coryd.dev-eleventy/src/posts/2024/a-retrospective-on-a-year-without-streaming-music.md

date	title	description	tags	featured
2024-04-09T15:00-08:00	A retrospective on a year without streaming music	I wrote, roughly a year ago, about wanting to stream my own music and I've spent that time exploring and settling into options. I still don't want streaming music and I don't miss it, but I've learned a few things along the way.	tech music	true

I wrote, roughly a year ago, about wanting to stream my own music and I've spent that time exploring and settling into options. I still don't want streaming music and I don't miss it, but I've learned a few things along the way.

Let's get one thing out of the way up front: streaming music is bad for artists.¹

Trent Reznor, via NME:

"I think the terrible payout of streaming services has mortally wounded a whole tier of artists that make being an artist unsustainable," he said.

"And it's great if you're Drake, and it's not great if you're Grizzly Bear. And the reality is: Take a look around. We've had enough time for the whole ‘All the boats rise' argument to see they don't all rise. Those boats rise. These boats don't. They can't make money in any means. And I think that's bad for art."

It was hard enough to make a living as an artist before streaming and it's nearly impossible to now. Recorded music has become a loss-leader for tours and touring is grueling².

Artists were better off when we were toting around iPods, Zunes, Dell Digital Jukeboxes and buying mp3s one at a time. I think we were too.

I've always been a fan of manual curation and the care that goes into maintaining a collection, but instead of subsidizing a streaming "collection" to fill in gaps, I've retaken ownership of the whole thing. This has been both limiting and empowering — I can't turn on a radio station but I can remember what's in my collection and what I want to throw on³.

I track album releases via MusicHarbor, RateYourMusic and RSS. Anything I care about goes on an Albums calendar, and that ICS feed gets parsed and displayed on my site. Recommendations come from friends, Last.fm and, again RateYourMusic. I buy music from Bandcamp, 7digital and a few other retailers as availability dictates. I pick up vinyl and have too many band shirts⁴.

Service/app	Type	Price
Astiga	Playback from compatible storage	$4.99/month or $49.90/year
Doppler	Local music player (macOS/iOS)	$30 for macOS, $9 for iOS
emby	Media server	Varies
iBroadcast	Cloud locker	$3.99/month or $44.99/year
Jellyfin	Media servier	Varies
Plex/Plexamp	Media server	Varies
Roon	Music server	$14.99/month or $12.49/month (annual)
VLC	Local media player	Variable donations
Vox Music Cloud	Cloud locker	$4.99/month

Astiga remains a strong and flexible option, but I still don't love the Subsonic player landscape. Doppler is fantastic, but constrained by your local storage⁵. I've yet to try emby and I quite liked Jellyfin when I took it for a brief spin — Manet is a great app to use with it. I'm not committed enough to set up a Roon server and VOX Music Cloud still fails to excite me. All of this is to say outside of a brief (and fun) run with Doppler, I'm sticking with Plexamp⁶.

Plex provides a great balance of features and flexibility — Plexamp isn't native but it's still a joy to use. I get to update my metadata, update every single artist image⁷ — I even cleaned up the album genres Plex runs with (it was tedious, but here I am on the other side of the process). I'm scrobbling plays to Last.fm and ListenBrainz but am surfacing data from my own — relatively — simple implementation.

I don't miss playlists, I've kept up with artists I care about and I've discovered new ones along the way. I remember what I have on hand and know what suits a given mood. I pay artists where I can and wish I could do more. I have enough to keep me entertained and I'm glad I made the change.

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1. It has and will only continue to get worse as said services look to increase profits. It's already looking grim for small artists — just wait until they're dropping releases in the same fashion as TV streamers or — imagine it — replacing actual artists with AI sludge. ↩︎

2. There are ever more hands out looking for a cut of merch sales on tour as well. ↩︎

3. My wife made the comment that I'm one of the few people that still listens to albums and I think there's a lot to be said for respecting the artist's intent and effort that went into sequencing the release. ↩︎

4. I'm down to buying shirts from Bifocal Media when they print something for NoMeansNo or Pyre Press and 20 Buck Spin (because they use Pyre Press for all their shirts). ↩︎

5. This isn't a bad thing, necessarily. Constraints can be meaningful and helpful. ↩︎

6. If things go sideways, Jellyfin is the runner up. ↩︎

7. I can do it, so I must. ↩︎