I have had YouTube Premium Music since it was launched. I uploaded nearly 15,000 MP3s at the time. Now that the family plan is $28 a month, what free alternatives are out there for music streaming?

  • Turgid Sturgeon
    41·
    20 hours ago

    If you go the route of downloading music or ripping from CDs, you absolutely do not need to stick with the over-inflated FLAC format. The files are absolutely massive, and you could easily convert them down to much smaller 192kbps MP3 (or AAC which is even better) and not notice any difference in sound quality. FLAC is for audio purists, and storage prices these days don’t really justify it in my opinion.

    As to where to buy music, try DRM-free sources like Bandcamp or even Amazon MP3. If you don’t want to pay for it, learn to use BitTorrent or even Usenet…both while using a good VPN, natch! You can even download from YouTube Music if you have the right tool (though it’ll probably come in Opus format which is fine if your player can handle it).