Music streaming alternatives to spotify/yt music/etc

[worldleaderpretend]

Hi yalls. Excuse me if theres alr a thread for this, I couldn't find one.

I've used youtube music for years and I'm trying to step away from google as much as I can so naturally, it's gotta go. I don't just want to swap it out for another corporate service like spotify but I need something more mobile than radiooo and I don't have the money for 234567890987654 cds, sadly. I have somewhat switched to cds, but they're all thrifted and I'm not going to find newer indie artists at the thrift store around here. I don't mind pirating but i have no idea how to do it and w/ smaller artists i don't want to take away from their income when it's already devastatingly low. Bandcamp seems neat but i'm not sure how they are on the privacy end? thx yall.

[Melooon]

It sounds like you've already got your answer but you just haven't put the pieces together yet 

There is no (and prob never will be) single indie music service that can compete with the big streaming platforms. The costs of running servers and paying licensing fees are too high; a "one service that provides everything" solution is a corporate idea that only big corporations can afford to provide.

The indie solution is to do a little bit of everything. Buy CDs for albums you love, listen to the radio when you want to discover new things (Pandora is good too), use Bandcamp to buy interesting indie albums, use YouTube or streaming services when you wanna hear regular music, build up an mp3 library of files you've collected and get a phone/music player with enough storage to make them easily accessible.

Some things will be more in line with indie ethics, and some will not be, but that's fine! You find the balance of what feels right, what suits your listening style, what you can afford and how much work you wanna put into it 

[glitchlynx]

I think 8tracks is a really neat website, although it is not actively used enough to work as a complete replacement for spotify or youtube music. The site is full of playlists made by users - you can't play an individual song or album - and the playlists are sorted by tags. Unfortunately, they shut down for a while a few years ago and never really got their user base back. Its almost an odd sort of timecapsule to 2010's music. It used to be used for fanmixes quite a bit, so if there's a show you like that that was popular in ~2014, it probably has a tag here. There's an 8tracks app, but you can only listen to playlists on there, not create them.

If you want more radio, there's radiogarden, which lets you not only search for stations by name but by location on a map. Soma FM has a lot of neat stations you can listen to through this app (and probably any other radio app).

If you like vaporwave music there's night plaza and Poolsuite FM, which again both have their own apps. (Also, a lot of vaporwave music is free or nearly free on bandcamp, so if you want a collection of instrumental mp3s, that's a real affordable way to do that.)

There's also FunkWhale, which is like soundcloud but federated. I haven't used this much at all, but if you really want to get away from corporate services... that's the furthest thing I've heard of yet.

[bingus_baby]

I got an iPod nano recently and adore the lil nugget. I recommend getting one, I have the square with the touch screen. 6th gen, I think? I think you should get one, and load it up with music. Using your main phone is fine, but a dedicated music device is nice since music takes up a lot of storage space. And the Nano also has a really nice Radio player in it to listen to local stations. The simplicity is what really makes the device shine, in my opinion!

To get music tho! For big artists, rent CDs from the library, rip them, and add it to your music player to sync. For smaller artists, I buy through iTunes and use the downloaded files as I please. Bandcamp is fine for REALLY obscure artists. But it never sat right with me how artists could delist music. Bought some albums a while back, the artist delisted them, and I only got lucky that my old computer had the files buried somewhere. Even emailed the dude asking for a copy, but he never responded.

And if there's something you gotta pirate, Archive.org has a lot of downloadable stuff. But tread carefully if you go any deeper, since DDL might have viruses, and torrents might send nasty letters to your ISPs. Otherwise, you can live like the 2000s and just yt-to-mp3 it. But again. Be careful, those websites are ridden with ads. If you're into Vocaloid tho, I can send a safe and legit site your way.

[Memory]

yuppp on the other replies, but i'll give my input - winamp is a very very good service for streaming music locally, with fully customizable UI from a 'skin museum' website; make sure to get version 5.666 of winamp here because the newer versions are bad, and the aforementioned skin museum is here ! i have a yume nikki skin hehehe it looks like this (all the songs are untitled cus i just took the ost files from an rpgmaker game i like. also censored parts for privacy of the person i was messaging on discord hehe its an old screenshot)

(edit: omg didnt read the "mobile" part SORRY but if youre on computer i still recommend lol, winamp is windows-only....)

[elliebees]

I can second a lot of stuff others have said. If you're looking for a non-corporate option then your best bet is to diversify what you listen to and how you listen to it ! Some ways I get music are:

• Cassette tapes (mainly thrifted or secondhand but there are some cool bands releasing new music on cassette which I was occasionally splurge on)
• Same with CDs. They're also much easier to rip onto your computer and from there onto an MP3 player or phone. I also have a CD player to listen to them straight off the CD.
• My main music program is Winamp. I've built a pretty decent library of my favourite music from sources like youtube to MP3 sites (like others said, make sure it's a legit one), ripped CDs, archive.org downloads, Bandcamp downloads, etc.
• I listen to local radio a lot ! There's a good station that plays music from the 1960s thru 1980s which I really like. I have a collection of radios so I've basically got one tuned to every station I listen to.
• If you want to use youtube sometimes but with a cool nostalgic interface, I've been using yt2009, which is just a frontend for regular youtube but with the site design for 2009
• I use Bandcamp for indie releases and stuff that's not released in other places, there's a good mix of newer and slightly older music on there.

Some (or most) of these options are slightly more clunky and less convenient, and you don't have the whole world of music at your fingertips, but I think that's part of the appeal. When I was using mainstream streaming services I got super overwhelmed by all the options and choice and just ended up listening to the same thing over and over anyway. Plus there's the corporate business practices I don't wish to support.

For some of the options you might need to invest in one or a few pieces of electronics like a radio, discman, portable cassette player, or MP3 player, but I've managed to build up a collection by saving up over time and going for secondhand/thrifted options as I'm also on a tight budget. If that's not an option, you can just put MP3s on your phone and use that !

[brisray]

As @Melooon said, nothing is likely to replace the large streamers. Just like YouTube for videos, it's just too expensive for someone to create something of that size from scratch.

I still scour thrift stores for goodies whenever I'm out and about but one of my favourite places to poke through is the Free Music Archive.

[worldleaderpretend]

Yeah, kinda the response I figured i'd get but ah well.

Can't burn cds afaik, because all I have is a chromebook running linux (no disc reader). My library has a small cd selection, but not that much available and as far as borrowing from other branches most of the ones in my area don't have one at all. I have a discman and about 15 cds of my own, a few more kinda scattered throughout the house from my family. I have a cheap record player and some records but it's not a lot. Radio online is definitely a better option than actual radio out here- only a few stations actually reach me. Perks of living in the middle of nowhere ig :/.

Atm bandcamp seems like the best alternative for mobile. Just gotta work things out for what's actually practical. (damn discman runs through batteries SO fast oml.)

Getting an ipod doesn't seem like a bad idea, but rn my household is barely affording food and rent so something like that is definitely gonna have to wait lol.

Might just dump some pocket money on a few indie cds and play from invidious while i'm home. time will tell ig.

thx yall

[alexela64]

I got an iPod nano recently and adore the lil nugget.

I absolutely second this!

I have an iPod Nano, and i'm pretty sure it's the same gen as OP's. :)

The library CD method is very good, personally my parents have a huge CD collection that i've sampled, and everything else was either from old MP3 uploads by fansites (specifically plastic tree), or from yt-dl.

One tip though - if you're downloading something off of Youtube, please use yt-dlp. Ytmp3 sites are super shady and this program makes me feel much safer. Plus it has support for playlists, and you could also download the video.

Hope this helps 

[grubbyfox]

I use Youtube for discovering music/ambient music/slowed songs. (and for just looking up music casually)

If you dont approve of youtube, you can also use the Invidious uh front end?? https://yewtu.be/ - I use this on my de-googled laptop, lol.

I also use yt-dlp to download off youtube if it's just random stuff or videos I want to hoard. I buy music either as CDs or on Bandcamp, but like, if I want an old 80s playlist on my PC, I'm not gonna buy the songs, lol I will download or thrift the music.

I do buy music from active artists though.

Bandcamp is great for buying music, imo. They've got a pretty good music app for your phone, too.

As for software to play music on:

Winamp (I did not like Winamp on Windows11 though, as the UI looks terrible, too cramped and blurry).

MusicBee - very similar to Winamp but I kinda like it better. You can customize a lot of the UI, and it seems intuitive.

BlackPlayerEX (ANDROID). I use this as a music player on my phone. They have a free version, I believe, but I found it was well worth buying the app too. It's so good, I love it. The UI looks soooo good, it has a lot of features, you can customize some stuff, etc. It's not perfect imo, but very close to perfection - and imo better than any other native option.

I also like to burn CDs sometimes, as I have a discman (actually a "portable audio book reader" lmfao sure, jan.) and I have an old MP3 player I sometimes use.

[georgemoody]

if you happen to have a spare old laptop (with a hard drive that hopefully isn't trying to imitate the clicks of a mouse) and are tech-savvy enough you could install something like jellyfin on it, load it up with your own music and have your own little streaming service!

[nintendowii99]

Can't burn cds afaik, because all I have is a chromebook running linux (no disc reader).

You can get a USB disc reader. Ripping CDs isn't very intensive so you should be able to do it on chromebook.

Sorry to hear about your library, but are you not able to do lending from libraries outside of your specific area? I know at my libraries we can do lending from pretty much anywhere in the US. It won't always arrive quickly, but it works. I've even been able to do lending from Canada before.

I totally understand not having a lot of options and money being tight. Part of leaving our reliance on big social medias/corporations is creativity. You don't need to buy CDs to have music. There are plenty of ways to get free music and there are tons of tutorials/info online about it, you just have to search for them.

However at the end of the day, if you're in a position where none of these options work for you i'm not quite sure what else to suggest. If there was a free magic answer, you'd probably already know about it or it would be easily findable through a google search.

[sokil]

You can get a USB disc reader. Ripping CDs isn't very intensive so you should be able to do it on chromebook.

i actually just came across this guide, perhaps it could work? i'm not entirely sure of the specifics of the whole thing, though. i haven't used a chromebook in a long time, and the one i had was pretty locked down from the start....so that complicated a lot of things. however, if yours is not locked down, then perhaps this can help you!


most of the alternatives for playing music that i can think of have already been mentioned, so i won't repeat them. there's a newer one similar to bandcamp - bandlab, i think it's called? - that i've come across a few times, but i haven't really poked around too much on there. a lot of my discoveries are actually from clicking around different genre charts and lists on rateyourmusic. there's some stuff i've only been able to find through pirating (soulseek is especially useful here), but overall i think it's been cool to use for discovery; i keep a notebook of things that i see and want to check out at some point. most pages will have bandcamp links and such for releases.

i also have to +1 radiogarden; it's especially fun discovering new music from other countries!

(sidenote - LOVE your username; REM's green is one of my favorites!)

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

I have a music library on my PC (from various sources) that I constantly extend, and transfer some albums on my laptop every week or every two weeks, and listen to them with headphones on the way to my job. This way, I don't overplay the music I like.