DeGoogle Yourself

Reality check here. If morals or personal philosophy means the most to you, then self hosting is really the only honest choice, assuming you then buy merch from artists. If features and library size are most important then you probably need Spotify. All the other worthwhile options might come with a good USP but they're usually flawed in comparison to Spotify.

Screw AI music, but it is on every platform. Spotify is just a victim of its success in this regard.

Edit: not a fanboi btw, just a dad with a family who likes to use Spotify. I have to pay for YT premium as well so the kids don't get ADs on their stupid iPhones. If the YT music app wasn't so shit I'd dump Spotify and make everyone switch, proving my point.

This figure mentions Spotify on a side note. You must be joking.

I just use OuterTune for YT Music. It works and it is less sus than ReVanced YT Music

if only deezer didn't have data breaches

Can't ungoogle myself this time. YT music has probably the best catalog of all and it's easily moddable

Some of these services don't offer themselves in turkey (tidal)

I tend to wear a special hat that allows me to consume music in any format or device I like.

and then go donate to, or purchase music directly from the artists that I like.

Is there a way to get a list of all the songs I like on spotify for archival purposes? Not the file, just a list. Like a shopping list.

This graphic seems to put Spotify in a "less shit" category than the other big players based on national origin or something.

From a quality and fairness perspective Spotify is just as bad. A large list of credible musicians and content creators have detailed the poor compensation, shift towards fake artists and AI filler tracks, and other moves Spotify has made that harm the artists and provide a worse listener experience.

If you want to fairly compensate artists, you'd be better off pirating 100% of your streams using alternate frontends for YT music, then making a list of your top 10-20 artists and buying an album or T-shirt from each of their official websites. They will make a lot better margin on that and its better for their career than any amount of streams you can give as one individual. (Also go to shows when available locally)

Which one has the biggest selection and highest quality audio, ad-free for $0/mo?

I use YouTube Music ReVanced, and while the audio quality isn't the highest (because it's YouTube), you can't beat the song selection. Especially when it's free and ad-free.

spotdl

A glance at this makes me happy to just keep playing my mp3s.

i decided to self host my library in as high of a res I could using Navidrome/subsonic.

I had a FiiO X3 anyway so i already had a FLAC capable player.

in the end, even if i know it's not for everyone. selfhosting is the only way to never lose what u love. so many of my lesser known tracks are just gone on spotify.

I'm trying to get most of what I like on CD and then host a jellyfin server

Tidal is owned by Block, the owners of Square, which is the biggest POS vendor in the US. If that’s not big tech I don’t know what is.

If you're paying for music, stay away from any music publisher that doesn't give you the option of keeping a DRM-free copy for yourself that can be played back in perpetuity, unconditionally.

I switched from Spotify to tidal then deezer and finally landed on qobuz. While the app still has some problems and the music selection is not as massive as on Spotify (but mainly in super niche content), the higher artist pay and amazing soundquality are definitely worth it

Qobuz also does purchaseable music!

I use Anghami myself

Naspers is a South African multinational internet, technology and multimedia holding company headquartered in Cape Town... did you mean Napster...? Did you generate this with AI or something?

Why would the largest music streaming service in the world be in the "other" category and not the "Big Tech Incumbents".

I've been happy with Bandcamp. They got sold recently so their future is uncertain, but I downloaded all the music I bought.

They don't really have an algorithm, but you can see who else purchased something, and they do blog posts about like "what's new in [genre]" that's worth reading. So far as I can tell it's written by real people.

Qobuz rocks!

There are also Faircamp and Mirlo, if you are looking for even fairer and progressive alternatives.