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I used to be a huge foobar2000 fan with a huge FLAC library. A bit later I got used to iTunes, because there was no good foobar2000 alternative on macOS, and I

I used to be a huge foobar2000 fan with a huge FLAC library. A bit later I got used to iTunes, because there was no good foobar2000 alternative on macOS, and I dialed back the library. Then I said fuck it and moved all the way over to Spotify, trading music quality (and UI) for discoverability. And I don't see myself going back.

p1necone 6y ago
If a music streaming service came out that had a good API for integrating with 3rd party UIs I would switch in a heartbeat. For now Spotify is still a better experience than maintaining my own collection though.
- voltaireodactyl 6y ago
  For what it’s worth, Roon + Tidal has been exactly that for me and since I started using both together, I’ve heard (and subsequently purchased) more good music in the four months I’ve been using in than in the four years before.
  - pixiemagic 6y ago
    I've always thought it looks great, but it's incredibly expensive. $700 for a lifetime license... even if it was $300 it'd be easier to stomach. What makes it worth it for you?
    - voltaireodactyl 6y ago
      I was right there with you in terms of expense/looks-great uncertainty. What ultimately changed my mind was last year they did a 4-months-for-$4 deal, and that was finally a long enough time for me to really test it out and see if I dug it. The short version is: if you have a large local library I think Roon at least is great, and Tidal makes it a little more fun. The long version: I know it's a lot of money, and I'm not looking to die on this hill, but here's the bullet point list of why it really works for me: - I have a large (400gb) lossless local library, and I really wanted an intelligent way to just put it on "random", if that makes sense. So the truly killer feature for me is being able to play an album/song -- and then have that mood continue afterwards without my interaction. My own local Spotify is worth quite a bit to me, as it turns out. - related to the above -- I'm aware lifetime license means just the company, and I've been bitten before. But the people behind it have specifically stated that, in the event of a buyout or closing of shop, they would release a final "untethered" version of their product. They also apparently have a history of supporting products in similar ways, since I believe their previous, defunct companies servers are still operational. - The metadata/connections are pretty fabulous. They have coverage for a significant amount of niche artists, and plenty of backup photos/notes. They do a great job of connecting musicians in the same "scenes" too, so I've had fun exploring my own library wiki-style and learning influences and collaborations I would never know otherwise. - the wide cross-compatibility with other audio hardware. Not something I've explored much, but very reassuring since I can make it play out of pretty much anything I want. - I realize Tidal is somewhat opposed to the local-Spotify goal I listed up top, but Tidal also had a deal at the same time, so I figured why not. - What ends up happening is that I listen to an album or two I own, get busy in something -- then realize it's switched to Tidal and it's something I've never heard/like. I then go on Bandcamp and buy the album, thus adding it to my local library. So it's given me this nice loop of discovery, to collection, to adding it to the main queue for when I switch to library-only mode. ()I was also fortunate enough to have a job during this pandemic, so I figured I could use the stimulus for something I would not otherwise purchase -- the lifetime license.) CONS: - Lossless music isn't a dealbreaker in a streaming service for me, so I do wish they integrated with something a little cheaper like Apple Music or even Spotify. But I get that's against their Audiophiliac Code of Conduct, and I can live with it. - No good way to use it remotely, like in the car. Hopefully that'll be a part of 2.0.
- endbringer93 6y ago
  No, it really isn't. The time you spend with UI is much greater than time you spend managing your collection so bad UI is far worse than a couple of evenings getting your collection in order. Also you get to enjoy your favorite albums not getting taken down without warning or reason.
  - 867-5309 6y ago
    you forgot to mention the time it takes hunting for your 'obscure teenage years' CDs on eBay, setting up search alerts for each CD to appear for ~$1 with cheap shipping, waiting three weeks for them to arrive from Lithuania, alcohol-rubbing the dozen sale stickers off the jewel case, cleaning the CDs with lint-free holy water, ripping the audio losslessly at superfast 52x, physically scanning with a scanner and optimizing the album artwork, categorizing, metadata'ing, updating and maintaining your Frankenstein music database, updating the online database for prospective fake internet points, and relisting each CD at $2
    - arpa 6y ago
      It is can be a very fun hobby, though.
    - endbringer93 6y ago
      Or you can just torrent them. Chances are that those "obscure teenage year" CDs aren't and never will be on spotify either so if you want them you'll have to go through all that in addition to paying a service with incomplete library and crappy player.
      - 867-5309 6y ago
        obscure as in cannot be found online torrents of such material are non-existent, dead or unreliable at best, and almost never lossless the point being to avoid being constantly let down by audio streaming providers but safe to say the point was missed on this occasion
        6y ago
- chpatrick 6y ago
  There are third-party Spotify clients, like https://github.com/librespot-org/librespot https://github.com/librespot-org/librespot.
dlkmp 6y ago
My story is basically the same (except iTunes was mpd in my case) but I'm seriously considering moving back because of the music quality. I don't consider myself anything close to "audiophile" but the dynamic range of streamed music (at least for spotify) makes for a terrible experience when played at rather high volume over speakers. The difference to CD-ripped mp3 is immense. Messing with the few options offered by the spotify client didn't help either. I'm mostly looking for a solution to use my music libary with a streaming service as drop-in for missing tracks.
- eertami 6y ago
  Spotify have announced "Spotify HiFi" (currently without an exact release date or pricing information) for 2021, which will offer lossless streaming[1]. Anecdotally though Spotify's "Very High" quality works well for me and honestly in 99% of cases it is indistinguishable. My setup sure isn't the greatest, but I have a dedicated DAC, a headphone amp, and speaker amp with some reputable headphones and bookshelf speakers. I keep CD sourced FLAC files on a local disk but I never really play them anymore. Maybe if I had large floorstanding speakers in the 1000$+ category there'd be a lot more cases where Spotify falls short - where the HiFi offering or local FLAC would have a strong case - but I certainly recognize it is a niche case. [1]: https://newsroom.spotify.com/2021-02-22/five-things-to-know-about-spotify-hifi/ https://newsroom.spotify.com/2021-02-22/five-things-to-know-...
antihero 6y ago
Don't delete your music man, I "slimmed" down my collection from 1TB+ to 200GB by deleting all the more "common" stuff I could easily find on Spotify only to realise that the versions I had (the original, pure, untouched music) was only available as fucking remasters etcetera. I miss Oink/What.CD.
- swixi 6y ago
  > I "slimmed" down my collection from 1TB+ to 200GB by deleting all the more "common" stuff I could easily find on Spotify only to realise that the versions I had (the original, pure, untouched music) was only available as fucking remasters etcetera Yeah, you get the version they choose. Admittedly, this is not something I run into often, but for example: the stereo remasters of the early Beatles albums sound terrible to me with headphones because everything is hard-panned (e.g. vocals are only in the right channel). These albums were originally mixed in mono and sound way better that way. It's impossible to listen to these albums in mono on Spotify even though digital versions do exist.
  - antihero 6y ago
    Beatles remasters were exactly what I was thinking of actually. I want to hear it like the people heard it when it first dropped.

p1necone 6y ago

If a music streaming service came out that had a good API for integrating with 3rd party UIs I would switch in a heartbeat. For now Spotify is still a better experience than maintaining my own collection though.

voltaireodactyl 6y ago
For what it’s worth, Roon + Tidal has been exactly that for me and since I started using both together, I’ve heard (and subsequently purchased) more good music in the four months I’ve been using in than in the four years before.
- pixiemagic 6y ago
  I've always thought it looks great, but it's incredibly expensive. $700 for a lifetime license... even if it was $300 it'd be easier to stomach. What makes it worth it for you?
  - voltaireodactyl 6y ago
    I was right there with you in terms of expense/looks-great uncertainty. What ultimately changed my mind was last year they did a 4-months-for-$4 deal, and that was finally a long enough time for me to really test it out and see if I dug it. The short version is: if you have a large local library I think Roon at least is great, and Tidal makes it a little more fun. The long version: I know it's a lot of money, and I'm not looking to die on this hill, but here's the bullet point list of why it really works for me: - I have a large (400gb) lossless local library, and I really wanted an intelligent way to just put it on "random", if that makes sense. So the truly killer feature for me is being able to play an album/song -- and then have that mood continue afterwards without my interaction. My own local Spotify is worth quite a bit to me, as it turns out. - related to the above -- I'm aware lifetime license means just the company, and I've been bitten before. But the people behind it have specifically stated that, in the event of a buyout or closing of shop, they would release a final "untethered" version of their product. They also apparently have a history of supporting products in similar ways, since I believe their previous, defunct companies servers are still operational. - The metadata/connections are pretty fabulous. They have coverage for a significant amount of niche artists, and plenty of backup photos/notes. They do a great job of connecting musicians in the same "scenes" too, so I've had fun exploring my own library wiki-style and learning influences and collaborations I would never know otherwise. - the wide cross-compatibility with other audio hardware. Not something I've explored much, but very reassuring since I can make it play out of pretty much anything I want. - I realize Tidal is somewhat opposed to the local-Spotify goal I listed up top, but Tidal also had a deal at the same time, so I figured why not. - What ends up happening is that I listen to an album or two I own, get busy in something -- then realize it's switched to Tidal and it's something I've never heard/like. I then go on Bandcamp and buy the album, thus adding it to my local library. So it's given me this nice loop of discovery, to collection, to adding it to the main queue for when I switch to library-only mode. ()I was also fortunate enough to have a job during this pandemic, so I figured I could use the stimulus for something I would not otherwise purchase -- the lifetime license.) CONS: - Lossless music isn't a dealbreaker in a streaming service for me, so I do wish they integrated with something a little cheaper like Apple Music or even Spotify. But I get that's against their Audiophiliac Code of Conduct, and I can live with it. - No good way to use it remotely, like in the car. Hopefully that'll be a part of 2.0.
endbringer93 6y ago
No, it really isn't. The time you spend with UI is much greater than time you spend managing your collection so bad UI is far worse than a couple of evenings getting your collection in order. Also you get to enjoy your favorite albums not getting taken down without warning or reason.
- 867-5309 6y ago
  you forgot to mention the time it takes hunting for your 'obscure teenage years' CDs on eBay, setting up search alerts for each CD to appear for ~$1 with cheap shipping, waiting three weeks for them to arrive from Lithuania, alcohol-rubbing the dozen sale stickers off the jewel case, cleaning the CDs with lint-free holy water, ripping the audio losslessly at superfast 52x, physically scanning with a scanner and optimizing the album artwork, categorizing, metadata'ing, updating and maintaining your Frankenstein music database, updating the online database for prospective fake internet points, and relisting each CD at $2
  - arpa 6y ago
    It is can be a very fun hobby, though.
  - endbringer93 6y ago
    Or you can just torrent them. Chances are that those "obscure teenage year" CDs aren't and never will be on spotify either so if you want them you'll have to go through all that in addition to paying a service with incomplete library and crappy player.
    - 867-5309 6y ago
      obscure as in cannot be found online torrents of such material are non-existent, dead or unreliable at best, and almost never lossless the point being to avoid being constantly let down by audio streaming providers but safe to say the point was missed on this occasion
      - 6y ago
chpatrick 6y ago
There are third-party Spotify clients, like https://github.com/librespot-org/librespot https://github.com/librespot-org/librespot.

dlkmp 6y ago

My story is basically the same (except iTunes was mpd in my case) but I'm seriously considering moving back because of the music quality. I don't consider myself anything close to "audiophile" but the dynamic range of streamed music (at least for spotify) makes for a terrible experience when played at rather high volume over speakers. The difference to CD-ripped mp3 is immense. Messing with the few options offered by the spotify client didn't help either. I'm mostly looking for a solution to use my music libary with a streaming service as drop-in for missing tracks.

eertami 6y ago
Spotify have announced "Spotify HiFi" (currently without an exact release date or pricing information) for 2021, which will offer lossless streaming[1]. Anecdotally though Spotify's "Very High" quality works well for me and honestly in 99% of cases it is indistinguishable. My setup sure isn't the greatest, but I have a dedicated DAC, a headphone amp, and speaker amp with some reputable headphones and bookshelf speakers. I keep CD sourced FLAC files on a local disk but I never really play them anymore. Maybe if I had large floorstanding speakers in the 1000$+ category there'd be a lot more cases where Spotify falls short - where the HiFi offering or local FLAC would have a strong case - but I certainly recognize it is a niche case. [1]: https://newsroom.spotify.com/2021-02-22/five-things-to-know-about-spotify-hifi/ https://newsroom.spotify.com/2021-02-22/five-things-to-know-...

antihero 6y ago

Don't delete your music man, I "slimmed" down my collection from 1TB+ to 200GB by deleting all the more "common" stuff I could easily find on Spotify only to realise that the versions I had (the original, pure, untouched music) was only available as fucking remasters etcetera. I miss Oink/What.CD.

swixi 6y ago
> I "slimmed" down my collection from 1TB+ to 200GB by deleting all the more "common" stuff I could easily find on Spotify only to realise that the versions I had (the original, pure, untouched music) was only available as fucking remasters etcetera Yeah, you get the version they choose. Admittedly, this is not something I run into often, but for example: the stereo remasters of the early Beatles albums sound terrible to me with headphones because everything is hard-panned (e.g. vocals are only in the right channel). These albums were originally mixed in mono and sound way better that way. It's impossible to listen to these albums in mono on Spotify even though digital versions do exist.
- antihero 6y ago
  Beatles remasters were exactly what I was thinking of actually. I want to hear it like the people heard it when it first dropped.