Comment by nycdatasci
1 month ago
I'm probably missing something. Why self-host when for $10/mo. you can access a nearly unlimited catalog of music on Spotify with integration on phone, PC, car, Sonos, etc?
1 month ago
I'm probably missing something. Why self-host when for $10/mo. you can access a nearly unlimited catalog of music on Spotify with integration on phone, PC, car, Sonos, etc?
Because:
* You don't have any control, if some paperwork fucks up you can lose access (rarer with music but very common with video services)
* They don't have a lot of rare stuff, demos, EPs, singles, dubplates, etc.
* You can't choose which version of an album you want.
* If you run out of money for whatever reason you can't listen to music.
* Offline is unreliable.
* Screw having my taste and discovery defined by an algorithm
* Artists get fuck all money compared to buying stuff off of Bandcamp/buying CDs and ripping them, even if you still pirate a lot of stuff.
* They have questionable ethics as a company.
* No lossless.
* When you curate your own collection you develop in my opinion a deeper relationship with it.
I have to rent my home and most other stuff in life, music is one of the most important things in the world to me. I'm done with renting that.
You forgot disappearing music. Add a song to a playlist, switch countries (or who knows what), it becomes greyed out, or perhaps simply removed. Annoying.
Their tendency to add random music to my playlists is annoying. I think there's some control over it, but I'm too old to follow up on how it works this week.
I'm on the most expensive family plan they have, but would pay more to get those two fixed properly.
I do still buy music on albums and digitally, mostly as a backup exactly for the reasons you mention. But I can't afford to do that for everything I listen to.
Regarding your second paragraph talking about Spotify adding random songs... It's a feature I absolutely hate, but I believe what you might be referring to are "smart suggestions" and/or the "smart shuffle" features. They annoy the hell out of me but can be disabled.
For smart suggestions, I haven't seen them in a while, but there was a toggle for it.
For smart shuffle, just hit the shuffle button again to turn it off.
To add to this - as someone who is traveling a lot, multiple issues with it saying "Ohh you can't play in this country so I will just stop working" are annoying to say the least.
Dumped spotify and couldn't been happier.
Yeah crazy when you offline music on Apple Music and then you have no internet and it won’t play them because it needs internet to (I guess?) check the license still. Absolute joke.
Because a person might be willing:
-to directly support artists with buying the albums or songs at full price, rather than letting Spotify barely pay artists anything for their music (especially independent ones without industry connections)
-knowing you own your library and that once you’ve purchased media, there is nothing to take it away other than the sands of time taking back its silicate
-one does not need unlimited access to songs they will never hear, especially when natural discoverability on Spotify is so so versus trawling through sites like Bandcamp, Earmilk, RCRDLBL (I know it doesn’t exist anymore), or other places where new artists show their work in a way that Spotify doesn’t provide
> to directly support artists with buying the albums or songs at full price, rather than letting Spotify barely pay artists anything for their music (especially independent ones without industry connections)
You can't post an open source project on this site without half the thread speculating that you're a grifting sociopath. <1% are going to pay for music on here.
90% of statistics are made up
I am curious, with the way you are using “<1% are going to pay for music on here”, is that to be read as “no more than 1% are going to pay for music on here” or that “less than 1% are going to pay for music on here”?
Is your point that people aren’t willing to pay for things if they have a choice not to?
Or is it that independent artists should be grateful that people see their work at all and that “most” people will just think they are a grifting sociopath?
Not sure what your issue with my comment is, but I’m interested in what you meant, as I feel I’m missing context that only you have at the moment.
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It's renting vs. owning. I care a lot about music, so I don't like paying monthly for it without even getting to build a real collection.
Also, it's just nice to not be at the whims of corporations and copyright lawyers. It sucks when some song you love gets taken down, or your streaming app introduces some shitty UI changes, or you find out the company you're paying has been doing unethical shit, or the monthly fee goes up, or any number of other annoyances.
People are already self-hosting other things maybe, and you can self-host from a PC at home without needing to pay hosting.
The advantages are control over data, greater privacy, etc.
I home-selfhost Jellyfin, so I can access media (music, movies and series) from mobile, tablet or TV.
I can imagine a group of friends hosting on a common VPS, like some sort of private Netflix but nearly unlimited.
Apart from many reasons mentioned by others, I find the "nearly unlimited" catalog to be very overrated. Every time someone asks me to queue a song, it's on Spotify maybe 50% of the time - as soon as you start delving into dance/single-oriented genres of the past, streaming services just won't cut it.
For the record (heh) I also have an extensive vinyl/tape/CD collection in addition to a few TB of pirated FLACs.
It’s fun