What's with lastFM these days? I used it some 20 years ago when they started and they offered free, automatically curated radios (like Spotify ), but then they flipped, thanked the users for the data they collected from listening data and switched to some subscription model
this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2025
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Friendly alert that it's currently Bandcamp Friday - one full day that the site gives 100% of purchases to the artists. It's a good way to support small artists and build up a personal collection.
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I simply just installed Metrolist on my phone.
100 % piracy robbing musicians, but more importantly, robbing Google while circumventing Spotify altogether.
My issue is discovery. I'll take a look at what they've done here, but ive never been able to implement a reliable discovery process into my workflow. I still use local music, but my wife is not going to switch until I get at least some reliable and effective discovery built.
I scrobble all my navidrome activity to listenbrainz, which gives a weekly playlist of recommendations. You might have to wait a few weeks before it can establish your tastes depending on how much music you play.
But I need to get those recommendations to automatically populate into playlist in my music app so its all in one place. Thats the challenge. Providing a close to as good service as Spotify.
No, you don't need that. You want it because it's convenient and we live in a consumerist society where everything "needs" to be "frictionless". Intentionally clicking on an artist's bandcamp page to listen to a recommendation is fine. It's a lot easier than mail order or taking the bus to the record store to buy a copy.
I get what you're saying, but we need to question the parameters of the challenges more often.
You don't need those either. You can learn to play an instrument, enjoy music on the Sunday mass, or wait until the local troubadour visits your place.
It's just easier with the record store.
The thing that flipped it for me was realizing the Spotify algorithm isn't actually about discovering new music, it's about driving profit. Idealism aside, what that tactically means for music discovery is the recommendations are based primarily around what they want to play, and then secondarily around what you might like.
It means that you're only discovering a subset of music you might like that is profitable to Spotify and their big record label partners.
After realizing that, the Spotify algorithm lost a lot of interest for me. Now I use SomaFM to discover new music. They do curated music channels in a bunch of different genres, and I find that the DJs have a similar taste to mine, so I hear a good amount of new music I'm into.
This is spot on (pun intended).
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If you’re fortunate enough to live near a well-funded library, you can peruse their new arrivals section for CDs. That’s how I discover new artists
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Is there a "torrenting for absolute tech illiterate morons" guide out there?
The absolute basics:
- Install qbittorrent
- Install a VPN and run it so that all your Internet traffic goes down it
- Open a Web browser and search for top torrent sites 2025. There are articles with lists of the big ones.
- Go to a torrent site and search for what you want.
- Download the .torrent file and open it in qbittorrent OR copy the magnet link and paste that into qbit torrent. Either will start your download.
Always use the VPN when searching and downloading.
There are lots of steps to make it more convenient - things like using a Virutal machine so the vpn and torrent do their thing while you do whatever else you want on your PC, or setting up a docker Servarr stack to make things more convenient, or setting up a Raspberry pi / other device as a servarr stack. But for the basics all you need is a torrent client, a VPN and a Web browser.
All the extra advanced stuff is just quality of life, like being able to leave it downloading securely 24hours a day or organising your downloads better.
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Start out simple and stick with a basic BitTorrent client. Figure out where you want to download from and get a torrent client configured. I use an ISP that frowns upon piracy so here's a quick overview:
- Look for public torrent sites. I'm out of this game so I don't have any suggestions.
- Research private torrent trackers. I don't think I can provide any help with this, but there are other corners of Lemmy who can.
- Find a VPN. Everyone has thoughts on this and Proton VPN is the one I'm currently using.
- Pick a torrent client. I'd recommend qBittorrent myself.
- Configure your VPN to include your BT traffic.
If/when you want to try Lidarr, you'll be much better off knowing the basics of BitTorrent because *arr software is confusing in its own regard. Lidarr is just a tool to organize your music library folders and also automatically queue downloads. It is not a requirement to enjoy downloading music.
Usenet and soulseek are other alternatives.
For music, soulseek is a great resource too
i personally use a provider for that. i just download torrents to their cloud and get it at maximum speed from there. so I don't have to worry about p2p risks or being online a lot. I'm with premiumize, but there are others I guess.
The problem is those companies (premiumize, debrid, whatever) are entities that make profits from filesharing and give nothing back to artists. That's not morally defensible.
Filesharing itself is perfectly morally defensible, and in fact sharing culture is good for society (including artists).
So while they might be convenient, they also shouldn't exist in the first place. Parasitic companies shouldn't be rewarded for their patristic behaviour.
you are not wrong, but this also applies to VPN services. (their defense is as good as the sharehosters are useful for downloading Linux ISOs) and without using any of those proxy services, the lawyers get rich on my money, not the artists either
I have also moved fully to navidrome. It's slightly less convenient, but it's worth it to deplarform
Have they fixed the issues with Lidarr yet?
As far as I can tell, no. I haven't been able to search or import releases since about April.
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I guess I can be proud of not getting into Spotify at the first place. Instead of discovering new music, I discover older ones which I find more reliable since new music industry mostly suck. Oh, also Bandcamp is fine for discovering indie.
I know the main topic is ditching Spotify, but on the secondary topic of screwing over Spotify...
I realized that you can "pirate" Spotify (i.e. listen indefinitely as if you had a paid account) if you have uBlock Origin on Edge. No setup needed, it just works. Most likely any Chromium-like browser will work.
Unfortunately, I haven't got it to work with Zen browser which is Firefox based so I'm not sure if all Firefox based browsers are affected. The workaround I have for now is just have Edge open with Spotify in the background, and control it from the Spotify interface on Zen. Never download the app, they control that fully.
Funnily enough, I also got ad-free Spotify play on Amazon Echo when I was controlling it from Edge, though I never tried with Zen because I don't use Echo anymore.
PS: For audiophiles this is probably not gonna fly, as you don't have access to the highest bit rates iirc.
What do you mean by "they control the app fully"? Something like https://github.com/abba23/spotify-adblock will let you run the app without ads, which kinda contradicts the idea they control the app fully.
Oh really? I didn't know about that. Thanks! I meant they theoretically have full control over the app since they build the whole thing, rather than have it run in a browser environment which they can't control and could theoretically be altered with extensions etc. Seems they're not that great at controlling their own app either, lol
Happy to help!
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