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Comment by ProfessorLayton | Hacker News Reader

I am having a hell of a time adjusting to a streaming-focused music world. On one hand, I love having access to pretty much all the music I want, and have discovered a lot of new artists (through no help of the apps themselves, however). On the other hand, having my library randomly switch on me with songs disappearing, album covers swapping out or renamed is driving me NUTS.

Not to mention the general buggyness that's on iOS Music. I feel like maybe it's just me because people generally enjoy it, but the app is a pretty terrible experience overall (Slow, buggy, messy). It sometimes refuses to play a song! Maybe I'm just getting old.

I'm on a family plan where the cost per person is negligible, so I can deal with it most of the time, but I do sometimes miss the ipod days.

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So stop streaming and start buying. That's still an option.

I use streaming services for taste testing, but if I really like something and want to own it, I turn to a DRM-free platform (e.g. Bandcamp) to buy from the artists, then use my own solution for playing that music on my devices (in my case Navidrome).

And as a bonus you'll put a lot more money in the pockets of the artists you love.

I've purchased plenty of music, but the problem is that at least on iOS, the music app will still swap out song/album/info/art, or mismatch them altogether. The app itself is optimized for streaming, with everything else being an afterthought.

My favorite way to support artists I love is to go to their tours and buy their merch, including vinyls that are too cumbersome to actually listen to :D.

> I've purchased plenty of music, but the problem is that at least on iOS, the music app will still swap out song/album/info/art, or mismatch them altogether.

I wonder if another app might solve your issues? Certainly my combo of Navidrome + substreamer (on Android) doesn't have any of those issues. My music is tagged and has embedded artwork and the app just uses what's there. Then I just use MusicBrainz Picard to ensure my tags are clean and in good shape.

> My favorite way to support artists I love is to go to their tours and buy their merch, including vinyls that are too cumbersome to actually listen to :D.

This is the way!

iTunes Match still exists.

I use that with Apple Music.

It’s still only $25 per year.

All my obscure old hip hop cds nicely looked after by Apple and available to stream or download anywhere.

That's a common bug. I fixed it and it has stayed fixed. I am pretty sure I followed the recipe here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252329979

>including vinyls that are too cumbersome to actually listen to That’s why you record them and cut the recorded master track into sides (or individual songs but I find it’s more fun to preserve the sides-experience) for listening on the go! I know it sounds ridiculous but it’s almost like this weird form of archiving meditation for me.

Oh man. Navidrome looks awesome. Never thought about doing that. Will start buying from bandcamp tomorrow. Thank you tons for the suggestion.

This is why I host my own personal streaming service. I'll buy music, copy the files to my server, and use Airsonic to stream it to my laptop, phone, etc. It's a lot more work, but I'd rather have full control than use something like YouTube Music, where I can only hope that the songs I like don't get pulled or the service itself doesn't get shut down.

I'm still irrationally hanging on to those days. I usually buy mp3 albums on Amazon and download them, then transfer to my iPhone. Occasionally I run across an album that just will not copy over, it just silently fails in iTunes when I try to drag and drop. I think the latest is Dave Brubeck's Time Out, I have to play that via the Amazon Music app.

What is supper weird to me is how billie eilish songs very often don't start playing. I can click on anything in my library and it is fine. Trying to play billie and the app just sits there waiting.

Simple music discovery has not recovered from just perusing the top daily or weekly on oink.

I encourage you to check out an app called Marvis. It’s a frontend for Apple Music (iOS only) that eliminates a lot of the default client’s issues. Until recently, I was paying for Tidal despite having Apple Music as part of my Apple One subscription, but switched back once I discovered Marvis.

> On the other hand, having my library randomly switch on me with songs disappearing, album covers swapping out or renamed is driving me NUTS.

Where are you seeing this happen? The only thing I ever notice is album covers swapping out. In the 6 years I've been a spotify customer, I can only ever recall 2-3 songs becoming unavailable.

You can use youtube-dl-gui to grab mp3's from many different platforms.

I also grab mp3's using ymusic and a hacked pandora app on my phone. I miss the days of what, waffle, and oink though. Still haven't gotten into orpheus yet.

Also op above is right, bandcamp is awesome.

Where can you buy (drm free) music these days? After google play shut down, I haven’t known where to go

Amazon has MP3 downloads, at least where I live. Last time I bought a CD there, the corresponding MP3 download was included.

Bandcamp. A lot of artists just sell their stuff directly on their Bandcamp page now, and you get the choice of format when you download (MP3/WAV/FLAC/etc).

iTunes still has a store where most music is DRM free, and available in a lot of countries (as opposed to Amazon MP3, which is only available in a few). If you have a Mac it's fairly easy to right-click a purchased, downloaded song in Music.app and click "open in finder", so you can copy it (or the entire album) to some self-hosted music server/app.

There are sites like bandcamp, boomkat, beatport, bleep, 7digital, but they all have smaller collections, so may not have what you're looking for.

There's also budget options of questionable legality hosted in countries with a more flexible approach to music licensing, like e.g. mp3va.com.

Qobuz sells drm-free standard and hi-res flac files.

Aren't all music stores DRM free these days? I personally use Amazon, but iTunes or... hmm, you're right, a lot of the big name digital music stores have now shut down.

Bandcamp is the pinnacle of such places in my opinion. I’m hoping it stays as it is for many years to come.

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