Without a doubt, Spotify completely changed the landscape of music. First, Apple made it possible to buy individual tracks instead of whole albums. Spotify then took it a step further with an all-you-can-eat model. Suddenly, consumers could enjoy music for free (), without managing libraries across different platforms. For artists, though, the reality is much darker.
Spotify has commodified music. Under the current system, a piece of music needs to be played a thousand times to make as much as a single album sale. In the vast majority of cases, people didn’t listen to their cassettes or CDs a thousand times. The music industry now is only profitable if you get lucky and go viral, or spend years touring and doing shows. Touring was already the worst part of the old system (that and predatory record labels). Spotify has made that even worse.
I’m not saying Spotify doesn’t help with exposure, but nowhere near as much as you’d think. 70% of music streamed on Spotify is older than 18 months old. You can argue that this is people’s tastes, but isn’t the entire point of Spotify to recommend music? To make matters worse, Spotify recently announced they will only pay artists that garner a certain threshold of streams. This is the complete opposite of where they should head, and a strong sign of where their interests lie.
As Spotify grew in popularity, other streaming platforms started to copy their model. How much artists make on each service is (intentionally) extremely complicated. It’s more useful IMHO to look at the number of streams, because that tells you how much exposure artists get.
So why is YouTube the best for artists? For one, there’s a lot less bureaucracy involved in uploading music to YouTube. That’s why YouTube contains a lot of music that does not (and often can not) exist anywhere else. Underground stuff, experimental stuff. Remixes, covers, live shows, emerging genres, unique blends of genres and takes on music. Basically everything that isn’t distributed officially by record labels. YouTube essentially has no competition in this regard.
YouTube’s recommendation algorithm is also unmatched. I often discover new artists (and new versions of music that I like) through YouTube Music. Despite all the hate it gets, I think YouTube Music was a good move for Google. It leverages YouTube’s underrated library to better position it as a streaming service. After all, YouTube has always had the content, but the experience wasn’t music-centered.
As for payouts, YouTube is also a lot fairer than other streaming services. Due to its lack of bureaucracy, artists can start their own channels and get paid for their music. The Spotify model pays out royalties to the labels, who then decide how much the artists get. Additionally, unlike Spotify, YouTube directs your subscription to the artists you listened to. They’re not pooled together and distributed with an intentionally confusing system. Seems obvious, right? Well that’s in line with the long list of controveries Spotify has had a starring role in.
So we’ve established that YouTube Music is the best choice for both listeners and artists. We now must address the elephant in the room: Google. You’re here to know how you can leverage its colossal library without giving up our privacy. Here’s a few hand-picked privacy-friendly alternatives to YouTube Music.
iOS
Musi
Musi is not open-source.
Musi is a free option, but it is not open-source. Whether giving your data to some random publisher is all that better than giving it to Google is your call. It’s the only option I could find for iOS though, unless you want to go the self-hosted route.
Of course, you can always download your mp3 files and play them on-device like it’s the 2000s. In fact, many of the self-hosted options below allow you to do exactly that.
Android Clients
MusicPiped
MusicPiped is an Android app built on top of Invidious. The Material Design is straight out of the Lollipop era, which is almost nostalgic at this point.
It works a lot like Spotify does, which I’ve always found to be confusing and unusable. It focuses on playlists, artist lists, top hits, etcetera. You can’t log in, which is understandable, but you also can’t download music. You can import your playlists or create new ones, though.
Update 2024:
MusicPiped is now abandonware.
Musify
Musify is a gorgeous wrapper for YouTube Music built using Material You. That means it picks up your phone’s accent color to blend in with the system theme. The UI takes some getting used to. Like Spotify, it prioritizes curating music for you with their in-house recommendation algorithm. I for one prefer YouTube Music’s more subtle approach of suggesting music, where I don’t even notice it. Here, it’s very much front and center, all up in your face.
The search button is handy in the bottom bar, and the next button over lets you import playlists. That way you can pretend the homepage doesn’t exist. Downloads are “offline mode” for added confusion. They do include Sponsorblock though, which is cool. That means it’ll skip non-music sections from music videos, if you enable it.
Oh, and lyrics rarely work in my experience. But it’s a very pretty package.
InnerTune
What is it with these apps trying to guess what I like? InnerTune also dedicates the entire homepage to recommendations. At least the top third is the same as YouTube Music’s “Quick Picks”, which contain songs I’ve listened to a lot in the past. Yes, that means you can login with your YT credentials, unlike the previous two options. All your usual account-related pages (playlists, likes, etc.) are under a dedicated “Account” button. In my entire time using this app I’ve always wished the Account button could be the homepage. I suppose the masses must really like their suggestions. Go figure.
What’s confusing is that, outside of the Account button, it’s a completely separate app. You can create playlists, but those aren’t YouTube playlists. Your YouTube playlists are behind the Account button. The two are completely detached from each other, for some unfathomable reason. If you’re like me and only want to listen to stuff from your account, you will never use any button on the bottom bar. You will be confined to the Account button.
Personal gripes aside with the UI aside, the features are pretty cool. Everything you’d expect is here including to synced lyrics (that you can edit and add to), and a sleep timer. Pitch and speed control are also here, which I’ve never seen in a music app before. I like how the “View Artist” button lets you choose from all the featured artists, not only the main artist. The official app can’t do that.
Update 2024
I’ve been using it intermittently since I first tried it a few months ago. It insists on suggesting local content despite my habits and country preferences. What’s worse, the “Accounts” page has stopped loading for me. Checking their Github repo, it seems all but abandoned. YouTube likely changed something on their end that broke InnerTune’s Account functionality.
ViMusic
Props to ViMusic for trying to put its own innovative twist on the experience. It does away with the bottom bar in favor of a horizontal one. When I first saw this, I fell in love… until I tried to use it. For starters, being on the left isn’t ergonomic for right-handed users. Weird choice, considering most people are right-handed. And you’d think it supports some kind of cool touch gestures to switch between categories. It doesn’t. You have to click them like a pleb.
The bad news keeps coming. You can’t login or download music. Not that those things aren’t possible, because they are. Vi would rather decide for you what music you’d want to listen to offline and what your preferences are. Clearly I’m not in the target demographic for this app. I came to this realization on the now playing page. Unlike the feature-packed previous options, this is very clean. You’ve got the play/pause button flanked by previous and next with like and repeat on either side of those. The queue in the bottom center, nothing on the bottom left, and an unassuming 3 dots button on the bottom right. Very minimalist and straight forward.
You wouldn’t know it because there’s no option for it anywhere, but Vi supports lyrics. From several providers even. You just have to click on the album art. The default provider offers synced (and editable) lyrics. In case that provider fails to find lyrics for a song, you can try other, un-synced providers.
RiMusic
RiMusic threw me for a loop. Out of the box it seemed like I was using ViMusic, only better in every way. A more refined UI, slick animations, and a treasure trove of features. Even the settings menu has far more options than Vi’s. It allows you to keep Vi’s layout, or a more traditional bottom bar one. Or, if you’re a psychopath, you can place the bar on the top. You can even use the Vi layout with the vertical bar on the right. Now it all makes sense because everything is reachable with my thumb.
Honestly, you should skip Vi and get Ri, unless you prefer Vi’s minimalist vibe. Oh, and both allow you to “view” each featured artist on a track.
Self-hosted
A lot of people in the current year still prefer to store their own music library. Be it for cost, to avoid recommendations, or to reduce reliance on cloud services. If you’re one of those people, here’s a few solutions for that.
Gelli (Jellyfin)
Gelli is a fork of Phonograph for Jellyfin servers. Phonograph is a popular open-source offline music app with a Material Design.
Jellyfin has its own set of official apps for every platform, but they’re more for video, not audio.
Strawberry
If you’re a filthy pirate old enough to remember ripping CDs, Strawberry is for you. Its main focus is organizing your library and curating playlists. It only supports desktop operating systems, but you can transfer music to your phone (a la iTunes). That way, you can listen on Android or iOS using any music player that lets you play local files.
AirSonic
AirSonic is like Plex for your music collection. It’s optimized to serve large libraries of MP3 over HTTP. You can listen on a wide variety of AirSonic clients available for all platforms. Though you can manually adjust bitrate, AirSonic supports on-the-fly conversion and resampling.
Funkwhale
Funkwhale is, at its core, a FOSS music streaming server. It has a slew of clients for desktop, mobile, and TV devices.
Funkwhale isn’t only for streaming your own music though. It also helps artists and podcasters publish their content. Additionally, it operates as a decentralized federated social network with followers and subscribers. This mean you can publish your content to all instances of Funkwhale, not only yours.
Ampache
Ampache‘s name is a pun combining (Power)Amp and Apache, the popular web server. It’s similar to AirSonic, but works over HTML5. That means it works in any browser. Though if you prefer native apps, there are Ampache clients for all platforms.
Aside from music, Ampache also supports video, podcasts, playlists and radio stations.
MusicPD
MusicPD is a more extendable version of Ampache and AirSonic. It’s less polished than both, but has been around for a very long time and caters to some advanced use cases. It’s definitely more for tinkerers than for the average person. The community has made plenty of clients for it over the years.