It is the Spotify Wrapped season and people are posting their most listened songs on social media. There’s something unusual about it this year, though: a lot of people are announcing that they’re ditching Spotify for alternative streaming services such as Qobuz. Spotify pays artists so little that people can’t bear it anymore.

That’s great! I, too, ditched Spotify a couple of years ago. However, my reason was not the low compensation for artists.

Instead, it bothered me how songs constantly disappear from Spotify. You come to an old playlist and so many song titles have turned gray and cannot be played anymore. That’s my main beef with the streaming services: you never know how long your favorite songs will be available.¹

Switching to another streaming service was not the solution for me. Instead I started buying music again by paying for downloadable MP3 files. It was more difficult but also more rewarding than I thought. In this post I will go through how I do it.

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How to buy music?

I buy music from two places: Bandcamp and Qobuz download store. Bandcamp is my first choice and it hosts a lot of less-known artists. Qobuz is more expensive and more cumbersome, but it has music from many big mainstream artists not available from Bandcamp. Both services offer DRM-free downloads.

Qobuz sometimes offers an option to pay more to receive higher-quality audio files. The basic quality is good enough for me - I’m not an audiophile. Similarly Bandcamp offers the option to download FLACs (audio files with lossless compression, which allows higher audio quality than MP3's lossy compression), but I just go for the default option of variable-rate MP3s.

I usually buy one or two albums per month. On Bandcamp, the albums typically cost 8-12€ and on Qobuz 15-20€. I end up spending a bit more money per month than I was paying for the Spotify Premium subscription.

How to discover new music?

Buying music is simple enough if you know the album you want to listen to. But how do you find out about new albums?

This was toughest part for me. Spotify’s algoritms worked great for me. I’d listen to the Discover Weekly playlist every week and almost every time it would have some great new song.

When the algorithm was gone, I didn’t know what do. I realized that I don’t even know what sort of music I like, or have the words to talk about it. It took me while to figure it out.

Here’s how I do it now:

• I talk to friends about music. Whenever I discover a great new album, I tell my friends about it or post about in my Mastodon account. Often somebody replies along the lines of “oh, this reminds me of something” and recommends me another interesting album. This is how I discoverd my latest favorite album, Neko-a-Sekai by Tinyhawk & Bizzarro. By the way, if you have recommendations, hit reply and let me know!

• I went to a festival for the first time in over a decade! We Jazz Festival 2024 in Helsinki was a great success and I discovered, among others, Heli Hartikainen and Sven Wunder. In the summer, I went to the ecletic jazz-and-basketball festival Kori Jazz and found out about Viive.

• I started tracking the labels. For example, I like so many albums published by Gondwana Records. I think that I found them by first discovering Hania Rani and then looking up what else the label had published.

There are always random discoveries. I somehow stumbled into this cover version of GoGo Penguin’s Hopopono. I hadn’t heard the original, but the cover was so mesmerizing that I immediately looked it up.

Another strategy that I’m trying is asking the artists that I like for music recommendations. It turns out that at least the lesser-known artists are humans too and you can slide into their DMs to ask for recommendations.

When I hear about an interesting album, I add it to my Bandcamp wishlist if it’s on Bandcamp, or to a note called “Albums to listen to” if not. When I’m in the mood for new music, I open the wishlist and listen through it.

Doing all this work has made me much more engaged with music. I’ve developed a taste in music, although I still do not have the words for it, and I’m constantly discovering interesting new music. It took an effort but the effort paid off.

What did not work? I tried reading Bandcamp Daily, but they almost never have anything that I would like. I’ve never been interested in music reviews. Bandcamp’s related album recommendations have been a hit and a miss and I have stopped looking at them.

How to listen to it?

Once you’ve got your directory full of MP3s, how do you listen to them? Myself, I mostly listen to music on my laptop with Doppler. It’s a paid-for macOS app. It’s simple, which is how I like it, and perfect for listening to one album at time.

When I want to listen to music on my phone, I usually use the Bandcamp iOS app to stream the music I’ve bought there. It is convenient but limited to what Bandcamp has to offer.

I also have a Tangara MP3 player. It’s cute, but I don’t use it much. At home, the laptop is always there, and when I’m on to go, I just use the phone.

Whatever your platform, there are plenty of options:

• You could get started by using Bandcamp’s website. Their player is perfectly adequate for listening one album at a time.

• Doppler also has a decent iOS app.

• For Android, Internet friends recommend Poweramp and Musicolet.

• My Linux-using friends are using Amarok and mpd.

• I hear that on Windows, Windows Media Player is a fine starting point. Did you know that Winamp is still available? Look for the “legacy player” button.²

• If you are into tinkering, you could set up a media streaming system such as Jellyfin and use it from all your devices.

One of the upsides of the streaming services is that you can find there almost any random song that your friends mention. The best alternative I’ve got is searching YouTube.

What’s the point?

MP3s still work. They are still a relevant way to listen to music.

It’s more work than using the streaming services so I don’t expect many to take this approach. Then again, there are a lot of vinyl fans out there and MP3s are way more convenient than listening to your vinyl collection.