Dead End Thoughts

How to replace Spotify with ListenBrainz (With some extra recommendations)

TL:DR Give up on having only one app to hold all your music wants and learn to get used to going to different sites/apps for different music wants like recommendations, playlists, data integration, etc. For those living under a rock, people are swearing and moving off spotify for a myriad of reasons. Some being the low payout for every artist that isn't as huge as Taylor Swift or the advent of AI musicians muddying the algorithms and playlists of everyday listeners or the rise in subscription prices. Browsing forums gets conversations on which streaming service can replace spotify as not all services held the same rights to foreign musicians or remixes like spotify did. Whether any of the alternatives below work for you depend on what artists/genres you look for, how important having it available via an app is and what your financial budget is:

For me, the core appeal of spotify were four things:

Going one by one, the ready made recommendations can be remedied by migrating your listens or some generic likes to a new profile on listenbrainz. In a nutshell it's a database that holds tons of genres, musicians, and songs similar to what last.fm is offering only the free account you get on listenbrainz offers much functionality than last.fm. You get a weekly generated "Weekly exploration" playlist that you can copy to your profile and listen to via their website, Sidenote: Listenbrainz does have an android app available but can only notice local songs you play. In order to integrate other services, you'd need the google play version which then works with the spotify service to play music which leads you back to square one. The data analytics on ListenBrainz can't be beat and imo are better than spotify as their presentation use a more classic format of showing your top albums in a collage that you can edit by changing the number of rows and columns. It also breaks down which genres you tend to listen to depending on the time of day and overall tendencies broken down by week, month or all time. Ease of access to artists is gonna be a sticking point as I love mainstream artists like red hot chili peppers and Linkin park but can dedicate an hour or two listening to some random death metal from Poland if it's recommended. My compromise is to keep listening to main stream artists on youtube and soundcloud and if I really love certain tracks then buy the DRM free copy off Qobuz. and Yes you can find some main stream artists on soundcloud, you can find the remastered version of "One" by Metallica on soundcloud by the band themselves, Link.

How to find new music to listen to?

Maybe the weekly playlist from listenbrainz isn't enough and you want hour long mixes delivered to your feed. I get ya and I've got two recommendations aside from scouring forums and subreddits for bands to check out.

Starting with bandcamp, so when you log into bandcamp on a desktop you'll see a little lightning bolt in the top right corner called "feed", typically this is used to notify you when an artist you follow uploads a new single/album or when someone else buys the same music you own (why is this a thing?). A recent feature I found is that you can use this same feed to find new albums/singles labelled under the same genres you want to explore or find more of. Go back to the home page and scroll down to the black space that starts with the text "Discover music by genre and location", click "Explore more genres". This'll take you to a new page letting you narrow down what you're looking for by genre, subgenre, digital vs physical media. Click "digital" and then any genre you want more of, say "jazz". Once done, there'll be a "follow" button next to the search bar asking you to "add a genre, location or tag". Clicking follow will add it to your feed so any albums or singles under "jazz" and "digital" will automatically show up on your bandcamp feed. So anytime you're feeling bored, swing on to your bandcamp feed and you'll find some random artist who's labelled their recent upload to a genre tag you've got your eyes on, thereby linking you to what may be your next indie favorite.

Next up is mixcloud, an underrated service letting DJs host their mixes and live shows that anybody can subscribe and listen to. It does have a monthly subscription and some artists can paywall some of their uploads for paying subscribers but you can still find plenty of ad free shows. This, like bandcamp requires you to look for what genres you already enjoy and see who's still active or at least as a plentiful backlog for you to explore.

#other