this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
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Privacy

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I'm going insane. I cannot for the life of me find a suitable way to listen to music privately. I'm on iOS, and I don't know whether to just stick to Apple Music or give up on music in general (I tried, TRIED to go local, but all the apps are shitty). Any way to listen to music and not have your data compromised? Should I just stick to Apple Music and hope that laws change (maybe something like EU's DMA?)

Edit: Hey all! First of all, thank you so much for all the recommendations! I've discovered so many great apps and tools I didn't even know existed (and it has also brought my hopes up for privacy in general). Even though it's still not perfect, I've been using foobar2000 on iOS, downloading music I find (I'm still using Apple Music for discovery, but will probably stop when my subscription ends this month). For desktop I'm using HyperPipe, which although a little buggy at times is so awesome! One thing I do miss about this system is the lack of lyrics. Apple Music has such a beautiful UI when it comes with lyrics, but you can't have it all when it comes to privacy it seems. Thanks for the amazing discussion! I'm so far loving Lemmy ;)

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[–] Xirup@lemmy.dbzer0.com 70 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

I'll be honest, the only way to listen to music privately is to download it. (And using an opensource music player)

There are Github repositories with CLI programs to download complete Spotify playlists with Youtube and also download their metadata.

[–] merde@sh.itjust.works 23 points 1 year ago (3 children)

there are also CDs and vinyl 🀷

[–] metaStatic@kbin.social 13 points 1 year ago

something brilliant I've found with modern vinyl is a lot of them come with a download card so you can get lossless files.

now if they would just fucking advertise which ones that would be great.

[–] CarlsIII@kbin.social 13 points 1 year ago

Whoa, you can store music on CDs? That’ll save me a lot of bandwidth!

[–] carloshr@feddit.cl 5 points 1 year ago

This. There was music before the internet.

[–] Zetaphor@zemmy.cc 7 points 1 year ago

I wrote a few scripts to automate this entire process for me:

https://zemmy.cc/post/25500?scrollToComments=true

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[–] Vendetta9076@sh.itjust.works 53 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Yeah. Buy it directly from the artist then throw it all into a self hosted service like plex or jellyfin.

[–] PastorHaggis@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yup. Buy CDs, vinyl or digital from Bandcamp or from the artist direct and then host it on Plex.

I've thought about trying jellyfin but Plexamp is just so nice that I don't think I could leave it.

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[–] HumanPerson@sh.itjust.works 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I use a jellyfin server plus finamp for ios plus totally legal downloaded music that was 100% legally obtained.

[–] harsh3466@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

+1 for Jellyfin with Finamp (or Fintunes). Also what I use and it’s fabulous.

[–] Zorque@kbin.social 26 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Do people not just download music anymore?

[–] BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social 10 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I'm 26, and don't know anyone, myself included, who purchases and downloads music to any significant degree. Essentially everyone I know just uses streaming platforms.

[–] Zorque@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sounds terrible for privacy.

[–] BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social 16 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Respectfully, I think you may be drastically overestimating how much average people care about that.

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[–] SomeAmateur@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Part of my job is traveling by air, so I got a $30ish sandisc mp3 player with a 200+gb sd card. I have a bunch of music and sometimes podcasts on there. Saves my phone battery, has zero ads, and as a bonus it has fm radio for surfing the stations below as they fade in and out every minute or so.

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[–] Blizzard@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

He didn't say anything about purchasing...

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[–] guyrocket@kbin.social 25 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I still buy CDs. And back then up to play in my truck. And rip them.

I still think OWNING media is a good idea. No privacy issues at all.

[–] mp3@lemmy.ca 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Most of the stuff I listen to isn't mainstream and the band are on Bandcamp. It's great being able to buy the FLAC version right away.

[–] kick_out_the_jams@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

https://daily.bandcamp.com/features/bandcamp-fridays-update

it's worth noting that the first friday of each month they usually forgo their cut so more money goes to the artists.

[–] LazerDickMcCheese@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Always this, never let physical copies die. They can't revoke shit legally bought and personally archived

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[–] RVMWSN@lemmy.ml 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't think you should expect any privacy on an Apple device

[–] jvrava9@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Im on a Jailbroken iPhone with all Apple network requests blocked with AdGuard and no Appleid.

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[–] Mcballs1234@lemmy.ml 17 points 1 year ago

Yarrr harrr didgeridoo

[–] sabreW4K3@lemmy.tf 16 points 1 year ago

Have you considered Funk Whale, the Spotify of the Fediverse?

https://funkwhale.audio/

[–] MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Self-host your library? I don't know why that seems so hard, going by your phrasing.

If you absolutely must listen to music online (I empathise, I need to do so to find new music), here's what I do: Librewolf with Ublock Origin, Cookie Manager, Dark Reader, NoScript + music.youtube.com.

No advertisements, minimal tracking (because you will explicitly disable every other script than the one(s) required to stream music). Use a VPN and fake your user-agent/browser fingerprint for more privacy (haven't done it since I can't figure out how to do so for Firefox).

Cheers

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[–] poofbirb@lemmy.ml 13 points 1 year ago

an MP3 player like foobar2000 ...?

[–] Nikls94@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You could get Spotify and switch it to private.

I don’t really care about other knowing what music I listen to and even use the β€œAI" to give me songs that I might like. Most of them are not my type but there is 1 or maybe 2 every week that are good that I’dβ€˜ve never searched for.

[–] ExLisper@linux.community 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Exactly, what are the privacy risks of letting someone know what type of music do you like?

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[–] StewartGilligan@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you want something on Android, check out ViMusic. It uses YouTube Music as a back-end and can recommend stuff based on what you listen. It also supports offline playback. On desktop, you can use Hyperpipe. It also uses YouTube Music as its back-end.

If you want ultimate privacy, then download your favorite songs and use VLC or self host them and stream it from there.

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[–] airikr@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I download the music from YouTube (through front-end services like Piped) and play it locally through a music player.

I don't know how it works on iPhone (I have an Android phone), but I can use NewPipe and LibreTube and Seal to download the music. If I'm on the go that is. Otherwise I download the music through ytdlp and transfer the files to my smartphone.

Apple really restrict their users to their own ecosystem.

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[–] Cowremix@artemis.camp 9 points 1 year ago

Classic iPod or mp3 player? Also, the β€œMusic” app on iOS still works like iTunes. You can load albums directly from your computer, even without an Apple Music subscription. Or you could get a Walkman.

[–] utopia_dig@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I'm using Qobuz. Since it is a rather small service, I just hope it is more private than the "big players" like Spotify/Apple Music. But the main benefits of Qobuz are the audio quality and the (afaik) highest payment per streamed song for artists.

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[–] quantenzitrone@feddit.de 9 points 1 year ago

If anyone is interested, i recently developed my own system of defining my music library declaratively in the Nix programming language and started switching to it. It creates folders as playlists and can automatically download the music from YouTube or SoundCloud. I plan to expand and improve this further.

I doubt this will work on IOS tho, sorry OP.

https://codeberg.org/quantenzitrone/declarative-music.nix

[–] Ashiette@lemmy.one 7 points 1 year ago

If you don't want to go local or want a streaming service : qobuz is the less shitty of all options regarding privacy.

[–] shortwavesurfer@monero.town 7 points 1 year ago (9 children)

Have a copy of all your music and use syncthing if apple allows it that is. Otherwise get a deegoogled android running grapheneOS

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[–] willya@lemmyf.uk 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Local with Plex and Plex amp was my best experience. It’s really well done.

[–] Samsy@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago

Jellyfin + Finamp is usable, too.

[–] hellfire103@sopuli.xyz 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If you want a streaming service, you could try HyperPipe. It's an alternative frontend to YT Music. There's also BeatBump, but it doesn't really work.

If you wanted to go local (which I recommend), have you tried foobar2000? It's proprietary, but I trust it and it does its job very well. No ads, no data collection at all, and it plays just about every audio format you'll normally come across (apart from MIDI files). You can also customise it with skins, sync over FTP, and play internet radio streams.

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[–] Grouchy@lemmy.grouchysysadmin.com 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Setup a Koel instance at a host of your choice. Upload your music to it and stream from that. See https://koel.dev/

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[–] slacktoid@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago

Setup your own subsonic or ampache server. nextcloud has an app for that.

[–] leraje@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I self host Ampache and have Sublime Music on my desktop and Substreamer on my Android device.

For Android- Blackhole | web - beatbumb and hyperpipe

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