i recently wrote about many reasons to hate spotify. many of those (and more) reasons apply to most other platforms too. maybe you agree with me and want to abandon these. or maybe you don't think it's viable for you to outright ditch these _ _ i have a solution for you too.
this post does not discuss directly supporting artists, which is a reasonable and cool thing to want to do. buying music and donating are both good for this. i'm sure you can figure it out
loads of artists are also satisfied if you are sharing their work with others
a couple of the things i mention here are legally questionable or outright illegal in some jurisdictions and you "shouldn't" do them
many artists still do runs of media for new releases. cds, vinyls, and tapes are all common. there exists a sizable second-hand market for this stuff, although prices can get kinda silly. there is also absolutely nothing stopping you from recording physical copies of media you like
there are reasons to not want physical media, though. misplacing your tunes is not hard to do, as are having your tunes stolen or damaged. physical media tends to also be particularly prone to damage through regular use
if you have tunes on physical media, you should consider ripping it to digital. it's at least good to keep a backup
you can buy digital music on a couple platforms. bandcamp is good for this. beatport seems alright too
free downloads for loads of music are often provided by artists for various reasons. most artists really just want their stuff to get out there. besides, more people having access to their tunes means more people who are likely to be interested in supporting them. these downloads are often made available on bandcamp or through fileshares like google drive folders. sometimes this option is available on streaming services, not that you are likely to want to do that given the blog you are reading. some artists are extra cool and do wacky things like provide their own music on tools commonly associated with piracy
this blog is absolutely a pro-copyright-abolition one, but this post is not the time. just know that i absolutely WOULD download a car, and i'd expect nothing different from those who wind up here
publicly available downloads for music are common. most of these seem to be provided by random forum users and they aren't always the easiest things to find. sometimes these are hosted on archival sites (like archive.org, even when it violates their rules lol) too. i once downloaded a huge collection of music from the now-defunct breakbit music off a link in an archived 4chan thread. i still have it all
peer-2-peer sharing is alive and well in 2025. my understanding is that this used to be much more common. i could imagine it probably poses some security risks, but software design and network security protocols have both evolved enormously since like the 90s. soulseek is a good platform for p2p music sharing, it's still pretty active in current-day and loads of the people on there are super nice. i've also been able to find a surprisingly large amount of the stuff i tend to be looking for on there. now is an appropriate time for me to say something witty like "They Must Have Good Taste! :thumbsup:"
i have personally never tried to use any torrenting software but i am aware that it exists and it is theoretically very sound. i cannot say anything else about it
some platforms (youtube, soundcloud, etc) have quite robust 3rd party tools for ripping music. quality can be dubious but it's usually much more than serviceable. you'll often get 128 or 192kbps mp3, which is perfectly fine for personal listening for almost everyone. i'll talk more about audio codecs later
bandcamp (and some other, usually smaller, platforms) lets you just copy preview audio request urls from the network tab in your browser devtools (usually f12). on bandcamp, this gives you the entire song in 128kbps mp3 quality, completely free
there's also the nuclear option: diy music ripping;;; for when you can't figure out a reliable method for properly ripping some media and you haven't found any good download options online. i personally use audacity for this, selecting a loopback option for my input and just playing back the track i am trying to rip. i think linux has better options but i don't currently use linux so i cannot comment further on this :: like most things on linux, you'll have to figure that one out yourself
this is almost certainly false. you most certainly do not need all that much music to begin with, it's pretty reasonable to just keep around a handful of albums on your primary portable listening device and switch them out when you get sick of it. this can be extended to any storage device
music is not very large, either. for example, my music library (72% .flac by filecount) contains over 120 hours of music and is only 46.01gb
| format | size (relative to raw) | quality | notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| wav | 100% | lossless | wav is raw audio with a RIFF header |
| flac | 75% | lossless | that audio codec sure is free and lossless |
| 320kbps mp3 | 23% | indistinguishable | |
| 192kbps mp3 | 14% | practically indistinguishable | |
| 128kbps mp3 | 9% | nearly indistinguishable | wouldn't go lower. i can occasionally notice artifacts |
| ogg, quality 10 | 37% | indistinguishable | |
| ogg, quality 0 | 5% | surprisingly decent! | this was for fun. it rivals even 64kbps mp3 in size while sounding MUCH better |
many of your downloads will be missing metadata. you will have to add this yourself. i am aware that auto-tagging tools exist, but i don't use them and cannot attest to their accuracy. for doing it manually, mp3tag is THE go-to option. most media players will provide this functionality with all sorts of random hitches tho
speaking of media players, you need something for playback. you probably have a halfway serviceable option bundled with your os, but you'll likely want to use something less terrible
windows users should consider foobar2000. it's very customizable, works with loads of formats, and is excellent for organizing your tunes. i guess it also has ports for mac, ios, and android but i cannot attest to their quality
if you need something that will work on practically any platform and will play just about any format, vlc media player is a long-standing tool for this with an enormous community and a dev team that's cool as hell
i've heard good things about DeaDBeeF (especially for linux) but i've never used it
loads of people seem to like winamp but i personally don't. i will admit it looks cool tho
if you MUST use a streaming service, try harder. but also i have a "solution" for you. do so in a web browser that at least tries to prevent sites tracking the shit out of you. something open source, ideally. chrome is a farce. firefox is good tho. use something like ublock origin (not just for adblocking, ublock origin targets all sorts of unwanted traffic. in theory you could do this with a well-configured router. i do not have the know-how for this as of writing). don't, fucking, pay these scumbags. all of these are mostly pretty PC oriented. that's because, if you're using something like the fucking spotify mobile app, you're probably way too far removed already lol. besides, smartphones are obnoxiously locked-down. if i didn't know better, i would suggest that absolutely every person ditch their smartphone forever
internet radio is still alive and,.,. ok i wouldn't say it's doing well, but it's doing better than you'd expect
you could set up a media streaming server for yourself and your buddies if you wanted to but it's kinda a pain. it's pretty cool tho
live shows still exist
the radio still exists
old ways don't spontaneously vanish when they're commerically superceded
you can also perform music. apparently some people do this together. what a novel idea
please entertain some of these ideas