I know there’s already a few posts about how people listen to, or discover new music, but I wanted to see how other people get their music. Do you buy CDs or vinyl? Digital downloads? Use streaming services? Something else? And why?
Until a few years ago, I would jump between streaming services depending on the best deals I could get, but got very concerned the more I read about how little money most musicians get from streaming listens (especially via Spotify) - and given I tend to listen to less popular bands/artists, it seems particularly bad for them.
I have a small selection of CDs and vinyl, but mostly buy my music digitally - directly via Bandcamp if the artist is on there, or through an online store like 7digital (or even sometimes if no other option, Amazon) if not. I have a home server where I keep my music and like to be able to stream it directly to my phone, so this tends to be the best of both worlds for me.
Interested to know what others do!
mostly listen via youtube, sometimes buy music via bandcamp, but usually not downloading nor listening via it, it is just an act of reward and encouragement.
i have a several vinyls and a cd, that i cannot get rid of, because the artist does not sell his music anymore. (but i have no way to play it).
I usually download my FLACs from Bandcamp or Deezer. Sometimes I rip them from CD when I can’t find an album anywhere else.
I stream them from Jellyfin afterwards.
Jellyfin is so nice
I use spotify for most of my listening, but I also buy a lot from bandcamp (digitally). I keep my purchases downloaded on my home server and on my phone for offline use.
BandCamp is great. Forgot about that
Spotify for finding new music and most of my listening.
I’ll buy vinyl for my favorite albums or if I see something at the record store that takes my fancy.
I’ll usually listen to my records while cooking or if I want to just sit and listen as a primary activity
This is what i do. It’s kind of zen to throw some vinyl on and whip up dinner or take some time to intentionally listen to an album vs passive spotify
Soulseek (with the nicotine+ client) is pretty good
Bandcamp and very rarely SLSK.
When I find a song, I like to keep it. Streaming cant do that. You can create playlists of course, but they may at any time silently remove or replace that song. You dont know suffering until you’ve heard a bad cover of Hotel California.
Now I only buy mp3s. Mostly from 7digital.com or Bandcamp. Amazon dont sell music to Norwegians somewhy. The last album I bought I finally had to download iTunes because thats the only place except for Amazon they released. The app wasnt as intrusive and DRM enforcing anymore as it used to be a long time ago. So I might use iTunes a bit more now. (Yeah, I tend to hold a grudge against software companies for a LONG time. You hear that, reddit!)
Got all my mp3s (23 GB) stored on Onedrive, and use CloudPlayer on android to stream it wherever.
I buy CDs and rip them.
I refuse to stream because of the possibility of services shutting down and losing all the music you “purchased” (never mind needing an internet connection), and the sorts of copy protection and other things I’ve encountered when purchasing digital music turned me off of the whole thing years ago. Now I have all of my music on my phone, on my computer, and a physical backup too.
Plus, you can sometimes find CDs cheap at garage sales and thrift stores so there’s a fun treasure hunt aspect there too.
I buy mostly from bandcamp and Amazon.
I use Plex to host my music. It’s not super difficult to set up. And Plexamp is a pretty good player.
Plex also has the option for you to subscribe to Tidal, which I do. And the ability to stream my own music that’s not available anywhere on any stream plus almost everything out there that Spotify has is the best combo.
Jellyfin is another server like Plex, but I haven’t ever set it up so I don’t know how involved it is.
I use Jellyfin, and this was my first home server. Think if I managed it it has to be relatively easy for most people comfortable enough with computers. Probably slightly more involved than Plex though I imagine!
I actually use archive.org for a lot of live concert recordings. bands like the Grateful Dead and Phish have been allowing/sort of encouraging fans to record and freely share their concerts for a long time and it’s all just out there to listen to and download as much as you want. there’s also the official streaming services like nugs.net and LivePhish for higher quality professionally recorded concerts, the subscription is kind of pricey but I think the artists get a better cut than on regular streaming services.
other than that I do use Spotify a bit and try to buy stuff on Bandcamp to support the artists when I can.
Independent artists: buy physically in person or online, or digital from bandcamp.
Mainstream or in affordable stuff: rip flacs from deezer
Bootlegs/live stuff: archive.org
Everything on a self hosted airsonic instance
yt-dlp from yt, SoundCloud etc. Download from Bandcamp, Spotify free. Basically I use everything where the music lives and then download it.
I buy mostly digital mp3 and FLACs from BandCamp, the band’s website, or Amazon, expect for Band-Maid, which I buy the CDs for. I don’t stream.
I also borrow from the library and rip CDs from there to add to my digital collection. Thankfully, my library system has a great selection of CDs and gets music from bands from like The Pretty Reckless and Sabaton. The library also has stuff that hasn’t made it to digital or is hard to find like some live Jimi Hendrix.
Use the library to expand your music collection. You can find a lot there. You just have to look.
A private torrent tracker and sometimes I buy vinyl.
really like soulseek, and theres a great android app for it called seeker. you can sort by variables like quality, size, encoding, bitrate, etc.
Soulseek is what I use to get more obscure titles that cannot be bought anymore and aren’t on spotify. It let anyone visit other people library of music, and some users share a lot.
If you want to find more stuff on it you should try it on a pc and setting up port forwarding (I don’t know if it’s possible with the seeker app) as without it, you can only see the content from users who port forwarded themselves.
I was a r/soulseek user, so I hope a soulseek sub will pop up somewhere here.
I hadn’t heard of Soulseek before. I see it depends on some central servers though the file transfer is peer to peer. Do you need to take precautions with Soulseek as with Bittorrent to hide your IP address?
Your ip is indeed public with soulseek. I’ve never heard of anyone having issues with that as soulseek is really unknown from the public but you can use a vpn to hide it.
Ohhhh, I knew port forwarding affected torrenting, but I didn’t think about how it would affect Soulseek. I’ll have to get that set up as it’s my primary music source since W.CD died.
