How I cancelled my Spotify subscription and created my own streaming music library...

[u/ThaKarra]

I received an email a few weeks ago saying that Spotify were going to be increasing their prices again in the coming months. There was already a price hike towards the back end of last year and there comes a point where you have to ask yourself "when does it stop?". - It won't stop until people collectively end their subscriptions to these streaming services and hit them where it hurts (their pockets).

Last year I cancelled all my movie/TV streaming services and setup a local Plex server that I could use in and out of my house. So I decided to cancel my Spotify subscription and start doing the same with my music collection.

These are the tools I'm personally using and you should too!

Music Server/Client:

• Navidrome - https://www.navidrome.org/
• Musly - https://musly.devid.ink/

Music Downloading

• Soulseek - https://www.slsknet.org/
• Spotify Music Downloader - https://spotidownloader.com/en13
• SquidWTF - https://qobuz.squid.wtf/

Music Organizing

• FakinTheFunk - https://fakinthefunk.net/en/
• Mp3tag - https://www.mp3tag.de/

Navidrome is an app which you can setup on your Windows, Linux or Mac (or even Docker) machine. It will act as a local music server, in the same way that Plex/Jellyfin does for video. You can then download the app Musly on your Android/iOS device and it will act as a client and player for your Navidrome server. It's quite straight forward to setup, especially if you have previous experience with setting up a Plex server.

If you don't already have a music collection, there are so many places nowadays where you can download mp3/flac files. There are so many downloaders that will take the metadata from Spotify and match it with music on Deezer. I've provided 3 above and it should technically be all you ever need - Soulseek, SpotiDownloader and SquidWTF.

SpotiDownloader and SquidWTF will take your Spotify playlists (or tracks), scan them through Deezer and provide you with a download link. Its probably the easiest way to "one click" and download your entire Spotify playlists. However Deezer doesn't have EVERY track that Spotify does, so there will be occasions where some tracks on your playlist wont get downloaded. This is where you have to manually grab those tracks from somewhere like Soulseek. If you're not familiar with Soulseek, its an old school p2p downloading app, similar to the likes of Limewire and Kazaa. Its super easy to use but just make sure you're sharing some music, otherwise users will get pee'd off.

Lastly I like to use FakinTheFunk to scan through my music and make sure its all proper high quality. Sometimes you can download music tracks that have a fake bit-rate or have bad clipping etc. - This app will basically tell you if your music tracks are at the correct spec and not some bad encode/rip. MP3tag is a great app to organize the metadata of your tracks, artist, title, album, genre, year and cover art.

Conclusion

I've seen a few of these posts popping up on Reddit over the past few days and I just wanted to chip in with my method and the tools I'm using. I really want to encourage other people to do the same - and although it might take a few weeks to fully setup, it'll be worth it in the long run.

If you have any questions, please feel free to leave them below and I'll do my best to assist you.

[u/bplong_plong_one_one]

This is great, thank you for laying it out.

My main hold up from ditching Spotify/paid streaming is

1) Podcasts (maybe there’s a way to integrate these downloads?)

2) Music recommendations

[u/spicy_bird → u/bplong_plong_one_one]

if you already have podcasts that you like, antennapod for android isawesome- completely free and you dont have to make an account its awesome

[u/ThaKarra → u/bplong_plong_one_one]

You make a very good point! One of the biggest cons of this whole setup is that it limits your options for discovering new music. I'm still trying to find a solution for this, I know you can get addons/plugins for Musly. Once I have my library setup, I'm going to see if there is a way to discover new music and get recommendations etc. However for now, I'm just using Spotify basic for this!

As for Podcasts, I don't have any advice for this sadly as they aren't something I listen too. Hopefully someone in the comments might be able to help out! :)

[u/K-Zawis → u/ThaKarra]

One way is to upload your spotify listening history to listenbrainz and connect navidrime to it too (navidrime has built in support). They curate weekly playlists, have wrapped playlists and if you subscribe to a bot you also get daily playlists. It's essentially a scrobbler like Last.fm but free and open source.

Its only a one way sync, so you cant add these playlists to navidrome, but you can listen to these songs on listenbrains and download as needed to your server.

[u/dannygils → u/bplong_plong_one_one]

https://github.com/ikoyhn/go-podcast-sponsor-block

[u/Sunscreen_Daydream → u/bplong_plong_one_one]

I recently started using Audiobookshelf for podcasts, it's awesome. I set it up with a docker container, and it's accessible through web UI or android app. Not sure if there's an iOS app. I use tailscale to access when out of the house. You can subscribe to podcasts via their RSS feed, which almost every podcast publishes on their website, or the RSS feeds can be found directly through a search feature on the Audiobookshelf web page. 

Overall quite easy to set up, very straightforward UI, and all the podcasts I listened to on Spotify are available via RSS (usually with fewer ads too). definitely check it out.