alt Hacker NewsOf all the privacy concerns in my life these days, corporations knowing about my music taste is not cracking the top 1000. In fact Instagram ads have led me to discover some fantastic small artists, so I'll happily give that out to whoever cares.
I'm sure it works fine if you've basically settled on what music you like and never listen to anything new, but if you do like to discover new music, self-hosting just isn't an option.
Or if you follow any contemporary artists who will drop a new single on any given day (which is usually not available for purchase), I much prefer being able to just go into my streaming app and press a button to start listening as opposed to trying to find and rip audio files from the internet and put it on my server and deal with metadata and cover art manually.
Apple Music and YouTube Music also let you upload your own files to a cloud locker and stream them from any device, so even if the platform is missing stuff you can fill it in yourself. Best option IMO
Replies
> knowing about my music taste
As with almost all arguments against exercising privacy, this is merely a failure of imagination on your part. Spotify doesn't give a shit about your taste.
Next time you listen to music, think about all the possible data that could be observed simply from you pressing play. What time of day is it? What day of the week? Which device are you using? Where is that device? Is this an unusual genre for you at 8pm? And so on. "You listen to indie rock" is harmless data. "We know the all your emotional states from the past 10 years and also those of your whole family" is at least a little scarier, right?
Combining large amounts of data about how you use a single app can tell a lot about your life. You may say this is overblown, but if you do want to hold a true belief instead of a convenient one, start by acknowledging the enormous amounts of data Spotify actually has about who you are and how you live.
Using apps operated by Meta is an entirely different thing — they're effectively spyware.
I tend to listen to albums in full, as the artist sequenced them. I get recommendations from friends and niche communities, then follow specific artists. When I start listening for the day I'll pick a known artist or set of albums, queue them up and go on with my day.
> corporations knowing about my music taste is not cracking the top 1000
They don't care much about your music taste, that's not the valuable data they're collecting and reselling. They're tracking your location, habits, address, email, passwords, billing info, extensions/other apps, locations, etc etc and storing it insecurely to be easily acquired by people with arguably even less scruples than the corporation they're taking it from because the cost to store this shit securely is higher than the fines/consequences from a data breach, so why bother? All of that (meta)data is for more valuable to them and the numerous "bad actors" that data-harvest them on the regular.
> as opposed to trying to find and rip audio files from the internet and put it on my server and deal with metadata and cover art manually.
This can be automated, which can also be a form of curated music discovery.
> so even if the platform is missing stuff you can fill it in yourself.
With what? All that music you yourself assert you aren't acquiring "manually"? Sounds like self-hosting with a couple of extra steps to me.
> I'm sure it works fine if you've basically settled on what music you like and never listen to anything new, but if you do like to discover new music, self-hosting just isn't an option.
I can't tell if this is ignorance or arrogance, but it's laughably out of touch either way, especially in this day and age. You can just say you're too lazy to fuck with it, don't know how to do it, or don't socialize with people that share your music tastes. It's fine.
There's numerous examples in this comment section of how to do music discovery without subsidizing a company that takes advantage of both the artists that users listen to, and the users themselves, and self-hosting is in no way a barrier to that.
> Of all the privacy concerns in my life these days, corporations knowing about my music taste is not cracking the top 1000.
It doesn't stop there. The business model of cloud and streaming services is to charge the customer, and then sell the customer's interactions with the service to third parties (data brokers), who cross-correlate the information obtained with other sources to build very detailed individual profiles.
You would have to go lengths (throwaway identity, email, payment with gift cards, VPN, etc.) with each streaming service to effectively prevent this sort of tracking. And after that, you will still own nothing. Worse, the streaming company may even ban you for using a VPN, or refuse to play the content on free devices because DRM can't be enforced. It's complete madness.
> if you do like to discover new music, self-hosting just isn't an option
Sure it is. Music discovery via algorithmic services is not the only way. There's radio, talking to people who have similar interests, reading interviews with musicians who talk about other music they like, browsing selections at the library, reading books about music or musicians, even just reading the liner notes for an album, noticing some players you like and finding other things they've worked on, and on and on and on. It doesn't have to be high effort, it's not instant, but it works great.