I’m going insane. I cannot for the life of me find a suitable way to listen to music privately. I’m on iOS, and I don’t know whether to just stick to Apple Music or give up on music in general (I tried, TRIED to go local, but all the apps are shitty). Any way to listen to music and not have your data compromised? Should I just stick to Apple Music and hope that laws change (maybe something like EU’s DMA?)

Edit: Hey all! First of all, thank you so much for all the recommendations! I’ve discovered so many great apps and tools I didn’t even know existed (and it has also brought my hopes up for privacy in general). Even though it’s still not perfect, I’ve been using foobar2000 on iOS, downloading music I find (I’m still using Apple Music for discovery, but will probably stop when my subscription ends this month). For desktop I’m using HyperPipe, which although a little buggy at times is so awesome! One thing I do miss about this system is the lack of lyrics. Apple Music has such a beautiful UI when it comes with lyrics, but you can’t have it all when it comes to privacy it seems. Thanks for the amazing discussion! I’m so far loving Lemmy ;)

71 points
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I’ll be honest, the only way to listen to music privately is to download it. (And using an opensource music player)

There are Github repositories with CLI programs to download complete Spotify playlists with Youtube and also download their metadata.

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23 points

there are also CDs and vinyl 🤷

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13 points

Whoa, you can store music on CDs? That’ll save me a lot of bandwidth!

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13 points

something brilliant I’ve found with modern vinyl is a lot of them come with a download card so you can get lossless files.

now if they would just fucking advertise which ones that would be great.

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5 points

This. There was music before the internet.

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7 points

I wrote a few scripts to automate this entire process for me:

https://zemmy.cc/post/25500?scrollToComments=true

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1 point

Any opensource music players for iOS you recommend? I found Flacbox which seems alright (a little buggy but you can’t win them all, can you?)

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7 points
2 points

I just use the Music app. With the privacy protections turned up and Apple Music disabled. All it does is ply my aac files without sending data back to Apple.

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2 points

I’m not sure that’s totally true. The iOS ecosystem is very intertwined. It’s possible that the Music app isn’t sending data to Apple, but it is likely sharing it with whatever Apple calls the launcher, which likely shares it with Apple (or shares it with Siri or another app, which shares it with Apple).

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1 point
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Its not opensource as far as i know, but i use documents5 (or 6 now?) by readdle and its been p good for music

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54 points

Yeah. Buy it directly from the artist then throw it all into a self hosted service like plex or jellyfin.

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15 points

Yup. Buy CDs, vinyl or digital from Bandcamp or from the artist direct and then host it on Plex.

I’ve thought about trying jellyfin but Plexamp is just so nice that I don’t think I could leave it.

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2 points

There is finamp Im told but yeah plexamp is goated

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4 points

If you only need music streaming, then a service like Navidrome may be better.

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1 point

Fair enough. Ive never used navidrome

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4 points

There’s also navidrome, if you only want to stream music.

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28 points

I use a jellyfin server plus finamp for ios plus totally legal downloaded music that was 100% legally obtained.

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5 points
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+1 for Jellyfin with Finamp (or Fintunes). Also what I use and it’s fabulous.

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27 points

Do people not just download music anymore?

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10 points

I’m 26, and don’t know anyone, myself included, who purchases and downloads music to any significant degree. Essentially everyone I know just uses streaming platforms.

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8 points

Sounds terrible for privacy.

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16 points

Respectfully, I think you may be drastically overestimating how much average people care about that.

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5 points
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Part of my job is traveling by air, so I got a $30ish sandisc mp3 player with a 200+gb sd card. I have a bunch of music and sometimes podcasts on there. Saves my phone battery, has zero ads, and as a bonus it has fm radio for surfing the stations below as they fade in and out every minute or so.

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1 point
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5 points

He didn’t say anything about purchasing…

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2 points

to be fair, to buy albums off sites like bandcamp, cutting out greedy multinational media conglomerates and give the money to the ppl actually working on it (yeah, i know, fees, welcome to distribution) and getting basically every (losslees/hr) codec in return for “name your price”-conditions makes it questionable to pirate some indie album to save like three bucks.

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3 points

Wow, they got your generation good. I’m over here listening to flac files and mp3s I ripped in 2003.

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3 points

This is always surprising to me. I can understand streaming video due to their high file sizes, but audio (even FLACs) is a lot smaller in general. The only reason I use spotify sometimes is to discover new stuff.

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0 points

I have my music library that I listen to, to which I add songs by getting them from youtube (it’s good enough for my cheap on the go earphones). Sometimes I tune into radio stations that offer nonstop music (like stubru tijdloze).

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25 points

I still buy CDs. And back then up to play in my truck. And rip them.

I still think OWNING media is a good idea. No privacy issues at all.

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16 points

Most of the stuff I listen to isn’t mainstream and the band are on Bandcamp. It’s great being able to buy the FLAC version right away.

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7 points
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https://daily.bandcamp.com/features/bandcamp-fridays-update

it’s worth noting that the first friday of each month they usually forgo their cut so more money goes to the artists.

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7 points

Always this, never let physical copies die. They can’t revoke shit legally bought and personally archived

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2 points

Vinyl has gotten so big at this point (and is also extremely profitable relative to streaming), that it’s not in any danger at all.

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4 points

Vinyl is damn expensive.

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