Ask Lemmy

These days, I avoid Spotify, or anything else with their ridiculous advertisements. I used to pay for Spotify but they charge so much for paying so little to the artists that I didn't want to support them anymore. Not to mention that I truly dislike this algorithmic world we live in, where things are "recommended" for me, but it's part of an endless conveyer belt of things being sent my way when I didn't ask for it.

I'm working on getting a record player so I can just intentionally play the music I want. I also like the physicality of it. It feels easier to dive into the artist's vision of the album as a full experience.

• Spotify for social and casual listening
• Tidal for curated personal music listening time
• brain.fm and endel for background music
• youtube music for rare finds
• youtube premium for tv music like tiny desk concerts and party tv
• mp3 through bone conducting earphones for workout, especially water sports. I try not to take my phone to avoid distractions.

I mostly use Apple Music because I have it and it’s easy access to a huge catalog of artists. I started using a little cheap MP3 player in my car that’s loaded with old Punk o Rama compilation albums, some ripped from my own collection, but many were downloaded because they are hard to find now.

I found a bunch of good bands at my library, so I checked the cds out and ripped them to my PC. I also frequent thrift stores for cheap books and cds. I’m slowly learning how to set up my own home network and I’d like to stream my own stuff on the go, but I have a lot to learn before that.

My favorite band is Green Day. I fell in love with them when I was 10 and heard them on the radio in the early 90s. They were my introduction to punk music and were my lifeline during some really rough parts of my life. I survived because of the 1039 smooth album and Star Wars Pod Racer on N64.

Primarily Spotify, mixed in with SoundCloud and YouTube for live sets.

Mostly stuff I bought from Bandcamp. It's drm free, but for convenience I usually let it stream from the app.

I also have a bunch of mp3s from older purchases I listen to sometimes, but I don't have a media server set up so that's mostly limited to my desktop.

Sometimes I'll pull up a specific track on YouTube, but that's mostly for "do you remember this song?" stuff. Adblock and the "resume playback from lock screen" make it bearable.

mostly mp3s, but I also use iBroadcast to stream my personal library on other devices

favorite band is The Magnetic Fields, favorite album 69 Love Songs, favorite song "100,000 Fireflies"

for streaming, Soma.fm. for everything else, ripped CD's and mp3s/flac I've found all over the internet that I've collected for 20 something years. I use jellyfin and a VPN to listen to my stuff from my phone.

Never streaming or radio. I like to choose what I want, and want uninterrupted play (not reliant on internet), when I want, and often prefer stuff where all or most of the album is good, so I listen mostly in order and almost never shuffle.

Mostly mp3's on whatever works for the device. Phone mp3's, USB for game console and car. Sometimes vinyl. Even record the vinyl's sometimes so I can play the vinyl mix anywhere since vinyl's tend to be mixed differently.

A mixture of hard-drive storage and streaming.

I like to change it up. I'll listen to USBs on my stereo, or on my phone with earphones. I listen to USBs which have mp3s from all over the place, YouTube, Radio Garden, and regular radio (on a stereo where you have to manually tune it to a station). I'm constantly unearthing new music, and music that's new to me.

Files downloaded from Soulseek and Bandcamp. Supplemented by Metrolist.

I stream FLAC on Qobuz. Sometimes I listen to CDs. My favourite band is Rush, I love Neil Peart's lyrics along with how great the three of them are at their respective instruments.

Used to be Spotify, now Tidal. Would prefer Qobuz, but it's significantly more expensive on the family tier.

Usually on headphones, og on HEOS via tidal connect - or, I would have preferred that, but it's super broken, so now from the tidal integration (not connect) on a wiiim...

With my ears

Anymore there are a few songs on yt that I listen to that I haven't downloaded. Otherwise it's mostly all local files on my devices. File type varies.

Otherwise, I have a bunch of CDs that I can either play using my desktop or battery hog of an old Discman. Pros for desktop is I have access to my higher quality bluetooth headphones and can move and do other things whole listening. Pros for the CD player is I have an old pair of 90s in ear Sony headphones that came with it.

Couldn't tell you a particular group for a favorite band right now since I've been listening to a fair bit of 90s ( basically all my CDs ) when it comes to most of the band music I've been listening to.

Tidal, though I've quit payments so when this month runs out I'll switch to try out Qobuz. Before that I was on Spotify since it was invite-only until a few years ago when I had enough of the CEO Daniel Ek complete disrespect for artists that make him a billionaire. Before that I was sailing the seas for many years. Before that I bought CDs. Before that I bought LPs.

flac files + navidrome + tempo app on mobile / supersonic on desktop

Primarily streaming, although I have a digital media player loaded with tons of FLACs that I use when I'm out and about or in the garden.

I also have a growing record collection of about 100 or so records so I do listen to a lot of records when I'm home.

I don't really have a favourite band, it changes depending on what I feel like but currently I've been listening to

• Thornhill
• Gojira
• King gizzard and the lizard wizard
• Tool
• Animals as leaders
• Smashing pumpkins
• Catslash
• Lorn
• Fcukers

Currently rip my CDs and then listen on my phone/PC as digital music. I also pirate music from artist I find problematic to avoid supporting them, and pirate old music I used to listen to which I plan to purchase later (not really in the position to buy all the music I've listened for free in my whole life, plus I feel like I've streamed them enough to support them, so I don't feel that guilty). My partner has vinyl records, so sometimes I listen to that, too. Also the ocassional concert when I can afford it, of course, I need that sweet live music.

My current favorite band... Probably Twenty One Pilots? I don't listen to a lot of bands lol, I mostly listen to solo artists, in which case my favorite artist is by far Ren.

I like Twenty One Pilots because they're like everything teen me would've loved. Specially a fan of Self Titled / NPI era. Raw garage-tier songs about your problems with God, and faith overall? Sign me tf in, I've had quite the history with religion.

And I like Ren because of his hard-to-label music style from song to song, while so very clearly being a Ren song, with all of his theatrics, lyricism, life struggles, cynisism, and a splash of religion. I've been following him for a while and it's amazing to see so far he's come.

Speaking of Ren and Twenty One Pilots... They're playing at a festival together next year (REN BARELY PLAYS LIVE)... And I can't fucking attend because it's in another continent. fuck me.

I listen on Deezer. I know, streaming is awful for the musicians but otherwise I would just pirate songs + I freeload on my friends family plan.

Currently I'm obsessing these artists:

• Femtanyl (KATAMARI)
• STOMACH BOOK (Fukouna Girl, Bambi)
• Danny Brown (Copycats, The End)
• FEM&M (Beep Beep Beep)
• Joey & Valence (DROP!!, BUST DOWN)

I would like to listen in an armchair to cd or vinyl through a modest, though still good, stereo speaker system. But my life doesn’t include space or time for any of that.

So - almost 100% streaming, through earbuds, the car speakers, and/or HomePod. There was a time I was on Oink and then What - what put Apple Music to shame. The staff picks were eclectic and amazing and I learned a lot about new to me music styles.

I don’t like listening to music in the background in general, but dance/electronic music is good for background distraction for workouts and focus. But my preference is for classical music - Bach, Beethoven, etc. - depends on my mood. Sometimes I’m in the mood for Queen or Pink Floyd. I’m never in the mood for pop.

Used Spotify until recently, but cancelled my premium subscription after the recent price hike as well as the increasingly prevalent AI content. I'm now trying to build a local library of mp3 files. Not sure if I won't resubscribe to Spotify at some point though, as I find music dicovery quite difficult without it.

I used to use Spotify, but got tired of the bullshit they were doing. Now I run my own navidrome server and use feishin for desktop and Symfonium for mobile.

CD's at Thrift Stores.

Seeker for everything else.

In order of percentage time spent

Streaming service (probably about half the time), Radio (maybe about 20%), Vinyl (say 15%), legal downloads and dubious legality via Plex (about equally 5%)

Some of what I listen to is kinda niche I guess, so I like to support the artist with a purchase (vinyl or Bandcamp download) where I can

Edit: typo

Vinyl and cds. Mostly vinyl. I do stream albums I consider buying in physical form, just to check out if the expense is worth it to me.

Large commercial Artists Music is downloaded illegally in various ways. Smaller Artists Music I buy via Bandcamp, Quboz or wherever else they offer it.

All Music is stored as Mp3 and Flac in a Filen Cloud from where I pull selected Titels and Albums onto my phone and into a Musicolet Playlist.

Current musical obession: Turkish Psychedelic Jazz

I generally use my ears to listen to music.

Seriously though, between Orpheus, Soulseek, and Bancamp I have a large library and I paid for a Plex pass years ago, so I use Plexamp on mobile and PC. Pretty pleased with it, and it even has scrobbling support for last.fm and support in Maloja+Multi-scrobbler.

On the phone I use Metro, from f-droid. At home I like to play the few vinyls I have from time to time.

I buy vinyl for older albums (or current favourite artists I follow that release LPs), and all my digital purchases are through Bandcamp. I host everything (flac or mp3 files) on a Navidrome server and stream from that.

Generally I stream music using Qobuz because at least its more ethical than Spotify AFAIK, paying their artists better rates and not (yet) bricking their physical products (Car Thing).

I'll otherwise download music using spotdl and my old Spotify playlists, but I don't enjoy pirating myself. I mainly do this for players without internet like my MP3 player and my car's head unit that only works with iPods or mass storage.

I've been getting into records recently but this is a novelty thing for me.

Cassettes! And bandcamp

vinyl

I download the song once using yt-dlp, then I use Musicbrainz Picard to fetch song metadata like author, cover, title, year etc... Then I listen 100% offline in any mp3 player app.

I send my songs encrypted to pCloud free tier (gpg) just to keep a backup somewhere else.

In other words, not a single online service on earth know what I'm listening to.

Qobuz

Spotify + FLACs ripped from CDs and Bandcamp + Vinyls.

In my phone you can create a sound profile that equalizes the music to what you can hear using a hearing test. It's a game changer for listening to music day to day, everything sounds better. Even my cheap headphones sound good.

I use youtube music, and it's alright.

Download via newpipe/ tubular, buy used CDs. I occasionally also use https://www.music-map.com/ to discover new artists.
Dont really have a favorite artist, but im currently listening to a lot of irie revoltes just because i went to a concert of them semi-recently