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 ;)
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.
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?)
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.
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).
I wrote a few scripts to automate this entire process for me:
Have a copy of all your music and use syncthing if apple allows it that is. Otherwise get a deegoogled android running grapheneOS
Getting/syncing music isn’t really a major problem for me, a decent audio player (with minimal features such as a queue and a decent UI) is what I’m trying to find.
VLC?
I feel like all the answers are so far beyond what I do. Basically VPN to Invidio.us, record with Audio Hijack, put on my phone, and play on VLC. Curious what all the elite privateers think?
Why vpn you invidio.us? Why not directly? Invidio.us acts as the middleman to yt anyway, right?
E: autocorrect correction.
Why record with an app? Some invidious insurances allow downloading. There’s a drop-down menu on the video page.
Setup a Koel instance at a host of your choice. Upload your music to it and stream from that. See https://koel.dev/
If you want a streaming service, you could try HyperPipe. It’s an alternative frontend to YT Music. There’s also BeatBump, but it doesn’t really work.
If you wanted to go local (which I recommend), have you tried foobar2000? It’s proprietary, but I trust it and it does its job very well. No ads, no data collection at all, and it plays just about every audio format you’ll normally come across (apart from MIDI files). You can also customise it with skins, sync over FTP, and play internet radio streams.
First of all, I love this thread as I keep finding new stuff I’ve never heard about. HyperPipe is awesome and it eases my anxiety that there are still private options for music. For foobar, the iOS app is pretty snappy, though it’s missing a queue feature. A feature as simple as that is kind of a deal breaker for me. Any hope that there’ll be future updates to the iOS app?
I don’t think you should expect any privacy on an Apple device
Im on a Jailbroken iPhone with all Apple network requests blocked with AdGuard and no Appleid.
How to Sideload apps, How to Jailbreak, Jailbreak Megathread. AdGuard Pro .ipa. My Blocklst Lists. The lists are Very aggressive, I suggest you to maintain a Whitelist. For getting apps without an Apple ID, check out some sources, repo’s and telegram channels Here.
Honestly, I’d trust a vanilla iPhone over that hacked together mess you’ve got going there.
You may be right if you are not as concerned about privacy and being able to not rely on the App Store for everything. I can install any app that is not in the App Store. Ex: new encryption laws come out like in the UK and all Matrix clients are removed from the App Store. I can still download them because I don’t rely on the App Store.
