I’ve felt similarly for many years, but remain trapped using Spotify due to a lack of decent alternatives. Tried Tidal, but it wasn’t really any better. Would love to hear what leavers migrate to.
I switched to https://qobuz.com, mainly for the high audio quality (it goes up to 192kHz 24bit, which is worth it for me as I have the necessary equipment to make use of this), but it also supports "Spotify quality" i.e. mp3 quality/320 kbps, but I stayed for the experience.
It does not really have an algorithm, there is one playlist "My weekly Q", which updates each week with songs that you could like.
The only other algorithmic thing they have are song/artist radios like Spotify has, which also work relatively good.
Their front page features handpicked songs from people at Qobuz and songs that are trending on qobuz (these won't look at all like Spotify charts most of the time, as the audience is different). But you can customize the front page by filtering the genres you want to see.
But as mentioned I stayed for the experience, and this includes for some (by far not all) albums you can download the whole PDF of the CD inlet or see a description/history/backstory about an Album provided to you by Qobuz, also the choices that Qobuz handpicks are very often excellent picks which I immediately add to my favorites. And as these picks are not some algorithm that decides this, I don't end up in a rabbit hole of recommendations like on Spotify, but more often discover really new things that I would've never through Spotify. They also have their own magazine https://www.qobuz.com/us-en/magazine.
You can also buy songs, and they will be yours to keep forever, as you can get the songs directly as FLAC, WAV, ... without DRM and whatnot.
There is also an unofficial qobuz downloader, which is against their ToS, but works.
Though I still have not stopped using Spotify, as I'm in a family plan and don't pay anything for it, and sometimes Qobuz does not have some songs.
FWIW I also use https://last.fm for recommendations, and Qobuz can automatically scrobble to it.
All in all Qobuz has more of the "sitting in a Living Room and listening to vinyls/CDs vibe" rather than the TikTok/Instagram vibe that Spotify gives to me.
Otherwise, I found Deezer to be quite a good alternative to Spotify.
Deezer is really great, not enough people talk about it. It has a simple and great homepage, you can upload your own MP3s, playlists are still mostly human curated, it has a shazam-like feature built in, the playlist management is the best, and the recommendations are second only to perhaps Spotify.
Sadly they all seem to be in a race to the bottom.
I switched to YouTube Music when Spotify made it clear they were going to spend a lot of money on podcasts, which makes it even more annoying that it looks like You Tube is planning on doing the same.
I end up missing Pandora (not available in most countries).
I do find Tidal to be a little better. I migrated due to comments on here and found it to not be the "no bullshit" experience that I hoped for, but it is a bit less obnoxious at least.
SushiHippie|2 years ago
It does not really have an algorithm, there is one playlist "My weekly Q", which updates each week with songs that you could like.
The only other algorithmic thing they have are song/artist radios like Spotify has, which also work relatively good.
Their front page features handpicked songs from people at Qobuz and songs that are trending on qobuz (these won't look at all like Spotify charts most of the time, as the audience is different). But you can customize the front page by filtering the genres you want to see.
But as mentioned I stayed for the experience, and this includes for some (by far not all) albums you can download the whole PDF of the CD inlet or see a description/history/backstory about an Album provided to you by Qobuz, also the choices that Qobuz handpicks are very often excellent picks which I immediately add to my favorites. And as these picks are not some algorithm that decides this, I don't end up in a rabbit hole of recommendations like on Spotify, but more often discover really new things that I would've never through Spotify. They also have their own magazine https://www.qobuz.com/us-en/magazine.
You can also buy songs, and they will be yours to keep forever, as you can get the songs directly as FLAC, WAV, ... without DRM and whatnot.
There is also an unofficial qobuz downloader, which is against their ToS, but works.
Though I still have not stopped using Spotify, as I'm in a family plan and don't pay anything for it, and sometimes Qobuz does not have some songs.
FWIW I also use https://last.fm for recommendations, and Qobuz can automatically scrobble to it.
All in all Qobuz has more of the "sitting in a Living Room and listening to vinyls/CDs vibe" rather than the TikTok/Instagram vibe that Spotify gives to me.
Otherwise, I found Deezer to be quite a good alternative to Spotify.
mmmeff|2 years ago
Very happy I switched. The new windows app is well built, too
10729287|2 years ago
anderber|2 years ago
tallanvor|2 years ago
I switched to YouTube Music when Spotify made it clear they were going to spend a lot of money on podcasts, which makes it even more annoying that it looks like You Tube is planning on doing the same.
I end up missing Pandora (not available in most countries).
solarkraft|2 years ago
cyberpunk|2 years ago