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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For Android- Blackhole | web - beatbumb and hyperpipe
Yarrr harrr didgeridoo
Local with Plex and Plex amp was my best experience. It’s really well done.
Jellyfin + Finamp is usable, too.
Nicotine+ and Plexamp
MP3 files that you own. They can never take them away from you, and you don’t have to pay every month for them.
Android has a fair few foss music apps.
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.
there are also CDs and vinyl 🤷
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.
This. There was music before the internet.
Whoa, you can store music on CDs? That’ll save me a lot of bandwidth!
Any opensource music players for iOS you recommend? I found Flacbox which seems alright (a little buggy but you can’t win them all, can you?)
Its not opensource as far as i know, but i use documents5 (or 6 now?) by readdle and its been p good for music
I just use the Music app. With the privacy protections turned up and Apple Music disabled. All it does is ply my aac files without sending data back to Apple.
I’m not sure that’s totally true. The iOS ecosystem is very intertwined. It’s possible that the Music app isn’t sending data to Apple, but it is likely sharing it with whatever Apple calls the launcher, which likely shares it with Apple (or shares it with Siri or another app, which shares it with Apple).
I wrote a few scripts to automate this entire process for me:
Have a copy of all your music and use syncthing if apple allows it that is. Otherwise get a deegoogled android running grapheneOS
Getting/syncing music isn’t really a major problem for me, a decent audio player (with minimal features such as a queue and a decent UI) is what I’m trying to find.
VLC?
I feel like all the answers are so far beyond what I do. Basically VPN to Invidio.us, record with Audio Hijack, put on my phone, and play on VLC. Curious what all the elite privateers think?
Why record with an app? Some invidious insurances allow downloading. There’s a drop-down menu on the video page.
Right, if dl’able then no need to record. I was trying to list my method in the most general sense.
Why vpn you invidio.us? Why not directly? Invidio.us acts as the middleman to yt anyway, right?
E: autocorrect correction.
@01189998819991197253 @ForestOrca the gateway to the middleman to yt
but if you don’t trust the instance, then you vpn to it :undefined:You’re right. I assumed trust in the instance, but should never assume that. Of course, by using a vpn, you’re assuming it is trustworthy. I guess you gotta trust someone somewhere, at least enough to hop to the next stone.
@01189998819991197253 To be online, you totally do. :undefined: Adding extra layers helps a little bit I think… after all, the VPN can’t see exactly what video you’re looking at, and then the Invidious instance can’t see where you’re really located…
I agree 100%. The VPN, though, can see what address you’re visiting, and the address is unique to the video. That’s where the trust in the VPN comes into play. With the VPN, invidio.us can’t see your location, and with invidio.us, YouTube doesn’t know who you are. So many layers! I love it!
Have you considered Funk Whale, the Spotify of the Fediverse?
an MP3 player like foobar2000 …?
If you don’t want to go local or want a streaming service : qobuz is the less shitty of all options regarding privacy.
Classic iPod or mp3 player? Also, the “Music” 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.
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 “AI" 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’d‘ve never searched for.
Exactly, what are the privacy risks of letting someone know what type of music do you like?
Maybe getting sold tickets to a concert?
(Which I would consider a win, because I always think about that when it’s sold out)
@ExLisper @Nikls94 Basically predicting and modifying your behavior. Here’s a paper that explains how it’s done: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S235215461730044X
The article frames behavior modification as a health advancement, but whoever can alter a habit can do so both to heal and to alter your vote or discourage you from protesting, and to make you accept unacceptable living conditions. Tell me what you listen to, and I’ll tell you who you are (and eventually I’ll make you be who I want).
This article pretty much says that listening to relaxing music can help you with stress levels. Saying that spotify can use the same mechanism to make you vote for Trump by slightly changing what songs are in your ‘daily mix’ playlist is a bit of a stretch.
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.
Love Qobuz. It’s fucking beautiful
Beware, though… I found that the Qobuz app sends data to google-analytics.com, app-measurement.com, mixpanel.com, crashlytics.com, and graph.facebook.com, possibly others. This is all BEFORE EVEN LAUNCHING the app. I don’t consider Qobuz to be good for privacy…
Which lossless streaming service do you consider to be better for privacy? Deezer, Tidal, …?
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.
First of all, I love this thread as I keep finding new stuff I’ve never heard about. HyperPipe is awesome and it eases my anxiety that there are still private options for music. For foobar, the iOS app is pretty snappy, though it’s missing a queue feature. A feature as simple as that is kind of a deal breaker for me. Any hope that there’ll be future updates to the iOS app?
AFAIK the app is still maintained. I could put a feature request in on the forums.
