Changelog:
3/20/2026 - Added a brief paragraph about why streaming is bad now and fixed some clunky wording.
Welcome to your primer on a post-Spotify/Apple Music/Amazon Music/Youtube Music future. Shit sucks, so we fix it. A range of options from "I just need something new to sign up for" to "I'll just make my own" to "I'm cutting ties to the internet, fuck this", we've got it all. Note: I am not sponsored by any products mentioned, no affiliate links, etc. I just like this shit.
What Does That Even Mean?
Well, first up will be alternative services, ready to subscribe to and listen to music. If you just want a change, you can stop there. Then, there's self-hosting. More in-depth, but more control, without giving up the niceties of streaming, like updated metadata, not having to carry everything with you, and accessibility from a wide variety of devices. Finally the nuclear I'm-going-old-school-fuck-streaming option. It is what it says on the tin, just some suggestions on places to get whatever your preferred format of music is, as well as devices to play said music. Any other questions can be directed to me and I'll update this if anything of note comes about from it.
Okay, But Streaming Is Actually Great Though???
*long, wet fart noise*
Look, streaming music is more accessible than ever, but the experience of streaming music is at an all time low. Dead space takes up much of their interfaces and ads flood the area, while the subscriber dollars go to the biggest artists and sometimes funds the war economy. The musicians that make the art these platforms are based around are getting actively choked out as well. The major players have largely destroyed discoverability in favor of playlist placement and virality. Music streaming services widely report at least 30% of music uploaded each day is AI-generated, making the already limited discoverability an uphill battle for smaller artists. Prices keep going up without any real improvement to your experience as a listener. Music is greater than ever but streaming it has gone down the shitter. So, in leiu of burning down server farms, I will instead make sure everyone is aware that there are alternatives, we're not powerless.
The Less Bad of The Streamers
Not ready for a big change, but still wanting to do something? That's alright! I'll be focusing on two areas here: compensating artists (so artists can continue to make art) and avoiding AI (so they're not crowded out by slop). With those factors in mind, three platforms stand above the rest as strong contenders for your time: Deezer, Qobuz, and Bandcamp.
Deezer has been around for a minute (meaning nearly 20 years now), just plugging along. They've been consistently towards the top of lists regarding artist compensation per stream, which is a big plus in my book. On top of that, they've taken a pretty strong stance towards AI. All AI-generated tracks are labelled, will not be including in recommendations, and they proactively look for botted/fraudulent streams to make sure subscriber dollars go to real plays. They also have maintained a very pro-artist stance, clearly respecting and understanding concerns musicians have.
Qobuz will take the award for one of the worst names I've seen in a while, leading me to misspell it most of the time when looking for it. However, they're a pretty killer service overall. First, they offer streaming of their entire catalog (over 100M tracks according to them), which does cover every major artist I've looked for. I was going to point out that they're more expensive than alternatives, but that was only true back when Spotify regularly could be gotten for $5 a month, several price raises ago. They also offer a download store, so you can directly purchase your favorite albums and download them for whatever you want. I regularly use their download store for bigger artists (i.e. anyone I can't find on Bandcamp), can't complain whatsoever. They've also dedicated to a "human first" approach to their services, which to my eye is about as good as you can do on a modern platform.
Bandcamp is a love of mine. I fuck with the indies, the people making music in the garage, and while Bandcamp has larger artists that have made a home on there, there's some real freaks too (affectionately). I would call it a store first, and a music streaming platform second with some neat features. Purchases are king, and you can stream or download any purchases from their app or site. Those purchases can include things like shirts, CDs, Vinyls, Casettes, and so on. Typically, about 75-85% of the purchase price goes directly to the artist, well above any streams revenue, and they host every-other-month Bandcamp Fridays where they forgo their fee, bringing it to roughly ~95% of sticker price going to the artist. There's also the ability to subscribe to artists if they've enabled that, giving access to all their releases. A newer offering they've introduced are Bandcamp Clubs, a "subscribe to own" new curated release each month, a listening party, and sorted by genre (jazz, dance, club, and heavy). Best yet, they've wholly banned AI generated music.
Your Own Streaming Platform, With Blackjack
This is my sweet spot. I run my own streaming service, or more technically I self-host a music server which I remotely connect to, for me and me alone, and it's great. One big note before I dive into this: kill the cop in your head. The internet is a post-scarcity environment. Support artists directly where you can, buy music and merch, see shows, etc. That being said, piracy is encouraged here. If you don't fuck with that, that's up to you, but I'm not going to act like it's hard or unreasonable given how things are.
Anyway, back to the actual details. I'll describe what factors need to be considered when talking about streaming your own collection (however you got it), and then detail my own. First up is on or off site, a.k.a. does that computer sit in your house or do you pay someone else to run it? Either is an option, it's mostly down to your comfort level tinkering with tech and your willingness to have a device sitting somewhere (generally) sipping electricity.
On-site has some strong pros: you control it, it's your computer, nobody can tell you shit. It will also almost always have the lowest latency unless you have remarkably bad internet. So it's good performance on whatever you want to throw it on. However, it is also your computer; if it breaks or something fucks up, that's your problem. No tech support here, sorry. If you have spotty internet, as I have in the past, it can also be temperamental and connectivity can drop in ways that a third party host wouldn't. When I'm talking about a computer, by the way, I encourage you to use whatever you have or can get for cheap. We're talking about Raspberry Pi's, business surplus computers (often fantastic deals with great hardware), or if you're a hoarder like me a NAS. As long as it is a computer that you can control what goes on it, you can probably get a music server on it.
Brief sidenote: Networking. When it comes to on-site stuff, you have to muck about in networking a bit. It's gross, and I don't wish it upon anyone, but it's a part of the price. The easiest solution I've found is using something like tailscale to create a VPN tunnel which you directly connect devices to, rather than leaving things open to the internet at large. Always play on the safer side and defer to the experts you find on blogs and StackOverflow rather than thinking it's probably fine.
Off-site has its strengths as well. Often times it's significantly simpler to get running, at least if you use a service like PikaPods or maybe a VPS you can install docker on. It will take some patience with the tech stuff, but you won't have to worry about hardware uptime or correctly configuring networking for the most part, they'll create an IP you can probably just point something to. The main downside here is that you probably will be limited on storage, or have to pay for that separately. Varies wildly depending on what sort of provider you go with, if they're storage focused, etc, but something to keep in mind if you intend to have a lot of music on your service.
The Server Software is a point of contention. There are generally a couple of camps you'll see them fall into. The best support, from what I've seen, is going to be the subsonic-compatible platforms, which has several more well known names like Navidrome, Gonic, Lightweight Music Server, but the options are really endless. They all generally are pretty low on hardware requirements so they're easy to throw on a cheap VPS or some eWaste you saved. There's the more general media streamers that also have good music support, like Plex and Jellyfin. They'll have higher hardware requirements as a baseline, but are still plenty manageable if you get some government/business computer surplus. They also have the added benefit of handling shows, movies, and the like if you want to go full self-hosted media streaming. For the real freaks with a penny to spend, there's Roon. Can't really say much other than I've heard it's good but it's also expensive. This handles how you're streaming the music out, but you need a compatible app/software for playing it.
The Player Software is more up to personal taste. If it's compatible with your server software and you like it, fantastic, godspeed. Don't fret about having every feature possible unless you think you need it. Moving from one to another is relatively low cost as it's just pointing a new app to your server you set up, everything is still there. If you go the subsonic-compatible route, you have a ton of options. There's several for Android and iOS, as well as Roku, Sonos, Desktops, even browser streaming. If you're thinking about Jellyfin or Plex, you're probably best off with FinAmp/PlexAmp respectively. They're players purpose built for working with their services and have some nice-to-have features because of it. You can't go wrong searching for "[subsonic/plex/jellyfin/whatever] app"and perusing the results, worst case scenario.
Finally, my setup in particular. I own and maintain a Synology DS220+ (no longer in production, seems to be replaced by the DS224+), which hosts (among other things) Tailscale and a Docker instance running Gonic. That Gonic server pretty seamlessly handles over 1TB+ of music files, largely FLACs. I almost entirely stream to my cell phone, so on that I run Symfonium, which is compatible with a stupid amount of streaming options. Its a remarkably flexible player, if that's your speed. Since they're my own files, I just maintain a folder of tracks that I run through MusicBrainz Picard before adding to the server, for metadata completeness and embedded album art; shit to make it look nice and easy to organize.
This should be plenty to get you on your way if you want to go the self-hosted route. Feel free to reach out with questions as this route can feel overwhelming. The nice part is that there's guide after guide on how to get through it, and dozens of communities for picking apart errors if things pop up. More effort, but very rewarding, and still get to enjoy the convenience of having everything (that you downloaded to your server) at your fingertips.
Actually, I'm Done With The Internet
You're done with streaming, self-hosting is for nerds, and you just want music? Alright, you could be nicer about it, but I've got you. You want a straightforward experience and I can't blame you. There's two main options when talking about your music on your device: Digital Audio Players (DAPs, modern iPods) and Physical Media Players (CD players, Casette Players, Vinyl players, etc.)
DAPs are something I see people picking up a lot lately. Reduces dependence on your phone, no data needed for streaming, just plop a bunch of music on a thing and go. I almost went that route myself. This describes a wide field of electronics, so I will give a brand recommendation, a budget friendly list to check out, and some things to keep in mind. First, for all audio devices, I trust FiiO. FiiO has been around for a while now and they've got products in every audio category, but for now we focus on their Music Players. Most of their traditional phone style (full body screen) devices run Android so they can run whatever local music app suits your preferences, including my previously mentioned favorite Symfonium. Their smaller iPod style devices with front facing buttons tend to run some sort of little media player OS but it's not much different from what you'd expect with an iPod interface. They tend to be a bit more expensive as a brand but they're durable, reliable, and have high quality DACs (digital audio converters, or why some headphone can barely get volume out of cheap media devices, sound like shit when they don't on others, etc.). Here's a list of budget options, but feel free to shop around as well, new brands and devices pop up all the time. Some things to keep in mind when shopping around include:
- How big is in the built-in storage? Is it expandable? How much can it be expanded to?
- How long is the battery rated for?
- Does it have Wi-fi capability if you still want the option of streaming a new release or podcast?
- Does it support all modern file formats (FLAC/AAC/MP3/WAV) and not some weird proprietary shit? (A rare problem nowadays but still worth keeping in mind)
- Does it support Bluetooth if you have wireless headphones?
Physical Media Players need two things: the player and the physical media to play (obviously). The media players needed depending on your media of choice, but there are high quality options available for casette players, CD players, and vinyl players. Some do have niceties like SD/microSD card readers and bluetooth, but you'll need to check the product listings for those. This is dependent on your needs, but for physical media you're primarily needing to concern yourself with a.) does it have a decent audio processor (so things don't sound awful), and b.) if portable, then does it have a good battery, Wi-fi, Bluetooth, etc. The options are nearly endless, so I'm leaving you mostly on your own to search around here. The only thing I can personally vouch for is the DigitNow! Portable Cassette Player (which is fine), and anything by FiiO.
Finding physical media is pretty easy, but some places are more friendly than others, or are going to be better for anything that isn't currently lining the Walmart media shelves. For finding specific releases or formats, the be-all-end-all is Discogs. Their marketplace is where a lot of music shops list their stuff digitally, and you can easily filter down to specific formats, artists, release variants, whatever. If you're looking for something specific, it's almost certainly here. It has nice features if you sign up for an account like a watchlist and notifications on new releases. As previously mentioned Bandcamp also has a ton of physical media being sold by the artists themselves, so the money goes straight to them. Don't be afraid to check out local places too, even my small-to-mid sized city has a couple of holes in the wall that sell vinyls, crate digging is a well loved tradition and a great way to find new stuff to check out. Of course there are also resellers on eBay and other auction sites, but I would recommend sticking to dedicated music platforms when possible.
Final Thoughts
That covers all the major things, I think. I'll make note and update if anything gets added or changed, but this comes from a good decade plus of caring about this stuff so I feel like it generally works. Good luck out there, music is for everyone, all art is political, and support artists directly when and where you can.