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Comment by Deganta | Hacker News Reader

Popcorn time was popular because it was way better than any of the legal alternatives. You just had to open it, type the name of the movie/series and you probably could start watching. You could also do this in the legal alternatives, but the chance of actually finding what you were looking for was pretty small.

Here I don't really see how this is better than Spotify/iTunes/Amazon Music.

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Spotify recently removed six songs in my "offline" playlist from its library, so I can no longer play them. If this actually saves music files, that's a big plus.

Indeed. I'd love an app that allowed me to download songs (from torrent etc.) - the desired version, quality, ID3 tags and so on without issues. That would be a big improvement on most music services (streaming and buying). However, this looks to mainly be a low-quality Spotify alternative, so...

You may be interested in soulseek[0]. I use it to search for more obscure music and the results include the bitrate/format. There's also a watchlist function in case you can't find something so you can keep searching in the background. Afterwards I use beets[1] to autotag everything with musicbrains and move it to my library folder, and it usually works. The downside is it isn't a streaming service so you have to find some way to listen remotely. I use Plex[2] for this and haven't had any issues. Also since it's P2P there's a general expectation that you also share things with other people, so you'd have to be prepared for that.

[0] https://www.slsknet.org/news/

[1] https://github.com/beetbox/beets

[2] https://www.plex.tv/

https://github.com/lidarr/Lidarr

You can use your own copies of music in Spotify. All you have to do is tell it where to find them on your disk.

And if you connect with a mobile device on the same network as the computer with the files on it, they'll automatically be transferred so you'll get them on mobile too.

Two of my favorite bands (Blind Guardian, Kamelot) put only their last couple of releases on Spotify, but with this method I can listen to their whole back catalog.

Reading through Spotify's docs, I really don't want to put control of my music life in the hands of Spotify's tenuous relationship with the music industry.

That's the point, you don't have to. The spotify software synchronizes your personal collection between all your devices and uses it to fill holes in their catalog.

Afraid that an artist is going to pull their stuff from spotify? Acquire digital copies of that artist's work some other way, and spotify will slot them right into your playlists where the old ones used to be. I did this when SPV Records pulled Silverthorn, it was practically no work.

Even if the whole industry abandons spotify, it will still be unique and valuable as a seamless way to synchronize your music library between all devices.

If the industry abandons Spotify, and my entire music life was wrapped up in it, then I need to acquire 600+ individual music tracks from 400+ artists, if I hadn't already done it already, all to continue listening to music the same way I do now. The problem gets worse the longer I remain on the platform. And that assumes I'll be able to get my data, about which tracks I need to acquire, out when the time comes. If not then I'm really up Shit's Creek without a paddle.

I'd rather pay more in the short term, paying for individual tracks, for a solution that will work indefinitely, than set up a situation in which extreme disruption of a part of my life I'm utterly reliant on can be afflicted at a whim of a dipshit music exec who doesn't understand how people can become reliant on music or worse, understands and does it anyway because it'll make him more money.

So you're saying, you're afraid of being reduced to small personal catalog in an unlikely future apocalypse scenario, and you are solving this problem by forcing yourself to use a small personal catalog today?

I wouldn't call it unlikely. Music services have a history of getting shut down. Sure, Spotify's star is bright now. But it could get acquired tomorrow by a company that decides it doesn't want to support all my use cases. If one of those use cases is something I'm reliant on, then Spotify all of a sudden becomes totally worthless.

Whereas my personal catalog will never stop supporting my use cases.

What music services have a history of getting shut down after 11 years of profitability and complete cultural and market dominance? Spotify is hardly comparable to Zune or whatever.

It's totally your prerogative to not use spotify or other music streaming services, I'm just saying fear of imminent market apocalypse isn't really a good reason to deny all of the upsides.

Cultural and market dominance? Where can I get some of that Kool-aid? Spotify is certainly more successful than many of the alternatives, but it's a crowded space. Apple Music, Amazon Music, Google Play Music, YouTube Music, SoundCloud, Pandora, Bandcamp and 8Tracks are just the ones I've heard of. Any one of these, including Spotify, is subject to acquisition, spinning out, or outright shutdown at the whims of the music industry. Any of these events can change the service such that it's practically useless.

The ones already shut down or folded into different companies with different priorities include Rhapsody, Beatport, Rdio, Last.fm's streaming offering, and the aforementioned Zune. Forgive me if I'm a little cautious and not willing to depend on the magic of "the market," cue jazz hands, to ensure access to my music, especially when I have a solution that's already working that isn't subject to those risks.

My only problem with this method is the volume level of imported songs is different than spotify's, which is very annoying because the imported songs are often a lot louder than other songs on spotify. Apparently spotify's volume normalization setting doesn't apply to these imported songs.

Dude, just had to tell you that Blind Guardian and Kamelot are some of my favs too :-D

But to add something substantive, I also do this with many artists. I also really like Tool, which are notoriously absent from all the platforms. I ripped my old CDs and uploaded them to Google Play Music and now I can listen whenever, wherever I want.

Blind Guardian has their full discography on Spotify now, in case you hadn't seen :-)

Have you tried Google Play Music? I have never had a problem with them, after experiencing the same issue as you with Spotify. Much cleaner interface too.

I've had issues with Google Play Music removing albums from underneath me. And sometimes specific songs from the album wouldn't be available.

And apparently file download in nuclear is "coming soon". Well, there went the one reason to try and use it.

I believe it might be sought after is because it is a free alternative (although not sure if it contains ads or not, I don't see any mention of it anywhere - and I haven't used it).

One way this better than Spotify & Apple Music - it contains user-created remixes and mashups that aren't available on the streaming platforms.

But for users who are interested in that content, I don't know how this is much better than just browsing the songs directly on YouTube.com.

FOSS client sounds like a selling point to me.

One of the best commandline tools I've ever used was `pirateflix`. You typed pirateflix, typed the name of any movie, then a few seconds later VLC would open and the movie started right away.

I didn't use it much, but it was an amazing example of "Do one thing well."

It's better because it's free, as opposed to the rest of options that you've mentioned which either a) cost money or b) force you to listen to ads.

(Pro-tip: if you use https://open.spotify.com/ with a free account with an ad blocker, you get no ads)

The actual audio ads are blocked/skipped? (vs the pop-up ads)

Yep

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