Piracy

I recently went through this decision. Firstly because I was getting saturated with so many services asking for subscriptions, secondly because I'm increasingly seeing songs I like becoming unavailable due to licensing on platforms such as Apple Music and Spotify.

And finally, when I gave YouTube Music a try, I had 500 songs downloaded for offline listening, but had an issue with my carrier in the middle of a work day which left me without an internet connection... And this freaking app didn't let me listen to the songs I already had downloaded. Noped right out of there.

So here's my solution: I created a free trial account on Deezer. I used SongShift to migrate all my songs from my previous streaming apps to a Deezer playlist. I then used deemix-gui to download the entire playlist of off Deezer, at FLAC quality, with lyrics, tags and album art built in.

I now use this library of FLAC files on Music Bee, a free software that looks awesome. When I connect my phone to my PC, Music Bee converts all songs to high bitrate MP3 and syncs with the phone - I then use an open source music player to listen to them.

I get lyrics, high quality audio, albums, artists, playlists... But zero issues with connectivity, streaming, songs losing licenses, subscriptions, and so on.

Maybe its a generational thing but I prefer having a Plex / Plexamp serveur with all my music as FLAC on my home server. I can better curate my collection and it's available everywhere.

Local library. I don't want to pay for things I don't own. Streaming services also can remove/ disable music any time. I also don't need recommendation algorithms I think they are biased. I can easily discover new artists on blogs

I have Ampache running on a self hosted server, which has desktop and mobile apps.

Spotify to find artists

Plex/VLC/winamp to continue listening after discovering them.

I agree with OP that it is best to have DRM free files. For music recommendations, I use a Scrobber plugin for Last.fm.

I have Apple One Family and that includes Apple Music, which I share with 5 others. Can't beat that price!

I use streaming for music these days. For one, I'm able to get either cheap or free premium services via some tricks (Apple Music currently has an exploitable, constant free trial through Shazam). I'd still consider paying for a service, though, if I had to.

For me, I consume music much differently than other media. For shows, movies, and literature, I typically only watch or read something once ever, at the most once every year. This means I don't feel the need to retain or backup most things. I still keep what I acquire while I have space on my NAS, but there are no backups and if I ever need to free up space, I know the first volume to clean up.

Music I constantly listen to over and over. If I go through the effort of acquiring something, I'll need to make sure the metadata is consistent. When I had my old collection, I'd have to make sure it was backed up to cloud storage because I couldn't risk losing all that music I had found and curated. I found I was approaching the point where my monthly costs of backing up to Glacier-like services was beginning to approach the monthly cost of streaming. Plus, despite some of the discovery algorithms being terrible, it's still been a useful tool for discovering new music. I'm also able to take streaming on the go, I cannot take the entire library I curated. I'm not someone who knows ahead of time what I'll want to listen to.

I suppose this was all a long-winded way to say the cost-benefit analysis no longer made sense for keeping local music files for me. Part of it is streaming music services roughly have everything I want to listen to. I don't need to subscribe to 5 different services like video platforms. Music streaming services, at least now, mostly understand that they need to be more convenient that pirating.

I stream because it helps me discover new artists, and makes it effortless. I do have my own library though.

https://github.com/Team-xManager/xManager/releases Free Spotify

Mostly, I've downloaded all my music and stream through Navidrome. But I'll use above in a pinch.

Personal library is 0 compromise, except for the convenience. There are plenty of songs in my library that aren't on Spotify or any other. All my music is FLAC. Uncensorable. I get star ratings and favorites.

I stream music because you can get just about everything with any service you choose at a reasonable price. I don't do the same for movies and TV shows because that option isn't available. If it was, my laziness may get me to stop pirating.

I've got a local library that I stream with using Subsonic/Airsonic-compatible APIs.

Give ViMusic (for Android) a try. It's free in F-Droid. It's like Spotify but uses Youtube Music for the backend.

I have a Spotify account and never use it anymore. ViMusic is great.

Mixing and matching is the best option, mostly.

I like to have my personal favorite albums and non-streaming albums in my drive, but if i download something new, most of the time it will just stay there and i'll never listen to it.

Streaming is wayyy better for discovering music (and also not making your hard drive full). If for every album you want to listen to you need to download, it sometimes lets you out of great music because of simple lazyness lol

Streaming for discovery, private tracker to get it in FLAC.

I stream because I like discovering new artists that I don’t know about. Otherwise keeping everything on a drive is probably better considering that you have full control over it.

Local copy for life. Streaming is just renting by a nicer name. I don't want to pay for the rest of my life to access the same content. I'll buy CDs and I'll buy DRM-free FLAC files if available, but otherwise I'm pirating the FLAC copy or, if worst comes to worst, ripping the audio from YouTube (too many new artists/YT artists don't offer lossless downloads). I'm not paying for something I don't get to keep.