As per title, if you had to switch away from Spotify ASAP, what streaming service would you go with? Ideally something around the same price range, meaning the change won’t incur in extra expenses. Also good if the service does its job well: playing music and paying artists. Any feature parity with Spotify is a bonus, except podcasts, which don’t require a paid streaming service. Or audiobooks. Focus on music. No piracy either (it’s illegal). The more money going to artists, the better.
Edit: extra bonus points if it is not 'Murican! Also, piracy is very illegal!!!
Selfhosting is not piracy because you’re only streaming the albums you already bought and paid for. If you’re not down for buying CD’s or other physical media, or maybe you no longer have a disc drive, then you should be buying the lossless audio direct from the artists or via a service like Bandcamp. I just bought a few vinyls from Bandcamp and I had them to listen as to on all my devices (as lossless CD quality FLAC files) inside of a few minutes after purchase. Plex paired with plexamp on devices for ease of use. Replace with Jellyfish in a pinch. MPD might work, but you’d need to be better at networking than I am, also you’d need a steady internet connection at both ends.
Self-hosting is not piracy, it’s fair use. Piracy is when a fool that only bought a license to listen instead of buying the actual media decides they want to listen on another device.
Self-hosting is work, though. I cannot guarantee quality service, I don’t think. I mean, I do have an old laptop acting as a server, of sorts. Pi-hole and all. But I don’t use it for much else cause I don’t trust meself. Only a matter of time until I lose all files on server or something. Or suddenly unable to hear music on the go or whatever. I’d be more likely to have the files on my phone than to self-host
Yeah, I think self-hosting can be overkill for music, for most people most of the time. If you’re an average 2/3 device user like me, copying the files around isn’t too bad.
Either way though, +1 to both buying and ripping CDs, and buying from Bandcamp. It takes some effort, and isn’t as good in terms of trying new music. But it’s nice to have some limitations sometimes. Having almost every album and song right at your fingertips is great, but the amount of choice can be overwhelming.
I can’t say much because I mostly use Spotify too. But it’s also just nice to have local files as an option.