Edit: started a free trial of Qobuz, it might be the winner for me.

I’ve been meaning to distance myself from Spotify for a while now but I’ve got a lot on my plate and their service has been very convenient. I’ve been paying for no ads since 2014 so I haven’t heard the ads personally but have seen multiple sources online describe them and confirm they they haven’t stopped as of today. I cancelled immediately. Not sure how many Spotify users there are on Lemmy but I just thought y’all ought to know what they’re up to. Spotify let’s you write a message saying why you’re cancelling and I was very descriptive. Hopefully they’ll back down just like Disney with Jimmy Kimmel.

  • owenfromcanada@lemmy.caEnglish
    31·
    23 days ago

    If you’re in the market for a replacement service, I can recommend Qobuz. Switched to them a while ago and they’re great, and apparently pay the artists really well.

    • Classy Hatter@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      7·
      23 days ago

      Qobuz app also works on Linux nowadays. Has a couple issues that you have to fix, and one minor annoyance I haven’t figured out how to solve.

      EDIT: Here’s a guide on how to use Qobuz on Linux. With a newer version than the one used in that guide, the Qobuz app (including the installer) opens minimized to system tray. I don’t know if this is a feature in the app itself or something with Wine. But other than that it works great.

      • cabbage@piefed.socialEnglish
        6·
        23 days ago

        There’s also a fantastic third party Qobuz client for linux. It’s CLI, but if you launch it with --web it launches a local web client that’s point and click. You can choose any audio quality up to 24bit/192Khz.

        I have it hooked up to my hifi system and connect through ssh to control it from my laptop or phone. Works great.

        • Classy Hatter@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          2·
          23 days ago

          Qobuz apps/players can also be controlled with other Qobuz apps. For example, if you have Qobuz running on your computer, you can control it with the Qobuz app on your phone.

          That CLI player is probably better if you just want a remotely controlled headless player, and don’t need the Qobuz integration.

        • Classy Hatter@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          2·
          23 days ago

          Just earlier this year it wasn’t possible to install Qobuz on Linux. I guess the Wine team implemented something that fixed the problem.

    • binarytobis@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      23 days ago

      I tried Qobuz and the sound quality was great, but I primarily use the “radio” feature off of a song for new music discovery, and their radios were wack. Also they were missing about 7% of the music I tried to transfer. No other complaints, pretty solid otherwise.

      So far Tidal hasn’t given me any issues. Hopefully they pay their artists and don’t do horrible things, because I don’t have the energy to jump services again this year.

      • owenfromcanada@lemmy.caEnglish
        3·
        23 days ago

        I’ve heard good things about Tidal as well with respect to paying artists. Glad it works for you!

      • owenfromcanada@lemmy.caEnglish
        1·
        23 days ago

        Can’t say as I haven’t tried, but as another commenter mentioned, they have cross-device control similar to Spotify. The Android Auto app works well too, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it supports voice control as well.

      • perfectduck@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        23 days ago

        I’ve recently switched off Spotify to tidal and now qobuz and the voice commands haven’t worked for me.

        As far as I can tell it’s not a native app to the Google home and won’t work. I may be missing something however, so your results may vary. You can cast to it from a phone, but again qobuz seems the weakest on that front.

  • webghost0101@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    16·
    24 days ago

    If you are willing to curate your own collection and have a little techical knowhow:

    You can set up a Navidrome server and enjoy high quality music streaming with no subscription costs

    • ramenshaman@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      4·
      24 days ago

      I fairly recently set up a NAS with Jellyfin, replacing google photos and Spotify have been on my to-do list for quite some time but they’ve been pretty far down on the list. Replacing Spotify just got bumped up. I’ll check out Navidrome.

      • paequ2@lemmy.todayEnglish
        6·
        23 days ago

        replacing google photos

        Immich makes replacing Google Photos pretty easy. The UI is very similar and the desktop and mobile apps are pretty solid. Multi-user support is excellent if your friends or family also wanted to try it out.

        I wish Navidrome (and more self-hosting apps in general) didn’t assume you were the only user on the service…

        • ramenshaman@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          3·
          23 days ago

          Yep I’ve done a little testing with immich, that’s what I’m planning on using, just haven’t gotten around to fully setting things up yet. My NAS is just running on a Raspberry Pi 5 so I’m not planning on any multi-user stuff at this point.

      • BingBong@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        23 days ago

        Since you already have jellyfin, try it with music using the beta finamp client. Works like a charm and will save you having to spin up another service.

    • leopardpuncher@feddit.dkEnglish
      1·
      20 days ago

      I managed to get a pretty decent collection going, accessed through Navidrome and have to admit I wasn’t a fan. Artwork missing, multiple profiles for the same artists, the inability to remove albums that were no longer on the server. The whole thing just felt like a struggle.

      Then the disk my collection was on kicked the bucket, and hadn’t gotten around to setting up backup, so I’m starting over from scratch 😅

      Bit miffed Navi is still what people are recommending 😔

      • webghost0101@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        2·
        19 days ago

        Sucks that this has been your experience and admitted it does take a bit of work to set it up nicely.

        The documentation of how artwork is detected and ways to fetch it automatically from online sources you can find here

        The multiple profiles thing happens Because Navidrome is very tag dependent to understand music. I have a few collections where the band slightly evolved their name/spelling where this happened.

        The difference between “artist/albumartist” and the “compilation” tag need to be set correctly and uniformly for that to be fixed, which depending on the source can take some work.

        My own strategy is to start with a small server And gradually expand it. Make sure the tags are ok, the art is correctly named in the right spot.

        I still have a lot of music i haven’t processed

        For the music that did get processed, things are stable and reliable as rock, require no maintenance and performs very well.

        The removed albums thing Is a weird one though, using the full rescan off all files and data button I have never experienced this.

        • leopardpuncher@feddit.dkEnglish
          2·
          19 days ago

          Thank you for the suggestions! I’ll give it another go, see if I can make it work 👍

          I was using Symfonium as my client on Android, maybe that was part of the problem.

          I used Beets for processing/tagging, which was also troublesome; never could get it to do anything on its own, had to manually initiate every session, and lots of stuff needed handholding to get tagged correctly. Never could get Picard to work at all, neither in Docker nor on my desktop.

  • Blubber28@lemmy.worldEnglish
    12·
    23 days ago

    Yeah I’ve switched to Tidal when I read about it. It’s a shame, in terms of usability Spotify is definitely ahead, but I would rather use an inferior product than pay nazi supporters

      • fif-t@fedia.io
        5·
        23 days ago

        No. At one point it was owned (partially? majority? don’t recall) by Jay-Z, who sold most of his stake later on to a different company that has its own problems, but as far as I know isn’t nearly as bad as Daniel Ek and all the AI generated music and “fake” artists issues plaguing Spotify.

      • Blubber28@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        23 days ago

        As another user commented, it was started by JayZ. It is still American, so I also tried Soundcloud, but it had too many things missing sadly, especially in terms of soundtracks. So Tidal will do for now.

    • 13igTyme@piefed.socialEnglish
      2·
      23 days ago

      There are a lot of reviews that say the app is garbage, but everything works fine on the website.

  • Kondeeka@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    23 days ago

    I switched to Deezer a few months ago. It is also European, but is not unethical as far as I’ve been able to find. Sadly, almost nobody uploads their podcasts on there though.

  • sudoer777@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    11 days ago

    If you want something free, Spotube has a plugin system now so you can use ListenBrainz (FOSS-friendly and knows more tracks than Qobuz, IMO recommendation system is also more interesting) for the library data, which uses a yt-dlp/Newpipe backend (they have adding alternative backend platforms on their radar). It’s buggy right now though.