Music streaming done right

For all but the smallest artists, it’ll generally be handled by the label’s distributor, who’ll get your music onto all the various mp3 shops and streaming sites, either for a cut of sales or a fixed fee or a combination of the two.  DistroKid is popular for indie artists, gets you on Spotify et al, and their service starts at around £35 a year.  Or, er, 26923 plays on Spotify.

I’m pretty sure you *can* upload your stuff manually but I’ve never done it and wouldn’t really know how. I’ve tried to contact Spotify in the past (for instance one of my projects has several different artist pages with subtly different names, so you can’t easily see all the releases in one places). But for a relative nobody you’re never gonna get a response! So it’s easier to go through a distro.

@pk13, yes it’s all in one lump, so the non-payers will be dragging down the average. Same with Youtube – most of it is the ad-supported stuff, which pays almost nothing.

Artists typically get a poor deal from all parts of the music business don’t they?

Not from the aforementioned Bandcamp, especially on Bandcamp Friday when 100% of the purchase price goes to the artist.
Personally, I buy my tracks, then stream from my own NAS. Can understand why this type of thing isn’t for everyone though.

I buy my own tracks/cds, either direct from the artist or label or bandcamp where possible. Then I upload and stream via iTunes Match, which pays out a second time (or many times if it’s a song on constant rotation).

Personally, I buy my tracks, then stream from my own NAS. Can understand why this type of thing isn’t for everyone though.

Is there an app which gives you a library like Spotify for this but with your own files on the NAS? Or do you store the files on the phone?

@the-muffin-man
Oh just put a finger in one ear and sing a long.🙂

Is there an app which gives you a library like Spotify for this but with your own files on the NAS? Or do you store the files on the phone?

Plex?

Is there an app which gives you a library like Spotify for this but with your own files on the NAS? Or do you store the files on the phone?

Yes… guess it depends on the NAS, but I use a Qnap NAS and QMusic that comes with it. Plex can be used as above, I’m sure there are others.

I tried to move to Tidal from Spotify but the app is so crappy that the plan is cancelled for now. BT speakers stopped working after one song when phone screen locked and general issues on fairly recent iOS device. Also on larger screened car (Carplay) the playlist buttons are hard to see. When listening on headphones the sound quality felt like it was improved but maybe it is just due different compression algorithm which sounds different to Spotify.

Apple Music I might try again but last time I tried it it was really annoying usability wise.

Also Soundcloud, some more obscure artists sell their music there and it might be better for them financially.

YouTube subscriber here. For me it’s worth £12/month for the combination of unlimited music streaming via YouTube Music and not seeing any ads on YouTube. Background playing of videos on a phone is pretty handy too.

£7/month for students is pretty reasonable, as is £20/month for a family (up to 6 users in total).

I tried using YouTube without signing in from a hotel “Smart” TV last month, and my god I’d forgotten how horrendous it is seeing all those ads…

Bear in mind that YouTube appears to pay less because the vast majority of users are not paying, so you just get a small split of ad revenue. If you’re a subscriber then YouTube gets 50% of your money, the rest goes to artists/creators proportional to your listening/viewing time.

I also note that in @doris500’s example above, although YouTube pays the least per stream it paid the most actual revenue of all the streaming platforms.

Edit: FWIW, like others I also buy albums/merch in various formats from the artists I particularly like.

Thanks @dorris5000

For the older music 90s for me I’ve subscribed to email lists of the smaller bands and buy the limited edition LPs re releases ect.

Super furry animals 90s hip hop ect . You can understand why big bands are selling off the rights as it would take a lifetime to earn any decent rewards.

New stuff is harder to find and support, i’d genuinely pay over the price range of Spotify ect if they gave a proper kick back to the artist.

The clutter of CDs fills me with dread but I can handle vinyl.

Playing devil’s advocate, if I illegally download all my 90s stuff then buy a tee or 12″ vinyl from the artist they would be better off?

NAS music? Not for everyone as you said. Also, not quite what I expect the OP’s pre-teen is after. It’s not Apple Music or Spotify which I’d guess are the benchmarks he might be using.

Yes… guess it depends on the NAS, but I use a Qnap NAS and QMusic that comes with it. Plex can be used as above, I’m sure there are others.

DS Audio app will stream from the Synology NAS and let you download to the phone. Pretty sure that there’ll be several similar apps to do the same thing – PLEX as suggested, VLC, … https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/feature/audio_station

Edit. I use Apple Music. Have done since iTunes Match came out on iTunes. Family subscription works out OK for us. I even use Apple Music for the stuff I have on the NAS – easier with the integration of the app and it’s now in the car too.

For general round the house/car/gym/work BT speaker, Spotify is hard to beat.

Great for gatherings too as you can have a group session where multiple people can join and add songs to the playlist.

We have the family package, but need to check if the daughter still uses it and maybe downgrade.

For quality listening (to a degree as still on BT), I have Tidal. Contrary to above I find the app fine. Tried Qobuz for a while but didn’t get on with it

Playing devil’s advocate, if I illegally download all my 90s stuff then buy a tee or 12″ vinyl from the artist they would be better off?

Oh I dunno!  Money from a 90’s album could depend on a contract that they signed in 1991 with a company that has since been merged or acquired, with a label manager who died in 2008, so who knows

These days I’m fairly sanguine, and advise anyone wanting to support acts to accept that streaming pays almost nowt, so just try to consciously support them one way or another too. Whether a t-shirt, gig ticket, vinyl, bandcamp album etc. Whatever!

This stuff is important to ‘the scene’. There’s something ephemeral about streaming that can be great but also (for me) creates shallow relationships with music. A £10 gig ticket might not give much money to the band themselves, but it makes the whole tour a bit closer to breaking even, makes the gig feel busier and more lively, helps create a convivial vibe that benefits everyone, in a way that you streaming a song 1,000x wouldn’t, even if it contributed the same amount of money. It also helps the venue!

I’ve been buying a lot more bandcamp albums lately – just take a punt on something for £8 (cheap really, considering what we had to pay for an album in the 90’s) and give it a few goes. Live with it a bit, make an active effort to get into it. I find it more satisfying, although I might just be telling myself that!

I’m giving band camp a try

Is there an app which gives you a library like Spotify for this but with your own files on the NAS? Or do you store the files on the phone?

Plex on the NAS and Plexamp on the phone to roll your own streaming service. Plex has some good help info for getting the right holes in the firewall to stream across the net. The £4 a month sub is well worth the money especially if you want to watch films/listen to music online from home

Another Plex user here.

Plexamp (their music player) is perhaps the best music player out there IMO, and I don’t think you need a Plex-pass any more to use it (ie: it’s free).  You obviously need a way to host your own media, so it’s a bit more involved than just signing-up, but still pretty easy for anyone who grappled with digitising our CD collections in iTunes etc.  FYI, it also does the same for your DVDs, but thats a whole different conversation.

Of interest is the fact that Plexamp integrates with Tidal – with the intention of helping you to navigate your own music collection alongside a streaming service.  I haven’t done this myself, but it sounds like a good solution for those of us that are still emotionally invested in our crates of CDs in the loft, but that also want to stream music.

In terms of hardware for Plex – you can basically run it on anything, but the best solution is something thats “always on” (hence a NAS is a good choice), but you can just as easily run it on whatever laptop/desktop you already have – with then client apps on your phone, iPad, TV whatever.

@doris5000 can you link to your music so we can give you a few extra streams, t shirts, albums, gigs etc?

Apple music here, it just works as we all have Apple devices. I use it for lots of new music, kids use it for repeatedly playing annoying R&B rubbish. Spotify was suggested by the kids at one point but only if I pay for it, so we stuck with Apple.

The problem with all of the streaming services is that the royalties per play go directly to the record companies, who then pay artists pro rata, so those who are well known and who stream many millions/billions globally earn more per than artists who might get a couple of million plays in their home country. The fault lies with the entire music industry, as well as the streaming services, both of whom should be forced to revise their practices so that individual artists get appropriate payments per stream in the same way as from radio, that way lesser known artists would benefit a lot more than they do now.

FWIW I use Apple Music, because all of its content is Lossless, something that Spotify hasn’t got to grips with yet, and who will charge more for unless you want to get adverts, in which case you might as well listen to commercial radio.
And yes, I do appreciate the Lossless part of it, because I don’t use wireless headphones, mine are cabled to my phone, both my in-ear and over-ear headphones.

A problem I do find, though, is that I don’t have to storage space on my phone to download everything in my library, so walking into town and back home frequently shows how crappy the phone networks still are, because a song will suddenly stop playing partway through, and refuse to carry on, because only 3G is available. And they’re talking about shutting down the 3G system!

Marvellous idea, lose a significant portion of the mobile network in built-up areas when there isn’t enough bandwidth already and 5G isn’t even available closer than 30-odd miles away! Still, I’m sure the millions they make from selling the frequencies off will benefit us all somehow… /s