The reason I gave up on MP3’s and subscribed to Spotify was because Spotify was easy. I’ve been listening “Iron Maiden - Empire of the Clouds” song every day and like a week ago, its removed. This was the last straw for me. Right now I’m trying to find “Stremio” of the music world. Can someone assist?
Key features I’m looking for:
- Synchronization between devices
- Offline play
- Playlist support
- Both desktop and mobile apps
- Wide music library (optional if I will upload music)
- Lyrics (optional)
Update: thanks to everyone who shared their solutions 🙏
I’ve been downloading tons of my Spotify music using spotdl and sticking it on Plex, which kinda accomplishes most of what you want. I then organize it with lidarr. Spotdl doesn’t actually download from Spotify but it uses Spotify metadata to tag files after matching with and downloading from YouTube music, it might just use youtube-dl/p under the hood but being able to give it a Spotify playlist, artist, or album url from Spotify makes it super convenient. For some artists I just download the entire artist in one go.
Now this is what I’ve been looking for!
I like to DJ sometimes and I typically just create playlists for sets I want to do and listen to them over and over to get familiar / play around with the order / discover new tracks that fit by letting Spotify make suggestions.
It’s a pain to then have to go find all those tracks manually, so this sounds perfect for my usecase.
Wow this is gold. Thanks
I don’t know if there exists a solution with all your requirements. You could host your own music library via Plex or something, and aquire stuff via lidarr but this doesn’t have the instant availability of Spotify.
I’d probably use ViMusic (android) if we didn’t have a family apple music sub going. It basically uses the YouTube music backend. Super easy to set up and use, has on-device playlist and download support. I don’t think it does synchronisation though.
What’s the bitrate gonna be on ViMusic though – is it whatever is on actual YouTube video uploads? I imagine that would be very lossy. I could be wrong. If it was ~320kbps I’d be all over it. That’s what I’m looking for really. Short of my current solution, which is Soulseek > cloud service storage > CloudBeats (Android app) for stuff I want decent quality of, and Spotify adfree using XManager for discovery and lower quality listening.
Most songs are between 130 and 160kbps
Ah thanks for letting me know. Not ideal
I think YouTube music is different to actual YouTube but I’m not exactly sure. You can always just try it and see if it’s good enough.
why not buy the album and then use it locally on your device? vlc runs pretty much everything and you could fit thousands of songs while offline (could even remove the gsm/wifi/bluetooth from a phone running some FOSS os and turn it into your offline media device). or just get a cd player for $1 at a thrift store, offline, private, full access
thrift stores sell albums for $1 and there are a few sites that sell new music to be downloaded for cheap
Can you even buy DRM free music these days?
yeah not sure. are there ways to rip a drm physical album to audio file?
There are ways to rip physicsl media but they break the encryption which is ‘illegal’.
I meant more just having control of the actual files when buying from places like Amazon or ITunes rather than just being given library access to the songs for so long until that company loses the license and deletes them from your library.
exactly
On bandcamp! If I want to support artists, this is the site I always go to. And yt-dlp works also great on bandcamp when I’m not feeling so generous ;)
iBroadcast lets you upload your music and listen to it anywhere - phone, browser, or offline access. I have like 42,000 songs and I’ve been using it for years. It’s awesome.
To get the mp3s, I still use the website that’s often referenced in old /mu/ memes/instructions.
I’m pretty sure it hits all your features - I’m not sure about lyrics though.
Hey that sound too good to be true, no ads and a free tier? Amazing
Idk if it’s actually open source, but they seem to be going on the open source financial model: make an awesome thing and then survive on the generosity of people with money who appreciate it.
My setup is lidarr+airsonic. This setup fulfills all the requirements you listed. The webplayer is really good and you can use free apps to stream your library on mobile devices. Highly recommend “substreamer” for iOS and android. To access my library at home, I use Twingate (Zero Trrust Access VPN that uses the QUIC protocol and it’s lightning fast). Also, the mobile app allows for offline playback and has cool playlist builder features.
Tidal-dl on your phone using sharable links on tidal. Then ftp your flacs to a Plex server. It’s all in order with artwork that way and is super easy to do
Then use Plexamp
It’s easier to install streamrip (beta version) on the server directly. That way, you can download music directly to the server and skip the whole ftp part.
The easiest thing to do is probably something like YouTube Music revanced and/or Spotube.
yt-dlp -x -f 251 https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=9CWTig2kBKE
I upload all my music to a selfhosted Jellyfin server. Finamp is a great Android/iOS app for Jellyfin that has offline play.
What’s the usual cost for self hosting a server? Also, is there some way I can use Google Drives/OneDrive/Mega as storage solution for these services?
Likely very cheap, you just have to buy all of the hardware first. I’ve got a raspberry pi b+ (the 2012 one) that I’ve previously used to host my music.
I have a RockPro64 and 2TB SSD connected with USB. I measure it at around 5,5W so in a month thats ~4 kWh electricity. For storage I think its not feasible to host it on a cloud, see https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/administration/storage/
Tidal-Dl/Soulseek + Navidrome works for me
This is great, but you should consider setting up Plex if you are downloading from tidal. I say this because the file structures are the same and Plex has an awesome app called Plexamp now
Plex shitty account system can suck my ass. I always prefer open source stuff and Navidrome has a few really nice clients on Android
Use deezer. I’ve been on them for many years and it’s just like Spotify without the social media shit.
Good looking apps etc. It’s also French so no bullshit around privacy.
This is not piracy though but it’s such a good service that I’m paying for it.
It’d also French so no bullshit around privacy
Lol no 😂
The was an app a couple years ago called Freezer, which was cracked Deezer with HQ playback and offline downloading. It shut down a while ago, and I’ve been looking out for a replacement ever since. It was perfect.
It should still be possible because deemix, free-mp3-download etc. still grab from Deezer afaik
I’m sorry to hijack this thread, but does anyone know of any other mp3 players that work with foobar2000 other than classic ipods? I would need lossless support too, either ALAC or FLAC or something.
Fiio has some pretty solid options for this. I really enjoy the Android mp3 player I picked up from them.
Never heard of this, thanks for the suggestion
Does it work eith Foobar? Does it support lossless?
Yes the players support lossless/flac and LDAC blue tooth codecs. I have foobar loaded onto the android player. I also use Qobuz/Roon. I like the auto playlists that roon generates and I can control different zones in the house with different Roon endpoints. I like qobuz for the detailed write ups and I can download high res files so they’re available offline.
The m15s was on sale for a bit at apos.audio. I got it because I liked the options to bypass battery /increase gain when plugged in. Also has 3 different output options -2.5mm, 3.5mm, and 4.4mm
I also have the device that only functions as a blue tooth player, which is nice in the car.
Glad to answer any other questions you’ve got.
Thanks man! I’ll likely review this on the weekend. I appreciate the offer to answer questions. This is super helpful.
Plexamp is a great Plex music front end if you already have a Plex server with music.
I much prefer to download music as flac and keep them local but i have 2 issues.
Finding new musis is hard because i am rarely exposed to it.
Music i like tends to be more obscure and harder to find a flac download for.
Ive started to use Spotify this year for those reasons but i hate it. I would love an alternative.
Take a look at Musicroamer
you type in a favorite artist and it uses the spotify recommendation stuff to find similar artists
if you find one that sounds nice then you can then create a branch of artist that are similar to them
(probably a horrible explanation, just mess about with it for a minute and you’ll get an idea how it works)I’ve personally used it to find quite a few new favorites since ditching Spotify in favor of a self hosted Navidrome server
as for FLAC downloads check out Qobuz, which has unlimited DL plans
alternatively if you would rather sail the seas, search up Firehawk52 for a guide
I use Spowlo in my Android phone to download the songs. There’s an offline music player known as Harmonoid which fetches lyrics over the internet. It’s available for both Android and Windows.
On mobile; Soundbound is the new Spotiflyer and recently still worked for me
Is it on f-droid?
think it is