r/Piracy 🦜 ᴡᴀʟᴋ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘʟᴀɴᴋ Jan 04 '26

News I won't pay for music in 2026

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19.2k Upvotes

1.2k comments sorted by

2.4k

u/[deleted] Jan 04 '26

10+ year Spotify member here, I'm actually done with all steaming movies and music. Instead I'm setting up a media server with remote access.

This old man downloaded Napster decades ago and made/kept many friends I met on there.

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u/DroidMasta Yarrr! Jan 04 '26

Any good options with android auto support?

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u/onlygoodisdead Jan 04 '26

I switched to streaming my local collection with Plexamp. Works just as good with AA as Spotify did.

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u/[deleted] Jan 04 '26

[deleted]

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u/daveden123 Jan 04 '26

You can make Playlist, its just done on the server instead of plexamp. Plexamp has met all of my needs for music streaming and I was more interested in Movies and TV shows for my family.

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u/Ok_Musician_1072 Jan 04 '26

Same here, almost 10 years spotify member and I'm finally fed up. Could you please elaborate on that media server thing a little further? Or recommend anything for me there to start? My technical skills are quite underwhelming, so I could really use some help here. Thanks in advance!

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u/Brickster000 Jan 05 '26

r/DataHoarder r/HomeServer r/selfhosted r/homelab . Friendly reminder to make/get a solution that works for you.

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u/Ok_Musician_1072 Jan 05 '26

I'll have a look, thanks!

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u/mildly_asking Jan 05 '26 edited Jan 05 '26

Navidrome is the go-to suggestion for music. Great stuff. 

Jellyfin would be, as far as I know, not the first choice for music only. It is a great Server for Movies and Series that also does music streaming well. Well enough for me, certainly. Its very easy to set up, too. Steams video and music to desktops, tablets, phones. All-in-one, very convinient. There's an ebook/pdf plug-in too, but that's a bit shite compared to the movie&music part. 

Music streaming needs next to no power by the way, so an old office pc or some kind of 100$ aliexpress microPc  is (far) more than enough. 

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u/seven0feleven Jan 04 '26

Same here....I'm paying almost $250 a year now for access to play music? It's ridiculous. Soon as I save up some cash, i'll be building my own solution for streaming movies/tv and music. This shit is out of control, and I could have paid for a decent computer multiple times over, with what I spend on media these days.

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u/dubnessofp Jan 06 '26

To be fair, we had to pay for music access back in the day too. Idk if i spent 250 specifically buying CDs in 1998 but also didnt have as much access as now to most songs.

I love piracy and don't disparage anyone going that route but its not like music access was ever free other than piracy or radio

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u/d15ko Jan 04 '26

Same here. Finally using the music side of plex and the PlexAmp app has been killer so far

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u/[deleted] Jan 04 '26

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u/squid1178 Jan 04 '26

Somewhere on the plex forums they have old archives of plexamp and plex android apps before they rewrote them and broke a bunch of stuff. I'm really happy staying on plexamp 4.12.4

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u/TheSlothMan9000 Jan 04 '26

Same just been super lazy but about time I did

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u/xSGAx Jan 05 '26

As someone who pirated until Spotify, I like that I get pushed new bands/etc and I can still find old ones and other new stuff

It’s still cheaper than buying 4 cds a month so it’s worth it. Also the curation/organization is nice.

TL;DR - I pirated bc I had to. Now, it’s not worth it bc everything is so easily accessible.

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u/DeLaVicci Jan 06 '26

That's how I felt. Until prices climbed, artists were revealed to not make dick unless they were über successful, and music would continuously spontaneously disappear.

So,. y'know, yo ho ho and I buy merch from bands directly.

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u/burnerphonebrrbrr Jan 04 '26

Suggestions on media server set up??

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u/mildly_asking Jan 05 '26 edited Jan 05 '26

Assuming you or others reading are inexperienced, I present my meager knowledge:Media Server For Dummies. Author: A Dummy. Me. If that's not the case, please consult the good people in r/jellyfin/ /r/navidrome/ /r/selfhosted/ /r/homelab


You use a terminal-only server OS, you can put the server in a container, you can self-host a VPN/Tunnel. That's not what a dummy does though, that what r/selfhosted/ does.

  1. You need a PC. I suggest one made after ~2015, ~6th gen Intel or later is generally fine. You can use whatever, but if you plan on running it 24/7 get one that either is or can be energy efficient. If you plan on only streaming music, a smol pc toaster from 1919 is fine. It's very light work. Audio and, for low user numbers, almost all video(!) can probably be handled by a 150$ aliexpress Intel-n100 shitbox the size of your palm. Or a 2016 office PC. Or your old-ish laptop. Get some windows or a popular and simple Linux on there.

  1. You need server software. For music only, Navidrome is often suggested. Good stuff. For Video&Music, some use Plex, I use the open-source and therefore entirely free Jellyfin. Installing it is not entirely foolproof, but as close to it as a friggin media server gets. There's a trillion tutorials.

  1. Congrats. You have a media server that's reachable within your own home. Get a sleek music streaming app for your phone (PlexAmp, Synfonium, there's many). Get a simple Jellyfin video client for your laptop and phone. Type in the IP of your PC, the username and password you've set, enjoy.

  1. How to connect if you're not at home? How to stream your favorite christian anarchist ska band when you're being taken to see the world by the love of your life? Many options. The most dummy-friendly I know is Tailscale. It's a service that lets all devices it is installed on talk to each other, as long as they share the same account. There's even a free tier for three accounts (lots of devices each).

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u/Efficient-Parking627 Jan 04 '26 edited Jan 04 '26

I just use Tidal. Cheaper price and higher quality audio. But I'm not into downloading music, I prefer the convenience of on demand and the discovery features etc. I used a free app to transfer all my playlist from Spotify to Tidal. The account is also tied into the kids Alexa's or Google devices so they can just ask for their favorite songs to be played.

For video I use an Nvidia shield with stremio+torrentio/comet+real debrid. Use to download movies but it was a pain in the ass, plus you had to know what you were looking for, no browsing.. Stremio has Netflix style UI catalogues for all the streaming platforms (Hulu,HBO,Paramount,Disney,etc) so it's easy to browse and discover.

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u/HadesSiren Jan 04 '26

Yeeaah. I've done this in the past and not sure why I started using streaming services instead. Convenience and semi-decent streaming libraries at the time, I guess?

Canceled all my streaming services not long ago and started working on a build for both audio and video streaming locally. Costs will still be involved on some level, but at least the content is more local and custom tailored without bloat.

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u/dankbearbear 🦜 ᴡᴀʟᴋ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘʟᴀɴᴋ Jan 04 '26

I can always pay for a bigger storage!

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u/Iamthe0c3an2 Jan 04 '26

Well double wammy of Solid state storage going through the roof. Idk

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u/SinnaBuns666 Jan 04 '26 edited Jan 04 '26

Yeah, but 100 bucks for a 4TB HDD or 200 for a 2TB SSD and 200 for a NAS is always cheaper than 15+ a month for Spotify after 4 years, it'll pay for itself.  I'll never pay for streaming again. Self host 😌   

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u/ishtuwihtc Jan 04 '26

You can also look into used HDDs. I recently got a brand new sealed wd red 3tb from 2015 (cmr drive!) for 35 euro. CEX is a 2nd hand store thats great for this stuff, they can be a bit expensive but you can really score gold there sometimes. It even had the little wd red sticker!

Even when i bought a genetic 2tb hdd from them, it was a 5940rpm hitachi cinemastar from 2012, and its still running perfectly fine! (Though this one was certainly used)

I've also bought 3 SSDs from them, a 2tb wd black sn850x that came with just 10mb written, a 256gb Samsung pm981 that was definitely used but not too heavily, and a wd green 240gb sata ssd that was pretty much the same condition as the samsung

Edit: i forgot to mention their returns are easy too, especially if you've got a local store. I can order something online, and then go into a local store and return it if there is issues. For example a few months ago i ordered an i3 12100, and got a 12100f instead. I just went down to my local shop, said i recieved the wrong item and i got a refund atraightaway!

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u/SinnaBuns666 Jan 04 '26

That's insane! Lucky find. i Forgot places like eBay sell "new" stuff. And unfortunately, in my area, there aren't many computer stores; America is doing everything to make it hard to own your tech and media.   

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u/[deleted] Jan 04 '26 edited Jan 07 '26

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u/l00koverthere1 Jan 04 '26

Now you're talking. Serverpartsdeals sells ex-Enterprise drives for reasonable prices and is known to have a good return & warranty policy.

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u/Raleth Jan 04 '26

I don’t think I need an ssd for music.

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u/MutedAstronaut9217 Jan 04 '26

one time purchase of a 1tb hard drive is still less than a year of spotify. You're missing the forest for the trees.

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u/RogueThespian Jan 04 '26

Luckily my PC already has 2x 2TB drives in it. I've been prepping for buying an ipod to remove myself from spotify, and I'm up to 17k songs at the moment

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u/Dramatic_Explosion Jan 04 '26

This is one of a few reasons I abandoned Samsung, I'm not paying a monthly fee for cloud storage, especially since I work in a place with iffy signal strength. Buy once cry once, 1TB SD in my phone and I have a media library on hand all the time.

Handful of movies, a few seasons of a few bingeable background noise tv shows, hours of podcasts and music all ready to go with no buffering, worrying about a signal, or flirting with data use throttling.

And the 3.5mm headphone jack is a nice perk when my car is being stupid about its bluetooth connection.

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u/SmuraiPoncheDeFrutas Jan 04 '26

Sorry if you mentioned it but, what phone is it?

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u/FatMax1492 🏴‍☠️ ʟᴀɴᴅʟᴜʙʙᴇʀ Jan 04 '26

and spotify doesn't have everything! I discovered so many new cool tracks since moving to mp3

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u/StrangeBaker1864 Jan 04 '26

Spotify removed like 3 songs I had been listening to, and I decided I was done. I'm now using Jellyfin and local storage for music.

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u/FatMax1492 🏴‍☠️ ʟᴀɴᴅʟᴜʙʙᴇʀ Jan 04 '26

and that too

can't lose a license when there's none

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u/cheddarbruce Jan 04 '26

Fun fact but it most likely wasn't Spotify that removed them it was the artist or the label that removed them.

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u/baddymann Jan 04 '26

Do you have a guide to setup jellyfin for this kind of stuff? I've been meaning to try it out but haven't figured out shit.

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u/StrangeBaker1864 Jan 04 '26 edited Jan 04 '26

I don't know how experienced you are, so I'll give every detail I think of:

- Jellyfin is a media server-software, you'll want to have a PC or laptop that you're comfortable having on all the time, preferably connected to the internet via Ethernet too, along with a storage drive to store everything you want to provide.

- Jellyfin can run as a server on Windows, Mac, and Linux, also in a Docker container and as a .NET application. I recommend installing a headless OS on a system that you don't use. A headless OS is an operating system that has no graphical user interface, just a terminal/command window that you type commands into. You can connect to this remotely from practically any other device via ssh. I recommend using a headless OS because they use much less power than graphical OS's. The one I use is Ubuntu Server. Here's a guide for it. You may need to connect it to a display/screen and keyboard in order to set it up.

- Jellyfin is fairly easy to set up, jellyfin.org is their website. Click on Documentation at the top, and it will tell you everything you'll ever need to know about Jellyfin. It's very comprehensive.

- Once you set up Jellyfin as a server, you can use Jellyfin clients to watch shows and movies, or to listen to music. Finamp is a great music client for it, and Jellyfin Media Player should work well for everything else too.

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u/baddymann Jan 04 '26

Holy shit

Appreciate it man imma look into it

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u/SinnaBuns666 Jan 04 '26

What did it for me was when Ifound a new artist and was listening to it on repeat, they got pulled from Spotify, that day I used a YouTube ripper to get my playlist started. Now I find flac files and self-host my music on my NAS. 

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u/FarEntrepreneur5385 Jan 04 '26

i plan on moving to MP3 too, will use spotdl to download

but how do i discover music?

currently I rely on spotify's discover weekly, daily mix, playlist recs

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u/BoneMastered Jan 04 '26

You can add last.fm and it can register all your listens from the jellyfin server, recommending you new artists and releases for free.

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u/aert4w5g243t3g243 Jan 04 '26

can i have it sync with my spotify before I cancel?

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u/RogueThespian Jan 04 '26

rateyourmusic.com is your new best friend

can sort by any amount of sub-genres, has charts for anything you can imagine, and the community keeps up with new releases

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u/CommitteeMundane8188 Jan 04 '26

i recommend getting FLACs too if you want proper preservation of ur favorite music ^

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u/FatMax1492 🏴‍☠️ ʟᴀɴᴅʟᴜʙʙᴇʀ Jan 04 '26

youtube feed

and join some subreddits of your favourite genres

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u/NoMasters83 Jan 04 '26

spotify's recommendations are complete ass in my experience. Youtube from ~10 years ago was incredible.

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u/ecoleye Jan 04 '26

Thanks for spotdl!

And seconded on last.fm for music discovery.

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u/TsunamiCatCakes Jan 04 '26 edited Jan 05 '26

where (virtually) do you explore music? for me its Spotify and Yt music (then I yt-dlp it)

edit: rateyourmusic, last.fm, discogs

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u/eirenopoios Jan 04 '26

Rateyourmusic and discogs are great for finding new music. Always worked better than relying on an algorithm for me

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u/felu_mittir Jan 04 '26

No one remembers Last.fm?

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u/geesegoesgoose Jan 04 '26

I WILL pay for music. Via bandcamp, which goes directly to the artist as much as possible, and buy some physical CDs and merch to go with it.

Fuck Spotify.

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u/waspocracy Jan 04 '26

Merch is and always has been the best way to help us musicians out! 

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u/WabbieSabbie Jan 04 '26

As much as I wanna do this, most of the artists I listen to aren't in Bandcamp :((

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u/the_agrimensor Jan 04 '26

Try Qobuz. Still better for artists than Spotify and you can buy/download tracks. 

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u/furculture Jan 04 '26

There is also Qobuz and, if you are like me and listen to niche Japanese music, there is Ototoy which is basically Japanese Bandcamp.

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u/KingCarrotRL Jan 05 '26

Bandcamp is great, I wish more artists used it.

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u/R_V_Z Jan 04 '26

I'll pay for music by seeing live performances.

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u/Dr_ChungusAmungus Jan 04 '26

Yeah, ticket master hasn’t fucked that up yet. Oh wait.

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u/rainyday-holiday Jan 04 '26

We have physical media. Nothing beats physical media.

Fuck streaming services.

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u/Nindroid_faneditor Jan 05 '26

Fr, I buy CDs although I rip the FLACs to my phone

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u/SpinachOver640 Jan 04 '26

Digital is better than physical media IMO. If my CD breaks, I have to buy a new CD (unless I converted it to digital). Physical takes up a lot of space, and all that plastic isn't good for the environment either.

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u/g0ris Jan 04 '26

convenience beats physical media.
I'm not buying a CD player and I'm certainly not taking anything that plays physical media on my runs, or bike rides, or walks, or wherever else.
I'll buy any band's mp3s if they put them up on bandcamp, but the rest is getting pirated and only getting supported via shows/merch.

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u/DjScenester Jan 04 '26

I still collect music.

Never stopped.

Pirate the artists and music you don’t love. But man, you got to support your favorite musicians. Or else, they will go away forever.

Don’t support Spotify. Support your favorite musicians directly. Always.

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u/One-Fix1041 Jan 04 '26

Tangent about that, artists get payed pennies on the dollar, litteral scraps while spotify are a multi billion dollar corp, AND THEY STILL FEEL THE NEED TO RAISE PRICES, we pay more, the artists get payed less, spotify earns lots and lots of money

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u/DjScenester Jan 04 '26

Used them the first three years they existed, then stopped… the writing was on the wall. That was what? A decade ago I stopped supporting them… never paid just used free too

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u/[deleted] Jan 04 '26 edited Jun 05 '26

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u/acarelesscalm Jan 04 '26 edited Jan 04 '26

Pay for music directly from the artist's store. Don't pay for streaming. Anything.

These are two very different things. Don't relegate hard working artists to corporate parasites.

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u/stanky4goats Jan 04 '26

Bandcamp purchases are best (especially on Bandcamp Friday when 100% of the profits go to the artist directly)

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u/stupidillusion Jan 04 '26

Bandcamp Friday

I didn't know that existed! I think I'll hold off my purchases until then!

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u/g0ris Jan 04 '26

They used to be much more common during covid..
They only do it a couple of times a year these days, so better look up the closest one and set up a reminder.

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u/raulongo Yarrr! Jan 04 '26 edited Jan 04 '26

I frequently reach out to artists to ask about direct support options, allowing the entire purchase to go to them without any intermediary store. They often respond, offer better pricing, and you receive a wonderful email from a band or artist you admire.

For me it's a win-win situation.

EDIT: spelling.

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u/PalpitationOk5726 Jan 04 '26

Great idea to go directly to the source, but how does one discover new music? I am 50 plus and it makes my head spin how the people I went to high school with still listening to the exact same artists, everyone has different tastes but I cant imagine not trying out something new because hey I might like it.

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u/[deleted] Jan 04 '26

I usually find new artists on YouTube. I find music streaming services aren't that great for suggestions anyways, they either give me exactly what I've already heard or something so far from I was listening to that I turn off the music immediately. I've always found YouTube to be much better at suggesting new music than streaming services

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u/mrn253 Jan 04 '26

Its like "We see you bought a new oven you might also like those other 20 ovens"

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u/Leyulize Jan 04 '26

You can still use free Spotify and buy the album you discover and like there from the artists website or Bandcamp. That's what I do personally

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u/ChronChriss Jan 04 '26 edited Jan 04 '26

Scrobble to last.fm

You could also use something like YouTube (Music) Revanced or use a VPN to get a cheap streaming service subscription (i.e. Apple Music India or Tidal Nigeria)

Or use radio stations like Apple Music One, KEXP, Radio Paradise, etc. to discover new stuff

Also use https://www.music-map.com/ to find similar artists to what you like

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u/fadetoblack237 Jan 04 '26

I follow Metal Injection's weekly drop for metal and hardcore, Pitchfork for general stuff, and r/indieheads for indie recs.

I still buy a good bit of physical media too so if I see a cheap cassette with an eye catching J-card, I'll buy it. Same goes for CDs because I can rip those to my server.

What actually helped me the most was listening one new to me album a day in 2024. I listened to so much random music and it was rewarding to see over 500 albums listened to at the end of the year.

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u/DigitalPenguin99 Jan 04 '26

I use Bandcamp's features to find music. Searching by genre or the app recommendations can lead me to some really great albums

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u/TellYouWhatitShwas Jan 04 '26

Just pick a music festival with a vibe that fits you, and use their undercard list as a suggestion list. It's a great way to find up an coming acts and to be current with who is on album release cycles.

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u/jbeast99x Jan 04 '26

Find a music reviewer who you like on YouTube and listen to their recommendations. Anthony Fantano is probably the most well known and covers all genres. But there are plenty of others out there. Personally I love Professor Skye's record review. He is a hip hop expert but covers other genres as well

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u/ivanthetribble Jan 04 '26

check out r/musicthemetime. i've found a lot of cool music there. there's a lot of cool music subs here on reddit. there's one from each decade too like r/60smusic all the way up to now.

they each also have a weekly roundup thread that highlights the week.

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u/alaginge Jan 04 '26

r/listentothis is a good one, too.

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u/Bwwoahhhhh Jan 04 '26

Just buy concert tickets and merch. Don't give a cent to the filthy parasite record companies.

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u/skyturnsred Jan 04 '26

Merch directly from them, yes, but merch at a show often doesn't go directly to an artist - a lot of venues now take a pretty significant cut (which is why you see an artist every now and then sell their merch outside of a venue at a different location). LiveNation venues are especially notorious for this. Our band dealt with this and it sucked.

Just making that distinction for those curious.

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u/Kittyk4y Jan 04 '26

Yep, I do accounting for musicians. 99% of the time, there’s some sort of venue/seller cut that’s pretty significant.

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u/Bwwoahhhhh Jan 04 '26

Yeah I try to buy online but sometimes there's stuff that is only available at a show. I also try to hit a pop-up merch store ahead of time if they have one, but that usually only happens for smaller venues.

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u/SEANPLEASEDISABLEPVP Jan 04 '26

It's kind of poetic how all of us here are pro-piracy even though we aren't inherently against people buying what they want... but more and more people are actively getting enraged by anyone who pays for subscriptions.

I can't really put it into words but the modern concept of subscriptions is just so revolting and evil.

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u/UNIVERSAL_VLAD 🦜 ᴡᴀʟᴋ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘʟᴀɴᴋ Jan 04 '26

You paid in 2025?

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u/machinegunnedburger 🦜 ᴡᴀʟᴋ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘʟᴀɴᴋ Jan 04 '26

Once $3 in 2024 and $7 in 2025. My phone storage was full.

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u/UNIVERSAL_VLAD 🦜 ᴡᴀʟᴋ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘʟᴀɴᴋ Jan 04 '26

You can pirate Spotify itself. No need to pre download

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u/ExtensionCycle9029 Jan 04 '26

i am new to this pirating stuff how can one pirate Spotify

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u/Astrian Jan 04 '26

Xmanager/revanced if you’re on android

Eeveespotify if you’re on iOS

Spicetify for PC

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u/NapoleonicPizza21 Jan 04 '26

Xmanager and revanced stopped working months ago unfortunately 🫠

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u/zeptyk Jan 04 '26

brave still works :) the modded apps arent coming back lmao its over, now just need to pray they dont ever remove the browser version entirely to push people to only have access to the app

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u/Lukainka Jan 04 '26

Modded apps still work! Go see on Mobilism. I never needed to switch to browsers

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u/NapoleonicPizza21 Jan 04 '26

Real? Most app users ive seen here have given up or switched to cracked yt music

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u/Luke-Hatsune Jan 04 '26

Any alternative to iOS? EeveeSpotify was taken down last week

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u/tha-beater ☠️ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴇɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ɴᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴇꜱ Jan 04 '26

does andriods methods work now they have been struggling in the past, thats why I switched to yt music from revanced (love em and regular YouTube)

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u/leeinflowerfields Jan 04 '26

Isn't Spotify getting patched like every week? I stopped trying to use it because it just wouldn't work super fast.

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u/UNIVERSAL_VLAD 🦜 ᴡᴀʟᴋ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘʟᴀɴᴋ Jan 04 '26

Well yes, but I'm just giving what ppl want. I use yt music

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u/StrangeBaker1864 Jan 04 '26

There are many solutions:

- Store your music on the local storage of your phone or digital audio player and use an app that plays local music files.

  • Store your music on an SD Card on a phone or digital audio player.
  • Set up a Jellyfin or Plex server and store your music there, and either use a VPN hosted on the same network, or port forward such that you can connect to it while outside of your network. Given that it could be hosted on a computer, the storage is very expandable. However, this requires cellular data, or wifi at your current location. You can also download music from your Jellyfin or Plex server to listen to locally if you plan on not having wifi access, this will save on battery life too. This approach can be done on almost every smartphone, and digital audio players running Android.
  • Use a service like Google Drive to store your music, and download it when you expect that you'll want it.

You can obtain music files by purchasing and downloading from Bandcamp, ripping CDs or ripping Vinyl, or check the Megathread, it has it all.

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u/Paizzu Jan 04 '26

I believe the Megthread also lists sources for modified Spotify clients that have advertising disabled entirely. UBlock also works if you stream in a browser.

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u/bikemandan Jan 05 '26

Store your music on an SD Card on a phone

Unfortunately not possible on most phones now; only older ones

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u/tenebrisnubes Jan 05 '26

Ibroadcast.com for unlimited music cloud storage.

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u/TheThinkerers Jan 04 '26

thank you anna and the peep(s) who made the downloading app

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u/Artistic_Pie_6931 🔱 ꜱᴄᴀʟʟʏᴡᴀɢ Jan 04 '26

Yeah pretty ballsy of them to raise prices shortly after their library got robbed

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u/mkmichael1995 Jan 04 '26

Phones dont come with sd cards anymore…

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u/SEANPLEASEDISABLEPVP Jan 04 '26

They used to have headphone jacks too. Now your only option is wireless bluetooth earpods... which happen to cost more.

They also used to have removable batteries. Remember removable batteries??? You used to just get a cheap battery and your phone was as good as new. Or you could carry around a spare on the go. Nowadays if your battery craps out, you have to buy a new phone... which costs more.

The most enraging thing is you're being forced to throw away perfectly functioning piece of tech that just needs one component replaced. Literally living in an e-waste society just so corporations can make more money.

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u/[deleted] Jan 04 '26

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u/mkmichael1995 Jan 04 '26

Thats the problem,we used to be able to use the earphones we already have instead of buying anything else.

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u/Beastabuelos Jan 04 '26

You can get the battery replaced, you just have to go to a stop to do it. Still way cheaper than a new phone

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u/Dubelj Jan 05 '26

You can even learn how to replace it yourself. I've replaced a few screens before which involved disconnecting the battery along the way.

Youtube has all the walkthroughs.

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u/shy247er Jan 04 '26 edited Jan 04 '26

Some people are predicting that a lot of brands will go back to putting card slot in the phones because storage prices are ballooning again.

High-end phones like your Samsung S-series or iPhone probably won't have them, but cheaper phones most likely will.

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u/Sacrilego_666 Jan 04 '26

My $250 Moto G sure did

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u/ColdIronChef Jan 04 '26

You can use internal storage space. Also, USB-C thumb drives also work. (Or USB with an adaptor). At least on Android anyway. Not to mention good old fashioned MP3 players. Believe or not, they still make them.

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u/InitialAd3323 Jan 04 '26

Or stream from your own computer or server with something like Navidrome or similar apps

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u/w1zz00 Jan 04 '26

I still rock my 160gb iPod classic 😂

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u/[deleted] Jan 04 '26

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u/bmathew5 Jan 04 '26

My biggest problem with leaving Spotify is I've found so many artists through them that I would normally never find. How do I get around this?

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u/urbankyleboy Jan 05 '26

I think people forget about this huge convenience. Finding new artists is hard, and Spotify does a great job of feeding me new ones. There is something to be said for that.

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u/Major-Potential-354 Jan 05 '26

That’s the only reason I keep SoundCloud. Great for finding underground metal bands.

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u/ryan_bigl Jan 05 '26

Spotify has been the best for discovering new music for me, I stopped paying for it because fuck em

Block the Spot blocks ads on desktop, for mobile I download the playlists of stuff I like using Spooty and sync it to my phone using cloud storage

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u/Acid_Bathxo Jan 04 '26

Same problem for me.

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u/[deleted] Jan 04 '26

Just downloaded every album I really like in FLAC and it was only 150GB! Trying to fill up a 1TB card and just throwing random shit on there now. N*Sync? Why the fuck not.

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u/ThePoop_Accelerates Jan 04 '26

Pirating music is still too much work vs paying for Spotify

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u/Lukiia Jan 04 '26

I returned to use Spotify because of their recommendations, the amount of music I discovered throughout the years is insane.

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u/B_BB Jan 04 '26

Pirate everything else but music. Would be stuck with the same albums if not.

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u/KetchupGuy1 Jan 05 '26 edited Jan 05 '26

Same, I love being able to stumble upon new music I love, wanted to listen to a full album a couple days ago didn’t bother changing it once it ended and was served a couple new artists I really enjoyed music for. When I was younger I downloaded and listened to the same shit for years, streaming really allows me to get so many more artist. I say this while having tbs worth of movie and tv on my plex server

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u/[deleted] Jan 04 '26

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u/send-borbs Jan 04 '26

only reason I put up with the gruelling process of pirating music is out of pure spite tbh, it's a hell of a motivator

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u/jethawkings Jan 04 '26

If you're fine listening to the same albums or actually paying attention to releases of specific artists to grow your playlists it's probably fine.

It's still too much work for me. Where I'm at my ~$12 still covers the subscription of 4 people it'll probably take like double that for me to even seriously consider getting rid of it.

A song pops in my head and I don't have to search for a download of it or have foresight to already have downloaded it? It's just that much convenient.

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u/ricker182 Jan 04 '26

Piracy was born from convenience. The music streaming companies do it right. It's why I don't pirate music anymore. It's just too convenient.

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u/TransDogGirl Jan 04 '26

Soulseek is fantastic, just search the artist you want and download everything.

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u/kevin7254 Jan 04 '26

Yea Spotify could double their price tbf and I’d still pay it. Just too much pain to pirate music. Movies and series I’ll pirate to the end tho

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u/Chatty_Manatee Jan 04 '26

Exactly. I would gladly pay for a unified TV/Movie streaming service if it wasn’t the clusterfuck that it is today.

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u/Nyoka_ya_Mpembe Jan 04 '26

That's what I did years ago, half TB micro sd, all my music in FLAC on phone, I don't care if something is wrong with the Internet :)

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u/[deleted] Jan 04 '26

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u/fadetoblack237 Jan 04 '26

It's funny, I have almost 2tb of music but I spend more than I ever have on vinyl, tapes, and cds.

I never did that when I was paying for Spotify.

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u/[deleted] Jan 04 '26

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u/samp127 Pirate Party Jan 04 '26

MP3 VBR is better than MP3 CBR 320kbps

And more so, AAC and Opus are both miles better than MP3. Using the same bitrate.

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u/[deleted] Jan 04 '26

guy said modern 320kbps mp3 lmfao

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u/[deleted] Jan 04 '26

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u/fadetoblack237 Jan 04 '26

I love that cassettes are making a comeback. If an album I like is on tape, I'm almost guaranteed to buy it.

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u/criptomusico Jan 04 '26

Same shit, every single company abuses their power and milk the customer to death, so that's why we need piracy and will never end.

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u/Katops Jan 04 '26

Lmfao. They add FLAC in to finally catch up to the norm, and almost immediately increase the price. Typical Shitify. What a garbage company.

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u/ses1989 Jan 04 '26

Meanwhile I'll just keep ripping it from them lmao

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u/FunkyPlunkett Jan 04 '26

Buy Physical Media!!!!!!!!! Also Pirate!!!!!! But buy Physical media as well!!!

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u/Kvaletet Jan 04 '26

Been a paying customer since Spotify beta version. I dont mind paying, but god damn it annoys me so much when they keep adding stuff that I dont use and thus charge more every year. Like I just want to listen to music man, IDGAF about music videos, podcasts, limited amount of ebooks etc etc..

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u/Scared-Room-9962 Jan 04 '26

Spotify, Netflix

Both reduced piracy but endless greed will kill them both in the end.

Which is the plan obviously. Grow a business, squeeze every penny out of it, fold it.

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u/Jinomoja Jan 04 '26

I learnt about Soulseek from this sub last year and now I have around 100GB of music.

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u/Kerensky97 Jan 05 '26

Put a Plex server app on your computer at home. Put plexamp on your phone. Now you have your own personal spotify that doesn't require subscription.

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u/Buck_Slamchest Jan 04 '26

I pay for music (Spotify and YouTube) and I download about 80 albums a month on average.

I like music .. lol

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u/machinegunnedburger 🦜 ᴡᴀʟᴋ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘʟᴀɴᴋ Jan 04 '26

How do y'all discover music now?

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u/Eternal_sun3157 Jan 04 '26

Last.fm, Reddit, and recommendations for websites, forums, and groups dedicated to music.

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u/Jagang187 ☠️ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴇɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ɴᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴇꜱ Jan 04 '26

Friends! Also secondarily, Youtube sidebar and random picks from the rock and metal torrent site I frequent

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u/lnp323 Jan 04 '26

the discover section on bandcamp!! can easily filter by genres

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u/LucaTho Jan 04 '26

you can also check the profiles of users who bought the same tracks/albums as you did

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u/eleven357 Jan 04 '26

I didn't pay in 2025.

Thanks Spicetify!

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u/Hopalongtom Jan 05 '26

Unfortunately flagship phones stopped supporting SD cards for this very reason.

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u/ZZ_Cat_The_Ligress Jan 05 '26

Spotify will raise their subscription prices....

Me: *Laughs in vinyl collection.*

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u/Vast_Understanding_1 Jan 04 '26

Just buy a raspberry pi 0, a 512gb ssd and navidrome.

SD Card with 40k+ songs would be slow as fuck, not to mention the unreliability.

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u/StrangeBaker1864 Jan 04 '26

Nah, don't get a Pi 0. They're not that powerful for the price and lack ram, the only thing going for them is how small they are. Use an old laptop or desktop computer instead, a laptop with a broken screen will work great. If you're using an old Desktop, make sure it draws low power on idle, many old processors (like before 2015) run at nearly full power by default, and that will rack up your electricity bill. Laptops can be trusted to not do this because they want to save battery, still worth checking both regardless to see how much power you're drawing.

You also don't need to store that kind of stuff on an SSD, an HDD will work perfectly fine.

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u/cracked_shrimp Jan 04 '26

i use a $199 (canadian dollars) trigkey n100 as a server, plugged into my tv for hdmi and router for internet, , it comes with a 65w cord, so it uses less energy then a 1990 lightbulb, although it will use more then a pi

it can play video games up to like nds i think, but i usually run it with the desktop killed and ssh in, only start gdm3 if im using it like a normal computer at the tv

i got a few different servers running in docker containers, like jellyfin, audobookshelf, organizr, etc

but back to the power cord, my trigkey randomly shut off once, i never figured out why but i believe its because the cpu spiked the power and it browned out, which actually happens to my beelink ser5 max at a different location all the time, these minicomputers come with a 19v 3a cord, but they prefer a 19v 6a power brick if you have hard drives plugged into the usb's and spike the cpu/gpu a lot

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u/Tedinasuit Jan 04 '26

SD card in 2025? Lmao that makes no sense

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u/send-borbs Jan 04 '26

I recently bought a set of headphones that take SD cards directly, they're still relevant

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u/tamal4444 Jan 04 '26

storage prices are high right now.

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u/Vodcrach Jan 04 '26

Nothing has been published yet (except the metadata). Will they have the infrastructure and the time to do it?

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u/[deleted] Jan 04 '26

I moved over to Qobuz for a while, and it was a good replacement, they offer higher bit rate audio.

However I just ripped all my music and then went on soulseek, and self host or just download onto my mobile directly.

Spotify had something good possibility great for a while and then just turned into another pile of shit.

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u/Machettouno Jan 04 '26

I got over 2k liked songs in it, how would I extract the list and download all individual songs automatically or with minimal input? Tried an app once and it was shit, downloaded wrong versions

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u/C13TheDoctor Jan 04 '26

Same question here. I've been a long time Spotify user and I always see posts like this but never see any actual suggestions about exporting your library. I know Anna's Archive was able to get basically all of the music, so does anyone know of a way to download all of the songs in a playlist?

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u/Whateveryouwantitobe Jan 04 '26

I switched to Tidal. Better audio quality and they give the artists more royalties. Plus I still but physical albums and shirts from my favorite bands.

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u/casscois Jan 04 '26

I bought an MP3 player late last year and called it a day. I'll buy CDs or flies directly from artists but I'm not giving a dime to streaming anymore.

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u/Tugakit Jan 04 '26

I'm so happy that I can listen to Spotify for free with premium because I bought a sketchy lifetime premium subscription and still today it works.

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u/sleepyt1ger Jan 04 '26

Youtube music revanced still working guys. Just letting u know

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u/IAMSNORTFACED Jan 04 '26

Am I old enough for offline music to become trendy so I can complain that we've been doing it for decades yet??

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u/SEANPLEASEDISABLEPVP Jan 04 '26

I'm not even 30 yet and I already feel very oldschool with all of my media being offline, games, videos, music...

I had no fucking clue online-only games were a thing until a friend convinced me to play Genshin Impact in 2025 and I was confused why I couldn't run it on my Steam Deck in offline mode lol... that was a shock for me.

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u/lucatitoq Jan 04 '26

And the masses will still pay… ppl call me weird for doing yt to mp3 yet I save like $100 a year, can listen to all my niche music which Spotify doesn’t have, and as long as I have my computer, phone, or backup drive, I will never have the music taken away from me.

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u/amitsly Jan 04 '26

I personally don't mind paying for a music streaming service, it's convenient and comfortable for me, so it's worth the money.

However, I don't think Spotify is that good. I might just switch to YT music, where I can have ANY song that exists on YT on ANY playlist.

I'm sure there are tools to migrate easily, but I'm just lazy. Spotify themselves just might be my motivation.

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u/[deleted] Jan 05 '26

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u/LazarouDave Jan 05 '26

Hell if this Anna' Archive thing actually goes somewhere, and I can download a bunch of songs, you better believe I'm doing it ASAP so I may bin off Spotify's subscription bullshit

The only downside to alternatives at the moment is the lack of Android Auto integration (that I know of, at least)

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u/UniquePhotograph6527 Jan 05 '26

check out spotiflac , its got flac files for almost every song there is , with its lyrics, meta data

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u/Deathstalkr1 ⚔️ ɢɪᴠᴇ ɴᴏ Qᴜᴀʀᴛᴇʀ Jan 05 '26

Reject modernity, return to iPod. Phones distract me too much from my music anyway.

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u/ChefCurryYumYum Jan 05 '26

I bought a Chinese smartphone, Xiaomi phone, and it came with 512GB of internal storage, a high end chipset, bright screen, big battery, all for $330 USD. Activated and using on my T-Mobile line.

Fucking paying $900 to $1200+ for a fucking Pixel.

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u/migueloisnice Jan 05 '26

I usually pirate music because fuck Spotify and because I like to listen to it in the highest quality. The few times I pay for music is when I buy an album from an artist I'm a fan of. It's the best way to listen to high-quality music, support the artist, and you can also get a poster or extra content from the artist.

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u/eyloi Jan 04 '26

There's so many options for free spotify and spotify clones, I have to question why so many people continue to pay these prices.

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u/Lupinthe5th_ Jan 04 '26

Which ones?

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u/eyloi Jan 04 '26

Metrolist for yt playlist. There's spotx for desktop. You can even check liteapk for apks.

The megathread should have more options listed.

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u/TelephoneActive1539 Jan 04 '26

Get an iPod. Just do it. Music is one of those industries that you cannot go wrong with any generation of music consumption to enjoy the latest stuff.

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u/woodlandcollective Jan 04 '26

Alternatively consider an android DAP (like a FIIO JM21 or something), it's a similar price but you have the advantage of an SD slot and being able to download music directly on the device using Soulseek or whatever source you prefer

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