So I want to swap off of Spotify. Most of the time it works great, but the annoyances with their UX are starting to build up. From not ordering albums in release order on certain screens, to having to wait a good few seconds before turning off their shuffle+, and their shuffle not being very shuffle-y to begin with.
I have a couple of requirements:
- A decent Linux client.
- Be able to easily select playback device from other devices (for example start playback on my PC from my phone).
- Preferably pretty straightforward UX philosophy, i.e. haven't started going down any enshitification with AI, "we know best" kind of elements.
I don't particularly care for the highest of lossless quality audio. I don't posses any audio equipment where I would have any shot of telling the difference. As long as its not the experience I had with YouTube music where some random persons heavily compressed upload of a song would start playing.
My main contenders are Tidal, Qobuz, and deezer. The latter two I have very little experience with.
I've tried Tidal before, but my main gripe with it was scrolling through large playlists (about 2000 songs) was very slow, as it loaded in songs as you scrolled through (think endless scrolling on ddg or Lemmy) making it tedious to go to artists starting with a later character in the alphabet. Maybe it was just the Linux client, an issue on my machine, or if they've fixed it since, would be great to hear if any of you have had the same issue.
Qobuz and deezer I haven't really tried or heard much about from a users perspective.
I know some people swear by buying (or ship in under the jolly roger) all their music and use jellyfin or just local files for playback. I'm not very keen on that idea, the convince and discoverability of music on a streaming platform is what made me go to Spotify and away from winamp in the first place.
I have not personally got to the point of trying any yet, but I have heard several times about plugins for Jellyfin that add discoverability and recommendation features.
You still have the issue of actually tracking down the music, which Jellyseer or similar can help with. But if one of those plug-ins were to interface with Spotify or YouTube for preview purposes, that would be pretty slick!
Emby does as well. That said once you live without discover features and unshackle yourself from algorithms I will say ... It's really not that big a deal lol
I used to go hard finding new shit on Spotify and YouTube etc, but eventually word of mouth with friends and the library really solved the issue. Also changed how I consume music from songs in a playlist to looking at every album as one solid work of art to be understood.
Now I hit up my friends when I want new music recs, they hit me up. It's a good ice breaker. The library is also mad under used as a resource, they love supplying new shit if people are wanting it.
I got to a point where I am now where I carry around an iPod, and some CDs for the car lol may be weird however works for me and I paid zero dollars for music the last couple months cause now I have a solid personal library.
I hear you on the algorithm stuff. I normally find most my music through more organic means anyway, like soundtracks in games and movies, word of mouth from friends, or youtube/twitch. So maybe discoverability wouldn't be so bad for me if I do decide to go for a local collection at some point.
That's how I did it before streaming and how I do now. Fortunately I got my friends to go down this road too and we're all sorta healthier with it.
Will say, the library is an awesome resource if you start a local collection. It can be a good resource while you bridge the gaps. Most libraries also run their own streaming service for free it's not feature rich usually but ours is very simple and very stable.
Like I said generally experimenting is best. Different people have different needs :)