Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

I just ditched spotify completely in favour of a jellyfin private server that works like spotify for me. If I want to get recommendations, listenbrainz gives me a weekly list based on what i listen.

I use soulseek to download, AOTY.org to find new music. To listen I use musicbee on PC and Poweramp on Android.

You can set up musicbee to scan and sync music automatically to your phones album folder when you plug it in the PC with USB. It can even convert them to smaller files like mp3 or opus if you like. I recommend opus.

Musicbee also has a replaygain feature to analyze the volume of your music library, and adjust them so they all play at a similar volume. This metadata also carries over when you sync to Poweramp. Just need to enable the option there.

You can use soulseek on your computer or on Android phones. I mostly download on my PC since then I don't need to go into the folders to move albums. Just need to plug in the phone to sync.

If I really need streaming for some reason I use revanced youtube music. But I mostly just search up recommendations on AOTY and add them to my library.

It took a little tinkering to get it how I like it, but it was fun, and once set up it's quite smooth and works well. I prefer it over streaming now.

Make sure to buy some albums every now and then to support your favorite artists directly.

It’s never been so easy to download music. Soulseek, yt-dlp, torrents for older stuff, spotify downloader websites etc. I still have spotify but I started growing my local music collection a few years ago. Considering canceling my spotify subscription.