Apple Music isn’t the best streaming music service — it’s just the least annoying::Competitors like Spotify and YouTube Music may be your first choice for music on Android, but you might want to reconsider
I buy DRM free music to own it
I don’t understand how it would be convenient at all to have your whole collection just online, restricted to a single proprietary site/app. I do use musical streaming, but it’s for discovering new tracks. All the actual listening happens locally on my computer and player. I cannot afford to actually buy the music, but if I did, I probably would pay for the albums I listen to the most, not the whole library.
I listen to music and podcasts all day, like minimum of 4-5 hours a day. No way I could afford to do that if I was paying per item and not for the service.
Good for you. I buy/torrent music sometimes too. Streaming is popular because it’s convenient and the convenience is more valuable to many people than the benefits of “owning DRM free music”.
Your comment is entirely pointless and pretty fucking pretentious.
I’ll admit it sounded a little showy to me too, but a lot of the nicher things with their own benefits sound pretentious when just being said in plain wording. I like fountain pens because they’re pleasant to write with but are more expensive and less convenient. Always sounds pretentious just saying I like them and why if I don’t throw in the caveats like I did here.
There’s the chance he is trying to, of course. I try to assume the best these days for my own sake though
I don’t think his post is meant to be hostile. It’s not pointless, but it would add more of a discussion to elaborate on the topic.
On the topic of choosing to own (download (without DRM)) your music, one of the benefits is that it allows you to have all your music available in whichever music player (app/program/streaming service) you like. You can access the music while offline, without being required to pay some subscription fee. If downloading, it’s generally also very easy to switch between different players if you so desire to in the future. You can control the metadata (swap album art, edit track info, etc.) You can sometimes even use owned media in tandem with streaming services to put all your media in one place within a streaming service’s app/program. Usually, doing this requires less purchases/downloads to get all your media in one place, but still requires a sub.
On the topic of using Apple Music as a player… I’m not sure if it’s still this way, but you needed to use iTunes (on a PC!) to import local MP3 files to Apple Music, which, iTunes, love it or hate it, requires you to not only own a PC, but it has its limitations such as FLAC files being unsupported… That being said, Apple Music does provide a great convenience for many people and it’s often cheaper than legally purchasing all of your songs. You can even add your downloaded songs from a PC (but not locally from an android device for some reason??)
I prefer to own my music. For anyone who likes the idea but doesn’t know where to start, I can give some recommendations for convenience.
For music acquisition, use a legal website like Bandcamp to purchase your music, most of the money goes to Artists, compared to some other platforms. Alternatively you could pirate… (illegal! I don’t care if you pirate, but I’m not gonna write a tutorial.)
If you want to sync owned/downloaded files, use: SyncThing - free software that lets you automatically mirror file directories between your devices, syncing your libraries with no fees required. Available on Android/Win/Linux/Mac
For players, I recommend:
Android:
PowerAmp - trial & one time purchase, has theming support, massive customization options
Oto Music - lite version or one time purchase, supports downloading & embedding lyrics
PC:
MusicBee - free, has theming support, allows loading network files (local or remote)
Plenty of players available for different functional needs and/or aesthetics, but these are what I currently use.
On a thread discussing the various streaming options all of this information is entirely irrelevant. Managing a digital library is not appealing to 99% of people.
You may as well tell people to cook their own food in a thread discussing the various food delivery options.
Well put. I typically use 7digital and sometimes HDTracks. Bandcamp confused me but I need to give it another go.
Purchasing music also gives a much higher percentage of money to the artist compared to streaming platforms.
Retro Music is my favorite player for Android and Elisa for Linux (maybe Windows too).
I looked into that as I listened to my playlist most of the time. And then I realize nano.RIPE after 10 years still unable to be purchased outside iTunes Japan or Japanese speaking websites.
Uhmm it’s pretty clear to me.
He says that after 10 years “nano.RIPE” music still cannot be purchased outside Japan.
I guess his point is that sadly that is not always a solution (outside piracy) as sometimes you cannot actually buy certain music, but I am guessing is actually available to be played on the streaming subscription service.
