No Stupid Questions

I have the music I made on my computer ~ well, technically on my external storage hard drive. And so, I don't need to stream my music. ;-)

But then, some argue such things as https://soffmimuhod.bandcamp.com/ may not even qualify as music.

No, I saute my music.

Well.. is suppose it is a good way to get the wrinkles out... I'll give it a shot.

It can since it's much cheaper than video and games thanks to the small file size of songs.

Very few people even know how to put songs on their phone to play locally, imagining trying to teach them how to host their own streaming on their computer.

I stream from my home server. Not sure which side that puts me on. But I don't use streaming services like Spotify or YT music.

Which reminds me I need to install Navidrome on my server.

I buy my music for download on Bandcamp, Steam and few other places. I listen to it with Jellyfin and Finamp on my mobile (it can store songs locally or stream them from my home NAS)

no i am the kind of person who can’t find his music, but when i do find them, i listen to them into the ground, i think my play list is like an hour and a half tops? music falls out of rotation as fast as i add to it. not really streaming capable

Ive always considered giving money to record companies immoral. When I was young I would download whole albums "for context." Moving away from tormenting, I just download singles from youtube. I can also download playlists. They just live on my sd chip in my phone

Iv had a single subscription for like a decade. YouTube red or premium or what the fuck ever it's called.

Cost me 7.99 I stream my music from YouTube.

The moment YouTube stops grandfathering me in is the moment I go right back to just pirating everything. They have threatened to raise the praise for grandfathered plans a few times and never went though with it. They have threatened to add ads, or change features and never went though with it.

8 dollars is entirely an acceptable price for functionally unlimited music and TV.

I use the service so I pay for the service. It's convenient, functional and there are no ads.

Works on my PC, phone and while I'm in the car with no fiddling.

If I had to pick a service to use to today I would just go with Bandcamp or pirate the fuck out of everything.

Seriously what Gabe said decades ago was turn then and now. Piracy is a service problem. A affordable, fair and customer friendly service will be worth paying for. Companies just keep making shit worse then what the value prop is.

And frankly I would spend like 40 bucks a month on CDs, so 8 bucks is perfectly acceptable. And I don't personally see any fucking reason to own a copy of my music. That just cost storage space.

I keep a simple txt file with a list of all the songs and albums I enjoy the most so if I need to I can easily just go get a copy of them when and if I need to. And not waste space on meaningless files that I have on demand access too.

Stored on my PC, rsync to other devices.

I still have an mp3 collection. Mainly because I like a lot of obscure artists you can't find in streaming services and I despise algorithm recommendations. I never liked fucking youtube because they always would put a lot of useless trash in the recommendations. So I shut down recommendation history, I stay away from their music services and I'm never giving them a single penny. I still buy CD's whenever I can, hey at least a CD is proof I'm listening to a real musician and not some AI slop.

For the most part I've always hated music streaming services because they feel very insular. There is no sense of fandom and community by design. I knew shit was going to get bad when you tube shut down the comments on music tracks. These "services" are designed to wall in the user and keep them hooked to the fucking algorithm; That betrays the spirit of musical community I was used to. I feel tech companies ruined the joy of collecting music and I am glad piracy is coming back. All of these streaming services can fuck off.

My MP3s have moved from 1 device to another. I paid for the physical copies years ago (also some friends "shared" other songs), and I still only buy MP3s.

I stream but from my own server.

Steaming seems a bit too extreme... it might damage or peel off the labels, or even damage the discs themselves, depending on the temperature (and I don't want to see what it'd do to tape!).

Personally I've always found a microfiber cloth to be sufficient.

I have my NAS on a private VPN running on my own server. The NAS have my music (roughly 2/3 from physical media, 1/3 from various DRM-free source). I use it with a simple mobile app (CloudBeat) that can work in both online and offline mode where you can download what you want ahead of time by ticking a checkbox.

It doesn't cost much: the VPN server do other stuff and is cheap to begin with, the NAS have some maintenance cost for storage, but that's like a drive every two years top, content never change of disappear, it doesn't slurp my bandwidth constantly, etc.

Even factoring the cost of a separate backup, since the whole setup store a bunch of other stuff and services, it's probably more cost efficient too, if you don't consider the initial setup cost.

And if needed, I can "lift" some content from streaming services too and put them there.

The only reason paying for a streaming service still exist is convenience, at the cost of bending over whatever craziness they come up with.

Yes.

I never had a spotify anccount and I’m still listening to the music I collected 20 years ago.

Kettle broke, and it was damaging the vinyl anyway.

Huh. I get my money's worth and more from streaming, have found so much music I like, and before streaming I listened to the radio (we have good community radio here, I still do listen to the radio and go to live shows) and went to concerts but didn't buy music because I despaired of ever building or organizing the sort of collection that would contain even close to the amount of music I want to listen to.

If streaming disappeared tomorrow, what I'd save wouldn't pay for even one concert a month.

I really, really use the heck out of it, my whole family does.

I've gone back to sailing the high seas and don't regret it. Cost efficient, superior quality, more control and a better service overall. If I do buy music from an artist that actually deserves it, it's on Bandcamp. I've been looking for a physical/analog setup and make copies of those. I'm also learning how to self-host so I can setup a Navidrome server for seamless transition from device to device.

I've cancelled all my streaming services. Technically I stream my Bandcamp collection, but I still bought it so it's somewhat a different model.

The recent wave of artists taking their music off Spotify and how much AI is plaguing that app made me pull the plug.

I prefer mine broiled.

But I've also never paid for a music service.

I buy on Bandcamp and put the FLACs on my Plex server, so I guess I’m technically streaming them, but not for a Spotify fee.

i've gotten some cooked mp3s before. i don't know if they got that way through steaming or what but i did need to uncook them before i eventually burned them 🤔

I'm not, and I've enjoyed the process of finding my own music again. I started buying music CDs; there's a used bookstore near me with a giant shelf of CDs for $1 each. I set up a music server (I chose Funkwhale, although Navidrome seems to be the more popular choice) that I upload everything to, so I can still stream things, it's just from my own server. And I bought an MP3 player.

I either buy mp3 or download from youtube.

I buy physical copies if available, usually only if available in a local store or directly from their bandcamp or a show, otherwise yarr matey.

Wife kicked me off our joined Spotify membership (we both agreed to her using student discount for her account) so I've setup plexamp for my albums. I mean technically streaming but self-hosted.

Has android auto, and the in app interface is reasonable.

Its kind of nice, just to play an album you own vs having a neverending list of songs you might enjoy.

Yeah my car is filthy 😇

No, I am frying my music. It gives the sound a crispier edge.

I don't get it either. I have a couple of friends who pay for music streaming just to listen for the SAME music over and over. They don't even make use of those so called recommendation algorithms or so. I tried to guide them into putting the music they like into their phones for offline listening, but they ignored me. I guess some people just have some sort of love for corporations.

Well I used Spotify in the past but prices are increasing over here so canceled that a long time ago. Now I'm using Symfonium with my Navidrome server manage my local library of songs. Now I just download them to the devices for offline listening.

People pay to stream music?

I thought most people just put up with ads, or get the revanced version of the app with ads removed.

Then you have the smaller group that downloads off of any good distribution site, and then the small minority of music archive torrentors.

I think I only ever met one person who actually paid for youtube premium, but my sample size is probably too small.

In order of preference:

1. buy flac directly from the label
2. buy flac on Bandcamp (or equivalent, although i'm barely aware of any real alternatives)
3. buy CD and rip it to flac
4. despair
5. try to fight it
6. give up and get it via torrent.

~~Streaming services are evil and i wish for them to fail.~~ ...but more seriously -- I get why streaming services exist. Although I will almost certainly will never use one in my life, in principle it's fine, I get the point. When I'm online I'm actually OK to stream from an indie radio (eg. soma.fm) or from a RSS based podcast player (eg. Antenna).

The problem i have is that, AFAIK, the business models are almost always abusive and hostile to both user and the artist. Some kind of federated system could work better, but I'm not sure it's doable. As it is, I'm afraid this middle man model just won't ever work properly without heavy regulation -- which is kind of a problem in the globalized world.

Streaming music never appealed to me. 1TB sd card in my phone with my library synced to it.