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philamonster | 3 years ago
https://www.fastcompany.com/90704310/spotify-boycott-daniel-...
I was paying for a family plan with some people spread out and wanted to get everyone on the same page before I just dropped their paid service. I have to say it's been horrendous using the app over what seems like months. I recently bought a car with Apple CarPlay (which is garbage on all fronts IMO though may have more to do with Subaru's console than Apple).
As you said, I was bombarded with Podcasts when the app loads in the car though I NEVER listen to them, ever. Even when my phone isn't connected to my car. Playback has gotten super annoying where if I'm listening to a playlist I've made or my Liked songs when I disconnect the phone and re-connect the song I was listening to will continue to play to the end but then then the app will take over and play recommendations instead continuing with the playlist I was listening to, every time. I also don't like not being able to generate a playlist in the app from Liked songs as I was using liking songs as way to quickly group a few tunes that I want to investigate further at a later time and maybe keep around or remove after a couple listens. They typically don't stay liked for long.
Since leaving the service I've been listening to the couple gigs of songs I had cached locally in iSub on my phone. I used to host my own Subsonic server, over 12 years I think, but had a catastrophic hardware failure in Feb 2021 which brought all my containers down permanently. Fortunately, I was able to recover the array long enough to copy everything to an external drive, nearly a TB of MP3's/AAC/FLAC etc. Not sure where to go from here as I don't really have the interest or resources to build a new/better/more efficient homelab nor do I have the time. These services to stream and never own or curate a thing are killing my interest in general in learning how to roll your own again, which oddly I am somewhat thankful for especially as warmer weather approaches. This has lead me to cancel other streaming services and really question how badly I want to rent content which always ends in not doing so these days. My kids don't always appreciate it but I feel like I've taken back a small amount of control by opting out and not participating. Interested in seeing how far I can go with this purge...
dangravell|3 years ago
Disclaimer: this is my commercial service...
A middle way is to use what is essentially a hosted service for streaming your own collection. I run https://asti.ga/ . Let me know if it seems interesting or you have any questions!