[dotnet00]

Over the past year I've taken to just buying my music and using plex/plexamp for the streaming convenience. I'd have a hard time going back to other streaming services after getting used to the convenience of having control over the entire chain. Buying music also serves as a nice way to spend digital credit from Amazon.

It ends up costing me about as much as streaming.

[PragmaticPulp]

> It ends up costing me about as much as streaming.

Spotify is $10/month. If you're purchasing everything instead, that's only about 1 new album or 10 tracks per month into your collection.

The only way the price could be similar is if you're not listening to much new music. That may work from some people, but I don't think it's common. I estimate I listen to a minimum of 50 new tracks per week, which would be hundreds of dollars per month if I was buying everything.

I also wouldn't be exposed to nearly as much new music if I had to buy it all.

> I'd have a hard time going back to other streaming services after getting used to the convenience of having control over the entire chain.

I'm also confused about how dealing with all of these small purchases, manually managing your library, and setting up and maintaining a server for it is more convenient than signing up for Spotify.

It's hard to beat something like Spotify for convenience: Create account. Add payment method. Listen to nearly anything.

I think you might be dismissing the relative complexity of your setup because it's something you enjoy setting up and maintaining, but it's definitely not as convenient as Spotify (or other music streaming services).

[dotnet00]

> Spotify is $10/month. If you're purchasing everything instead, that's only about 1 new album or 10 tracks per month into your collection.

On average, that is indeed where I'm at, I had thought I did more than that but upon actually checking my purchase history, I found that I didn't really get new tracks too often, instead every few months I come across a new artist (via covers on youtube or from twitter) whose style I really enjoy and end up buying most of their discography in one go (and new tracks don't come out too often). Then I spend a lot of time listening to it all, enjoying picking up things I might've missed before. This is probably also affected by my preferences being a bit niche as a very specific flavor of J-Pop.

For managing the overall structure of my library I use MusicBrainz Picard, the small purchases don't really bother me too much.

You're right in that I do also enjoy setting up and maintaining my configuration. I self-host a bunch of things so the machine is already running anyway.

[belval]

> getting used to the convenience of having control over the entire chain

What convenience is that? How do you consider that your setup is in anyway more convenient that opening the Spotify app and listening to basically anything?

If you are into very niche music or something maybe, but it's pretty hard to beat just clicking "play". Now if you said you simply pirate the songs I could see the convenience of saving money, but in your case you buy the music anyway?

[dotnet00]

My biggest complaint with all the streaming apps I tried was that their interface was terrible (in my opinion), so that was an especially important consideration to me. I prefer an 'old school' music player interface that focuses entirely on just my library.

Then there's also the issue of VPNs, especially on my phone, I prefer to always have my VPN active which most streaming services do not allow.

Plus, on desktop I often prefer to use a separate music player (MusicBee), which again lends itself nicely to the self-hosted solution since I just have it pointed to the same library as plex. Related to this is that I can organize my music however way I want and don't have to worry about being locked into the app's quirks.

Then, with the spotify outage I came across many complaints about login timeouts causing the app to outright log them out, preventing them from accessing even their downloaded music, which is also a nice thing to not have to think about.

On top of all that, my taste in music is indeed slightly niche and it isn't too uncommon for some track I have to outright not be on any streaming service (sometimes because it's too old, sometimes because it's from too small of an artist or isn't a public release), so not having to switch to a different app for only that music is also nice.

So combining all that makes a plex/plexamp style arrangement much more convenient to me than any streaming service.

I used to pirate the music back when I was too young to afford it and might still do so for music that isn't available for convenient purchase (ie only available by importing expensive physical media from the other side of the world), but otherwise since I can now afford it and am often somewhat invested in the artist's career, I don't mind buying it.

[dvtrn]

What convenience is that

In my particular case, as someone who listens to a lot of international music: licensing. I've come across, and subsequently lost track of so many amazing international groups whose music suddenly comes off of streaming sites and don't come back because of licensing disputes or the license just plain ran out.

Pretty convenient for me now to just buy the song/album, put it on my drive and know it's not going anywhere outside of data loss or drive theft. Two things I can reasonably control with a bit more vigor.

[nine_k]

- Opening this setup and always finding the tracks you have. Nothing ever disappears from the catalog.

- Opening this setup and enjoying the highest quality.

- Opening this setup and having full control over playlists.

- Opening this setup overseas and still listening to the same tracks, regardless of local distribution rights.

- Opening this setup and realizing that you have already paid the artist likely more than several years of your listening on Spotify nonstop would bring them (only feels good if it's one of your favorite artists).

[justinhj]

Because of outages and or censorship of content

[belval]

I probably listen to music on Spotify ~5h a day while I work and I haven't had any downtime ever since I subscribed. As for censorship there was that thing with Joe Rogan, but as far as I know Spotify sided with him so I don't see where the censorship is?

[justinhj]

You are in a thread about a Spotify outage. The White House press secretary called for censorship of Joe Rogan and I expect it will happen soon as they find a reason. Personally I cant stand the user interface and many times I am away from a network connection and something I downloaded is not available or Spotify is just stalled trying to connect. Its probably just not a good fit for my use case

[alar44]

I've never experienced a Spotify outage in the 5 years I've been using it and I use it daily. Not once.

[alar44]

I have issues with Plex regularly with file formats not playing nice, incorrect box art, content being labeled completely wrong, and random server hangs. It's OK, but I wouldn't say it's more convenient than Spotify. With Spotify I do literally nothing. With Plex I have to troubleshoot now and then. I don't see how self hosting a media collection is more convenient in any way.

[dotnet00]

I haven't had an issue with server hangs or file formats (not suggesting that those can't exist), but for metadata I'm in the habit of putting all music I buy through MusicBrainz Picard which can automatically fix any errors or missing metadata fields and put them in a neat structure (Artist/Album/Song). Haven't had to manually fix any matches since that.

But yes, if you don't have to do anything to have an enjoyable experience on Spotify, then there's no reason for you to bother with self-hosting.

[lelandfe]

Gosh, I used to fuss over metadata constantly back when I managed my 500gb library of music. MusicBrainz would frequently mess up fields like composer, album artist, and especially remix credits and formatting of the same (using brackets instead of parentheses, "Rmx" instead of "Remix," etc)

I would go on weekend long binges of cleaning up the mess. The neurotic side of me misses having the busy work, but the practical side appreciates having the free time.