I want to avoid Spotify and Apple Music.
I have checked out Sound Cloud and they do have the artists I’m interested in but are they more ethical than the above services?
I could also buy cds as a last resort.
There was a video recently which tackled this among other things, apparently Qobuz has the best rates of pay for artists per stream. Though if you aren’t in the supported regions then you won’t be able to do streaming with it as I understand. The video has runners up.
(timestamped link to the relevant part of the video, but the whole thing is worth a watch) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVXfcIb3OKo&%3Bt=13m20s
I’ve just started buying my music, however, since the payout to artists is far, far more. The initial investment is high, in needing to buy a lot of albums/tracks, but over time you won’t need to do as much buying as you won’t need to fill up all your backlog. Bandcamp is my #1 but Qobuz has had some of the artists I haven’t been able to find on BC.
like a bunch of people have said, i recommend buying from the artists (such as through bandcamp). if you’re able, setting up a streaming thing like navidrome might interest you, or you can stick to local storage / use cloud sync
I’ve been buying stuff from Bandcamp. They sold recently so their future is uncertain, but as it stands right now it seems like a pretty good deal. Artists get a good cut, and you get streaming + drm free copies of the music to download.
I don’t really like subscriptions for music. It’s like renting. I’d rather pay $10/mo buying an album and have a big library after ten years than have nothing.
I built up my music library over time and serve it from my own computer using plexamp. It’s been really quite nice.
Same, I dusted off my old MP3’s and have been slowly replacing them with flacc from BandCamp. PlexAmp is pretty sweet to take it on the go.
Plexamp is the best music player in a long time
I went from Spotify to Napster, but Napster has a much more limited selection and in top of the albums were missing and even songs from the albums they do have. So I went back to Spotify, but after the latest price hike I switched to Tidal. I am liking it so far. Everything band I have looked for has been on there.
There’s also a tool to download stuff from tidal, which is nice for if you go broke and need to cancel it for a month or two.
Not quite the same but check if your local library has access to Hoopla. It is usually free and can get your music, audiobooks, and ebooks. There’s other free apps too like Libby for ebooks, flipster for magazines, and kanopy for foreign films and documentaries. All were free with my free library card.
Aaaannd libraries typically have a fairly large set of audio CDs to check out, take home, and… listen to (cough)
Whenever you buy music, try to buy from the band directly if at all possible. If not, check that their label has a merch store. Prices won’t be much different but in most cases, the band gets a larger take of the sale.
We’ve had a Pandora family plan for 5 years now. All four of us streaming on several devices with no problems.
