I have had YouTube Premium Music since it was launched. I uploaded nearly 15,000 MP3s at the time. Now that the family plan is $28 a month, what free alternatives are out there for music streaming?
Go self hosted
Lidarr can get your Spotify playlist and download it, navidrome can me the music server. Works awesome
Bandcamp lets you preview entire albums, several times, before deciding to support the artist. And it’s a firehose of fresh music.
Yes but 98% of the music is shit. Anybody with a ten year old laptop and a pirated copy of Cubase thinks theyre a music producer. Instead of listening to music you spend your time searching through garbage
Sturgeon’s Law 90% of everything is garbage. The last 10% is worth dying for.
I haven’t purchased media in 40 years
Check out your local terrestrial radio options. There are still good human-run, human-presented local stations out there which would love nothing more than to gain your listenership.
Where? Everything everywhere seems to be a mix of clear channel, church broadcasts, or the rare public radio station that isn’t classical music 24/7.
Local library
SomaFM
Radio Paradise
Big Sonic Heaven
Insomniac Radio
Local library is underrated AF
YouTube Music through the ReVanced app
I think Pandora still has a free tier.
If you go the route of downloading music or ripping from CDs, you absolutely do not need to stick with the over-inflated FLAC format. The files are absolutely massive, and you could easily convert them down to much smaller 192kbps MP3 (or AAC which is even better) and not notice any difference in sound quality. FLAC is for audio purists, and storage prices these days don’t really justify it in my opinion.
As to where to buy music, try DRM-free sources like Bandcamp or even Amazon MP3. If you don’t want to pay for it, learn to use BitTorrent or even Usenet…both while using a good VPN, natch! You can even download from YouTube Music if you have the right tool (though it’ll probably come in Opus format which is fine if your player can handle it).
When using lossy, use Opus.
Internet radio station with 30 channels, donation-supported Soma FM with player and desktop site
Groove Salad Classic channel is the shit!
Love Soma FM!
Tuned in just yesterday after while, its so chill. Love SomaFM.
I just use pirated YouTube Premium and have a playlist there.
jellyfin and tailscale
On Android; Grayjay
Download revanced manager. Enjoy.
Apps like Metrolist that stream music from YouTube for free and without ads. Basically a NewPipe but for music specifically.
A note that these are temporary. These programs often have issues and will always get shut down in the end. Better to get your own collection.
