Deezer (France 🇫🇷) Qobuz (France 🇫🇷) SoundCloud (Germany 🇩🇪) IDAGIO (Germany 🇩🇪)
There’s also ~/Music/MP3
Did you meant ~/Music/Opus?
No. Because my mp3 directory was created long before 2012. And the actual data formats inside it are irrelevant. :)
I’m thinking of self hosting my music, but I’m going to miss the discoverability of Spotify for new songs
When I used reddit, I had a multi-reddit mix that combined all the big music subreddits. Then on Fridays I would review that since new music drops then.
I feel like it could be replicated with an RSS feed
Reiterating for the millionth time: Spotify is European. You are obviously allowed to not like them for other reasons, but calling them non-European is simply untrue.
Yes. It’s my go-to example for how we don’t need US Americans for capitalists to fuck us over and spend all of their considerable influence to make the world worse.
Any alternative from europeen countries thst do not kwep defending Israel?
Piratebay is Swedish of it helps
It should be said that Deezer is owned mostly by Russian oligarch Len Blavatnik.
To me what matters most is not who owns it - on the grounds that all oligarchs are bastards - but where the HQ and operations are.
Written on the American Nazi platform Substack. The irony.
After getting Qobuz two months ago, my listening habits have changed; I listen to albums now instead of songs, and the quality provided by Qobuz is absolutely amazing!
You’re not wrong to call them out, they have a plan to migrate:
Without meaning to, we would be contradicting the spirit of this newsletter. Something similar happened when we chose to host Choosing Europe on Substack. Regarding that subject we are still working on our own solution which is getting closer. It will likely be ready later in February or in early March.
I hate to say it, because I know people are not a huge fan of the company, but Spotify is also European. They’re Swedish.
That’s mentioned in the article?
To be clear from the beginning, Spotify was founded in Sweden but now operates within financial structures that place it firmly inside the global Big Tech ecosystem.
Maybe article but not in the post
Whats up with the downvotes? I was just saying what i think the 1st comment meant. I thought this wasnt as negative place as Reddit, but i guess i was wrong
You get downvoted because Spotify has no place on the list of European alternatives despite it being based in Sweden for the reasons mentioned in the article, and yet you highlight them? Plus who cares about downvotes as there is no profile bound karma system.
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True, but they have tons and tons of american investors and partners. They are firmly in that grip and also a shit company partnering with military surveillance tech as well as trying to stop paying their artists by stealing their work and making AI slop with it.
Nestle is also European and yet one of the worst companies in the world.
Just because a company is European, doesn’t mean they aren’t a horrible company that nobody should support or buy a single thing from.
Your client might have glitched out. It seems like you posted the same comment four times.
Thanks. Eternity hasn’t been updated in 8 months, so maybe it is a bit buggy. I will go delete the extras.
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I store my music locally
Do you have good sources for buying digital albums apart from bandcamp?
I’ve been using uk.7digital.com for multiple years. Quality is great, I can download FLAC, and I find their prices tend to be a bit lower than Qobuz (at least for the music I tend to listen to).
There’s been an occasion or two where the music I bought was no longer available (they don’t hold the distribution rights in perpetuity), but I download it right away and keep good backups locally (same as I would with my old CD rips because CDs don’t last forever either).
I accept that, as with anything digital, I’m purchasing temporary right of access and take steps to secure it in case that access is removed or the company goes out of business.
[Edit: nothing against Qobuz, I’ve just been happy with 7digital for years and I don’t see Qobuz offering me a compelling reason to switch or 7digital offering me a compelling reasons to leave.]
MP3Caprice is Ukrainian and apparently a bit dodgy in that it doesn’t pay the royalties it should. But I’ve bought from there in the past. These days I would use 7digital, although it’s more expensive
I’m mostly a pirate but there have to be some internet stores left around. Try looking up the names of the songs you’re interested in + “digital” maybe you’re find a good site.
I love Qobuz, pays artists well and its pricing is good
Same. It’s what I use, I love that you can also BUY music though. Hard to recommend because their user experience needs a lot of work. (Eg. Can’t even change the language. Since I’m in Germany I have no choice but to use German for the ui)
I have option to change language in the android app at least. But I agree, their user experience could definitely use some work.
Someone mentioned it the other day, I switched and I’m happy with it so far. The main benefit for me is the native Linux app. It’s so much less cluttered than Spotify. Android/Android Auto also work without issues. Good library at a good price.
The music catalogue was shit for me, missing a ton of music.
ah I imported my 1.2k Spotify library (mostly rock/electronic/pop but maybe a bit generic) and it only couldn’t find about 30 of them.
Tidal?
The author assesses both Tidal and Spotify to be no longer under European influence:
To be clear from the beginning, Spotify was founded in Sweden but now operates within financial structures that place it firmly inside the global Big Tech ecosystem.
Similarly, Tidal was founded in Norway, but it now holds a marginal European market share of less than 1% and is controlled by American capital.
Both now operate within financial and corporate structures that place them outside the European sphere of influence. The cultural and economic centre of gravity is no longer European for these companies.
To be clear from the beginning, Spotify was founded in Sweden but now operates within financial structures that place it firmly inside the global Big Tech ecosystem.
What does this mean? That a company cannot be publically traded to be considered European? Given how the article doesn’t extend on this at all is telling.
To clarify: Spotify has two headquarters, one in Luxembourg, another in Sweden. The executive chairman is still the founder, Daniel Ek. Other two key people are also Swedish.
Spotify is about as European as a music streaming service can be. If you don’t like it for other reasons, that’s another discussion, but let’s not bring 100% lies about who is european and who is not into this community, please.
Thanks for the clarification! However, so far, I have not yet found an good enough replacement to Spotify…
I tried Deezer and I might stick with it. Out of my whole music library it was missing a very small percentage of songs that TBH I don’t really care about. It sounds good and it doesn’t push podcasts down your throat. The only issue I encountered after about 2 weeks of using it is that the UX is not as good as in the Spotify app. I can live with that if that means I won’t contribute to the wealth of their CEO who’s slowly turning evil. I love the recommendations algorithm. It doesn’t feed you the same songs over and over again. In Spotify it feels like you’re in a constant loop. Open the mix and it regurgitates the same songs you’ve been listening in the past month. Scroll down and you see the recently played. Open discover weekly and listen to AI slop. Deezer flags albums that might be AI generated garbage and that’s another plus for me.
Qobuz is not available in my country (Romania) because I assume they just dont want money. Man, I hate geo-locking so much. It’s one of the dumbest things in the world. Just shut up and take my money!
I tried Deezer and Tidal but I missed features I use all the time with Spotify… Namely the ability to control another device, casting and multiple users casting to the same smart device. With these, it makes it quite hard to use alternatives in a shared home. The catalogue is essentially the same.
As someone who switched to qobuz a few months ago, if you want to switch stick with it for at least 2 months because while it is missing some core features over Spotify and Tidal, I think I found I enjoy music more without those features. And I don’t miss them as much anymore.
Yeah indeed! much better the whole albums instead of the endless spotify music diarrhea. Their music picks and magazine are great as well
Really glad I’ve found Qobuz.
Yeah, I have come to look forward to fridays when most new music comes out and to browse it on the home page! On spotify I never really listened to new music unless it got really popular.
I use the family version of Qobuz. Comes to CAD $3.20/M per user, or CAD $38.40/Y per user.
They pay the artist super well, sound quality is good.
Some songs are missing, but can found in their store purchasing in other countries (for example, I not find some albums in their Canadian store, but I could find them in their U.S. store).
There is also AD free YouTube for missing songs. Or but them from Bandcamp during Bandcamp Fridays (for max artist revenue)
I find qobuzs song suggestions to be subpar to my liking and the music keeps buffering for only ten seconds compared to other services that load the whole song. Uk has pretty spotty signal so I end with lots of interruptions. Any advice on how to Improve?
That’s fair you ask how to improve the signal. You could try to either bring down the music quality, or to download the songs.
Other than that, do what you can to avoid anything that will slow down your bandwidth.
Navidrome.
Been self-hosting it for a while now and love it. Try Tempus if you’re looking for a good Android client app.
Kinda related question: is there an EU version of Bandcamp?
I’d like to suppport smaller artists, and bandcamp’s business model is great (I can stream an album before purchase)
I buy a lot from Bandcamp. https://subvert.fm/ is supposedly an alternative but it’s not open yet and I’m not sure it is EU-only.
I’ve been using Deezer free for a good while now but I’m getting kinda tired of it. I also read that they, like a lot of companies, have some problematic ties higher up the chain.
Yarrr.
