ISP I wouldn't think

My server says streaming is working great. My radio station list says streaming is working great. SomaFM is working great, and the archive fills the rest.

I just think we should all go back to physical media CDs for music and blu ray for films is what I am currently doing

Last year I put my music collection on an SD card and slapped it into a hifiman walker mp3 player. I quickly discovered that having a device solely for music has made my listening much more deliberate, and I've listened to more music more often than I ever have because of it. I even plug it in my car instead of using bluetooth
physical media CDs for music
My understanding is that the streaming services basically ended the loudness war by imposing ReplayGain-style volume normalization. I'm not sure that I want to restart it.
- That's true, from a certain point of view. What they actually did was give everyone a common target. We still get everything compressed and limited into a flat line, just now we don't have to adjust the volume on our stereo between songs.

I really want to get a https://www.crowdsupply.com/cool-tech-zone/tangara at some point.

Although I have an old ipod with a new battery and linux installed...so theres no real need.

Did he ever go over bandcamp? Most of the indie music that is local at least has something on there.

This is from the artist's pov, and touches on specific scenarios, but generally speaking this and other things make every Spotify user's experience worse.

And what I hate most is that they don't even understand what I'm talking about. That they're being duped, and that I have more freedom in choosing and discovering music than them.

So many people think solely in genres nowadays, not individual artists. And they don't even care if more and more generic or AI generated stuff finds its way into their playlists. They "adapt". After all, they only put stuff they like into their playlists, right? But unknowingly, gently, they keep getting pulled towards a trodden path and if this goes on long enough we'll have like 10 genres to choose from and that's it. No individual artists anymore, no experimentation, no challenging your listening habits etc.

edit: it seems my general anti-streaming-service-rant partly contradicts this video, or misses its topic by half a mile, but then again maybe not? Shit's complex.

But unknowingly, gently, they keep getting pulled towards a trodden path and if this goes on long enough we'll have like 10 genres to choose from and that's it.
Usually when people think in genres instead of artists, genres get more granular, so we end up with hundreds of more new words that describe minute differences. Like, look at EDM, a genre that has never really cared about individual artists. They'll consider a 5BPM difference to be a different genre.
Given all the different "microgenres" that are popping up now, usually by younger artists, I think that tracks with music today.