this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2025
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Why I Ditched Spotify, and How I Set Up My Own Music Stack | LeshiCodes (leshicodes.github.io)
submitted 4 days ago by BrikoX@lemmy.zip to c/technology@lemmy.zip
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For years, I relied on Spotify like millions of others. The convenience was undeniable stream anything, anywhere, discover new music through algorithms, and share playlists with friends. But over time, several issues became impossible to ignore: artists getting paid fractions of pennies per stream, fake Artists and ghost Tracks, AI music and impersonation, creepy age verification complicity and the fact that despite paying monthly, I never actually owned anything. So I decided to take back control of my music experience. Here's how I built my own self-hosted music streaming setup that gives me everything Spotify offered and more.

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[–] kaidenshi@lemmy.world 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I understand the author's intent to support artists by purchasing their music on various platforms, but by using Sabnzbd to download music from Usenet, this is essentially a guide to pirate music. The only thing in this setup that isn't automated is purchasing the albums, and at one point the author says he uses Sabnzbd to download from Bandcamp. No, he doesn't, that's impossible; Sabnzbd is a Usenet client and nothing more.

I applaud the author for trying to be honest and support his favorite artists with legal purchases to justify his use of these apps, and it's a great setup. But let's not pretend that most people following this guide will actually legally purchase any music they download once they see how seamless and fun it is to pirate it.

And I say all of that as someone who has a similar setup with Lidarr and Sabnzbd, I am not judging anyone who chooses to pirate music. And I do purchase actual physical albums of some of the music I download so I can support my favorite artists. I just wanted to call out the author for being a bit disingenuous about his setup.

[–] BrikoX@lemmy.zip 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

<...> at one point the author says he uses Sabnzbd to download from Bandcamp.

He does? I can't find that reference.

[–] kaidenshi@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago

I could swear I read it exactly that way, but looking back I don't see it, perhaps I inferred it from this:

My setup uses sabnzbd integrated with Lidarr for handling downloads of content I've purchased.

To be clear, Lidarr/Sabnzbd can ONLY download from Usenet, which (as far as I know) is not an authorized download channel for any legally purchased media. I get what he's saying, that he buys the music from a legit source and then downloads it from Usenet for simplicity and automation's sake (which is exactly what I do as well), but the inference appeared to be that he was somehow pointing Lidarr/Sabnzbd at Bandcamp directly.

[–] FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 7 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Few laughable things here:

Artists don’t get paid when you’re using Lidarr and sabnzbd lol. Dudes pirating music while trying to say how badly Spotify pays artists lol.

Your complete library is only available offline if you’re streaming locally or have already downloaded all of your music to every device you want to play it offline on. Don’t know what he means by “limited downloads” for Spotify either.

In this setup he is having data collected and tracked by last.fm, (potentially) whichever indexing services he is using for lidarr, (potentially) whichever download service he’s using for sabnzbd, and ListenBrainz (which even makes all user listen data and text public). Oh and his ISP. And cloudflare.

Hosting your own media library is awesome, just don’t try and bullshit people by pretending that you’re better than Spotify because they pay their artists poorly when you’re stealing from the artists yourself.

[–] BrikoX@lemmy.zip 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Can't say if he's actually pirating or as he says ripping payed content but it's well established fact that buying a single DVD will earn artist more than a lifetime of streaming.

[–] FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 0 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

No one uses Lidarr and SABNZBD to download their purchased content, because that’s not how it works lol. You can’t use sabnzbd or lidarr to download from iTunes or artists directly or anything like that.

[–] Dreaming_Novaling@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 days ago

Hosting your own media library is awesome, just don’t try and bullshit people by pretending that you’re better than Spotify because they pay their artists poorly when you’re stealing from the artists yourself.

This in general when people talk about piracy. It's great, and sometimes almost needed in cases where companies are making it impossible for people to access the media they want. But stop making it sound like you're doing the creator a favor by pirating.

"Oh I pirated this musicians music, BUT I'm giving them exposure!1!1! Spotify and YT only pay them .0000001 cents per view!1!1"

Sure, they get almost no money via streaming, but at least they get SOME money over time. People who listen, like, and comment on their songs on social media gives them more exposure then you ripping the song for fucking free and MAYBE (not guaranteed for some of you) telling a friend or two about it. Priating contributes nothing to the (albeit evil) algorithm. Like it's the dumbest moral argument/excuse people seem to bring up to defend themselves. Artists do deserve to be paid or recognized in some sort of way. Either stream or buy on bandcamp to support artists. Exposure means nothing when the bills aren't paid.

I hate Google, but I know I don't have the means to buy every single album from the many artists I listen to, so I'll stick with them for now until I start making a plan on how I wanna go about buying their music and streaming it at home.

[–] Wurzelfurz@feddit.org 6 points 4 days ago

This looks great. I really want to take back the control over my music library und consumption and am so tired of spotify. I want to give this a try. Plus I'm building my home server platform at the moment so this has come at the perfect time. Thanks for posting.