What’s your recommendation for listening to music privately?
My requirements are: open source desktop/web (Linux) and android app. I also want basically every song I would ever want.
I’m willing to pay just not on agregious amount of money.
If you are posting your recommendation please care to include the tradeoffs or any annoyances you got from it.
Thanks all!
Download the shit I want, stick it on a USB key and plug it into my car. The old magics.
If you’re talking about ambient music then you have things like Navidrome or Jellyfin that can stream music throughout your house.
Ad hoc, on device streaming: I use PipePipe, choose a YT music playlist and just…play in radio mode. There are better options (like InnerTune) but those tend to crap out when YT futzes with their back end / aren’t updated as frequently as PipePipe.
I also have an iRiver MP3 player (about size of a box of matches) that’s awesome.
Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
I am planning to get a dedicated audio player at some point this year. An modded iPod classic 5th or 6th gen with Rockbox. It’s offline, and you get so much more flexibility once you mod it, you can’t really go wrong. It’s a bit of an upfront cost though but a worthy investment.
The android app I use for music is Musicolet. It’s offline and has a lot of really nice customization options. Also free.
Hugston Media Pro, comes with thousands tv and radio channels worldwide (with bookmarks), updated newsfeed (minute/hour/day), local music player for your downloaded songs/videos. If enough users are interested I can make it opensource :)
Should you open source either way. I’ll check it out sometime
I have a local music library.
I once uploaded my entire connection of music (ripped from my own CDs or grabbed over the decades) to Google Music, but we know where that went. So I used Amazon Music for a few years, until the service went to shit.
Unwanted tracks in my personal playlists; songs playing out of order; ads despite passing a subscription fee to listen to music I already own.
The frustration with the entire copyright and, “rights holders” scene led me to turn away from buying anything but physical media at local music ships.
I have never used the arr tools, but if I was starting from scratch, I probably would. For now, when I want a few new tracks, I use yt-dlp or fire up jackett and find it.
Eta: frustrations
- Lidarr + Tubifarry + Slskd: automated downloads and organization
- Explo + listenbrainz: discover weekly replacement
- Navidrome: Subsonic Music Server
- Feishin: Linux Desktop client
- Arpeggi: iOS mobile client (Yes Ik iOS on privacy sub. Can’t afford to switch yet and my family has been using iPhone since I was s a kid)
Listenbrainz requires you to make what you listen to public as it is part of the open source project. If that is something you are worried about I think there are alternatives to explo that use last.fm but that is closed source as far as I know.
As others have said, buy stuff from small bands on band camp or at shows or something and pirate from whoever you see fit.
EDIT: I also should have noted, this is a self hosted setup that requires a server to be online unless you download your tracks to your client device. If you want a single device alternative, I am not personally sure what to recommend.
Don’t push yourself to switch from ios. It’s extremely unlikely you need to go to graphene to get the kind of privacy you need and familiarity with the system and how you can protect yourself in it is arguably more important.
Yeah I am not in a hurry to switch but I would like to at some point. But with android becoming more closed source every month it seems, I am more curious about switching to a linux mobile OS if that becomes viable in the future.
I have mostly been pushing myself to degoogle and self host to achieve my privacy concerns and in that regard I have been relatively successful. Switching to an open source OS is just the next major step that I am not sure I am ready for just yet. I do already run bazzite and arch on my desktop and laptop though so the phone is really the only thing I have left to switch.
Good luck. Before you make the leap to either a linux mobile os or graphene, make sure it can meet your physical security and emergency use requirements.
I’ve been enjoying using Finamp for my Jellyfin server, although you will need a proxy if you want to use it outside of your home network. I’m paying $7 a month (it used to be $5 😭) for a VPS that’s running Pangolin tunneled to my home server running Jellyfin. It’s basically my own private Spotify/Netflix/Audible. There are also free options like Nginx for the proxy.
Pros:
- Open source with desktop/web/android apps
- Free/cheap once set up
- Functions like major streaming services but doesn’t come with their bullshit
- You have complete control over everything since it is self-hosted
Cons:
- Set up can be tough depending on your skill level
- Requires your own home server PC
- You must add all of your own content, be it through torrenting, ripping CDs, etc.
Why is it better to have a VPS instead of running Caddy on something like a router using OpenWRT or maybe on a Raspberry Pi?
If you wanna save a little cash there’s a website called lowendbox that aggregates cheap vps deals. I try to keep mine under 10/11 bucks a year.
Dont really need a proxy for remote access. Tailscale is better and very secure and easy to setup.
I thought Tailscale was made by Microslop.
Personally I prefer being able to just give someone a link without getting them to download and use a VPN. That’s why I went with Pangolin since it essentially functions as both.
What is Pangolin? My searxng just shows results for the animal.
Might have to type “Pangolin software” but it essentially functions as a reverse proxy as well as a VPN to hide your home network IP when paired with a VPS.
I’m willing to pay just not on agregious amount of money.
Me too. I wanna support the artists I like.
I’ve used Bandcamp before. I was able to sign up anonymously and use a masked credit card to pay for music. Sure I could pirate it. But I feel like that’s a dick move, esp for smaller bands I like a lot.
Playing music privately, that’s the trivial part! A million ways to do that, without sending any info to anyone, either at home or on the go.
Download it via torrent, thats your best option. It takes time to build up a sizable catalog but it helps you can download entire acts discographies one fortuitous swoop here and there
Paying is basically antithetical to privacy, I only do it for the essentials or what i cant otherwise obtain freely
Soulseek is my goto
I will usually buy vinyl or cds for artists that I listen to a lot. It has the additional benefit of giving you a hard copy of the data. But yeah, this is unfortunately the way.
Yeah, like support underdogs but be realistic, you cant pay for everything and everyone unless you’re unusally well-resourced so respect your own constraints where they exist.
And thats just music, are you planning on remaining internally consistent and limiting the breadth of access you could otherwise have across all the modalities like TV shows, movies, books, courses, audiobooks, etc??
Your consumption does not hurt them, the stuff you would pay for anyway just do that but i think i can live with myself for downloading Pink Flloyd’s discog or the complete cartoon series from childhood lol
I found a comfortable way to listen to music without torrenting. It relies heavily on a private company though, Bandcamp.
I spend $20 a month in albums and other than that listen to their shows and recommendations. I can’t pay for everything so I set a cap per month. I decided not to be 100% in control of what I listen to by listening to their radio shows (usually featuring an interview with an artist).
I’m slowly growing my private music library. Wish I had a friend or two to help. I’m happy to be supporting artists.
For sure. Most of my money goes to local artists. If I want to support a music artist, I will usually see them in concert and/or purchase merch. But Ticketmaster is making that difficult these days. I had to have this discussion with my mom regarding amazon kindle.
“AI companies are stealing everything anyway. Get your media while you can, because they don’t want it to exist anymore.”
Server (navidrome) + client (feishin, symphonium) + music (soulseek, bandcamp, ripping your old cds) + remote access (tailscale or something else if you’re savvy).
Absolutely Feishin for Navidrome behind tailscale. Its so good. Slskd for soulseek with Soularr to auto grab music is awesome also.
Jellyfin+SoulSeek does a great job for me. Absolutely free.
The real problem is getting the music
Is have a Spotify playlist of some 7000+ songs I want to have but finding each one individually is a nightmare. Are there ways to just put the list into some arr system and have it automatically torrented or pulled from Usenet or something like that?
Glad we’re stealing from people now. /s
Lidarr with Soularr for Slskd(Soulseek)
Op answer the following:
How do you usually listen to music? Not “I put on my headphones, fire up Winamp and go” but “I use curated playlists from Spotify” or “i listen to whole albums on youtube”.
What does private mean to you? What do you consider not private?
Although I would appreciate recommendation feed that’s private I know that’s impossible.
I basically download songs anytime I get a recommendation or hear it somewhere. I usually listen for a while or add to a playlist. Very simple use case.
Private means I know and things I choose know what I listen to and others don’t. I would also preferably like ownership of my music. I would consider not private something that uses my data for anything except necessities(no algo no selling)
I know this sounds stupid and pedantic, but what do you mean by ownership?
Where or how do you download?
E: recommendation isn’t off the table, you’ll just have to go about it in an unconventional way.
I know this sounds stupid and pedantic, but what do you mean by ownership?
Diff person here. Can’t speak for who you asked. Not stupid OR pedantic tho! For me, it means two things.
One, that the music cannot be taken away from me against my will. So no DRM! No s/w that can reach into my device and remove things, how it was happening with DRM audiobooks. The music must be Plain Old Files. That I can copy and backup. No special s/w. Oldschool CDs were like that. DRM-ed music is not like that.
Two, also means I have fairly paid the artist. Especially for smaller bands, or single individual musicians. If I like their shit enough to seek it out, I feel they deserve to get paid.
It’s both of those at once that’s harder than it should be. Easy enuf to get one, or the other, alone.
It’s not impossble tho. There are ways to have both, and I do it.
Doesn’t buying from bandcamp achieve both? You pay them all, and get a DRM free file.
Ownership as in its a file on my device, no DRM or whatever shit people have on files nowadays.
I download either bandcamp or sometimes from yt music.
Set up whatever arr piracy stack is going now and some kind of overlay network (vpn but not in the vernacular of “anonymizing proxy”) to play your files.
Pick a player that you like and use it.
Use a combination of rss and scripts to get recommendations.
Could you explain a little more on what you mean by rss and scripts to get recommendations. I’ve never really messed with something like that. Any recomemended feeds or sum to look at.
Oh yeah, you can also, if you’re the kind of person who would do this, just be caveman about it and build a physical media library. Learn how to rip and sync the files to your device and you’re ready to go.
CDs are the easiest because all you need is a cd drive and a computer. Records and tapes need their specific player and an audio interface (or one of those all in one newfangled players that have a usb on the back).
It’s pretty fun…
I use Navidrome with Feishin on GNU/Linux and it works well. Furthermore, you can also check out Soulseek (Nicotine+ on GNU/Linux).
navidrome + dsub2000 for android
If yt-dlp/Newpipe still works over a VPN then Spotube with ListenBrainz plugin is an option, but it’s extremely buggy and they’re working on a rewrite afaik. Or use another YT Music client, or download your music and use an offline player. If you have the time and resources to self-host that’s also an option of course.
