I’ve had an Apple Music subscription for years and use it A LOT. I tried some alternatives (Tidal, Sirius, and maybe one other?) and wasn’t super happy with the options.
Is there a service that people recommend that is good, like $10/month or less, maybe gives better pay to artists? I’d like to spend on a better company if possible too. If Apple has enough money to buy gold trinkets for elected officials they probably don’t need more from me.
No. Buy their CDs and rip them into something like Jellyfin.
That’s not realistic. I have a CD collection, but that took decades and thousands of dollars. Plus I had access to Columbia House (if you know, you know) and a robust used market. That doesn’t exist anymore.
I don’t think a person who’s sensitive to $11 a month is going to be interested in a collection of $25 CDs.
While I don’t disagree with your comment, this part:
isn’t as bad as you might think, at least where I live. Used CD sales are the highest they’ve been in over 20 years. Sure, it’s not like it was at its peak, but it’s coming back in style again. The rest of your comment is definitely true though.
HiFi services are more like 16€ a month, ish, which is like 180 euros a year. 5 years and you already spent over 800 euros on nothing. My last skirmish with these services taught me to buy when I can and pirate the rest. Not like artists were earning anything relevant from my subscription anyway.
A $10 a month streaming service without ads that is fair to artists isn’t realistic either to be fair
Exactly this. A music collection is expensive. Even more so if your tastes change over time.
This is a challenge. I’ve grown on hip-hop and rap, and finding the media is a struggle. For example, the first 'Run the Jewels" album is basically unavailable on CD.
I’m thinking of the other end of the equation: I don’t listen to a lot of the artists I liked twenty or thirty years ago. I’d be annoyed if I spent a bunch of cash on their albums only to have them be coasters now.
I think Qobuz and Bandcamp have the ability to stream what you’ve purchased, as well as downloading to own. So in the interim you can still stream, and the option to self-host or just have it on your local devices is a bonus that could be explored later.
Buy used. OP can probably pick up five used CDs a month and stay under budget.
Of course the artist isn’t paid here, so you might as well pirate at this point.
Pirate flac files and burn your own CD’s.
Interesting, I do the reverse and go to the library and rip CDs to FLAC.
Yeah, eBay is a great for used cds & dvds
The robust used market does still exist. eBay, and Discogs should be all you need. Bonus points if you have a local record store.
I feel like that’s a couple levels of effort more than I’d like. As good as it would be to support the artists by buying CDs I don’t want to buy more plastic and clutter the house. I could also do the same from the library, but that’s not supporting artists either.
That is what we did before streaming made us lazy.
And I just had to go and remove the CD player from my old car. Sigh…
You can load the song onto your phone and play via Bluetooth or aux cable.