I currently have Spotify, mainly because I signed up a while ago and never really bothered to explore alternatives.
I pay €13 every month these days which I feel is quite a lot. I was already thinking of getting a few friends together and sharing a family plan, which would make it cheaper. But if I’m doing that I might as well take a proper look at my options.
What are some good, hopefully ethical, European alternatives? I know Spotify is from Sweden so good in that regard (?). Deezer is French, but also mostly owned by some American investment firm. If I can believe what I read they pay artist a bit more, which sounds like a good thing, but I don’t want my money to mostly go to American investors…
Any advice is highly appreciated!
I agree that Spotify is too much for the price, and despite not being American I have a problem with the shows they platform.
If you don’t find any of the paid options morally tolerable, I would submit that pirating and self-hosting what you need is the most ethical option.
Yeah I just read they donated to Trump! I had no idea but that’s terrible.
Self hosting will make my partner unhappy haha, unless I can make everything work seamlessly and I doubt I can. And the music recommendations are genuinely useful.
I have Kodi for my shows and movies though! I’m definitely not opposed to pirating and think self hosting is fantastic
Yeah I haven’t figured out / put enough time into getting Navidrome working, and I’m not happy with using Jellyfin for my music either. Can’t say I have a great answer to that, but it certainly ticks the ethical box for me.
Self hosting is cool, but you miss out on the discovery that the streaming platforms provide.
There’s lots of free Internet radio—some commercial, some public/community—that are good for that. For example:
It’s true, my way of discovering things is kind of random walk, or sometimes from following musicians I like and seeing who they talk about. That or browsing bandcamp and scraping whatever seems decent.
youtube music revanced is also an option
It is, and thank fucking god I’m not an audiophile. I bet it would suck to notice when my audio has a low bitrate.
I agree. As long as it has a good beat that I can dance to I don’t need to hear that somebody dropped a pin onto the studio carpet and if you listen closely you can hear the impact between the drumbeats at 2:47.
It’s bourgeois.