[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.