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For years, I relied on Spotify like millions of others. The convenience was undeniable stream anything, anywhere, discover new music through algorithms, and share playlists with friends. But over time, several issues became impossible to ignore: artists getting paid fractions of pennies per stream, fake Artists and ghost Tracks, AI music and impersonation, creepy age verification complicity and the fact that despite paying monthly, I never actually owned anything. So I decided to take back control of my music experience. Here’s how I built my own self-hosted music streaming setup that gives me everything Spotify offered and more.

  • Novaling@lemmy.zipEnglish
    1·
    3 hours ago

    Hosting your own media library is awesome, just don’t try and bullshit people by pretending that you’re better than Spotify because they pay their artists poorly when you’re stealing from the artists yourself.

    This in general when people talk about piracy. It’s great, and sometimes almost needed in cases where companies are making it impossible for people to access the media they want. But stop making it sound like you’re doing the creator a favor by pirating.

    “Oh I pirated this musicians music, BUT I’m giving them exposure!1!1! Spotify and YT only pay them .0000001 cents per view!1!1”

    Sure, they get almost no money via streaming, but at least they get SOME money over time. People who listen, like, and comment on their songs on social media gives them more exposure then you ripping the song for fucking free and MAYBE (not guaranteed for some of you) telling a friend or two about it. Priating contributes nothing to the (albeit evil) algorithm. Like it’s the dumbest moral argument/excuse people seem to bring up to defend themselves. Artists do deserve to be paid or recognized in some sort of way. Either stream or buy on bandcamp to support artists. Exposure means nothing when the bills aren’t paid.

    I hate Google, but I know I don’t have the means to buy every single album from the many artists I listen to, so I’ll stick with them for now until I start making a plan on how I wanna go about buying their music and streaming it at home.