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 ;)

  • Xirup@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    55·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social
      9·
      1 year ago

      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
            22·
            1 year ago

            Well, considering the community this discussion is in…

            And, respectfully, the average person doesn’t seem to give much of a fuck about anything other their own base desires most of the time.

            • BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social
              3·
              1 year ago

              Sure. But the question you asked was “Do people not just download music anymore?”, and the answer to that question, which you seemed unaware of, is “Not really, no”.

              Do enjoy your highly refined and elevated desires, O noble one.

      • SomeAmateur@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        51·
        1 year ago

        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.

      • Juno@beehaw.org
        3·
        1 year ago

        Wow, they got your generation good. I’m over here listening to flac files and mp3s I ripped in 2003.

        • mishimaenjoyer@kbin.social
          2·
          1 year ago

          to be fair, to buy albums off sites like bandcamp, cutting out greedy multinational media conglomerates and give the money to the ppl actually working on it (yeah, i know, fees, welcome to distribution) and getting basically every (losslees/hr) codec in return for “name your price”-conditions makes it questionable to pirate some indie album to save like three bucks.

    • shotgun_crab@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      This is always surprising to me. I can understand streaming video due to their high file sizes, but audio (even FLACs) is a lot smaller in general. The only reason I use spotify sometimes is to discover new stuff.

  • guyrocket@kbin.social
    22·
    1 year ago

    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.

  • Nikls94@lemmy.world
    121·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • ExLisper@linux.communityEnglish
      91·
      1 year ago

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

      • Nikls94@lemmy.world
        1·
        1 year ago

        Maybe getting sold tickets to a concert?

        (Which I would consider a win, because I always think about that when it’s sold out)

      • piromantik@hispagatos.space
        11·
        1 year ago

        @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).

        • ExLisper@linux.communityEnglish
          7·
          1 year ago

          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.

  • StewartGilligan@lemmy.world
    101·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • Postis2@lemmy.world
      21·
      1 year ago

      Vimusic is not getting updates anymore innertune is a vimusic fork that i think is better

  • Cowremix@artemis.camp
    91·
    1 year ago

    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.

  • airikr@lemmy.ml
    6·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • uberrice@feddit.de
      1·
      1 year ago

      Yt-dlp is great for getting music from YouTube music.

      You even get fairly good quality if you have premium (I do through Argentina, so it costs me cents per month)

      • airikr@lemmy.mlEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Woot? yt-dlp premium? Never heard of it. yt-dlp have always been and will always be free (donations aside) since it’s open sourced. Sounds like you pay to a scammer. Or do you mean YouTube Premium? :)

  • utopia_dig@lemmy.ml
    6·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • ArtisinalBS@lemm.ee
      7·
      1 year ago

      You assume to know what kind of information is leaking when you use these apps.
      How did you come to have these proprietary information?

      Unless you have proof otherwise - I’m going to assume that they have access to: My location, my ip, typing speed and common spelling mistakes, IMEI identifiers , installed social media apps…

      Now all it takes to make an online profile about you is just one more app or website that leaks the same kind of information

    • N-E-N@lemmy.ca
      104·
      1 year ago

      Yea of all the things to keep private, my music listening habits isn’t one of them. Tbh the algorithms give me good recommendations

      • floofloof@lemmy.caEnglish
        4·
        1 year ago

        The companies that aggregate data and find patterns in them can probably predict a lot about you from your music listening habits, when they correlate it with data about other people, or even about yourself. The power of profiling isn’t in any specific data but in the patterns that emerge when you gather a lot of diverse data about a lot of people.

        Listening habits will tell them about your routine, including where you are, when, and when you have time to listen to music (so, therefore, when you don’t). If you don’t ever listen to music between 8pm and 10pm, for example, it may indicate that you have children to put to bed. If you listen mostly between 12am and 5am it may indicate that you work a nightshift. If you listen between 8 and 9 and again between 5 and 6, you’re probably a commuter. When you listen on a computer and when on mobile will tell them something too. And these are only the obvious patterns that I can think of off the top of my head. AI systems running on big data are designed to find patterns humans don’t notice.

        And of course the styles of music you listen to will be readily correlated with demographic profiles. When you feed data into AI systems designed to find patterns people can’t spot, you’ll find the most unlikely data reveals things about people that they’d never imagine you could know.

        Given this, it’s entirely possible that your music listening telemetry could eventually influence your credit score, your insurance premiums, your qualification for security clearances or your employability. You don’t know where the data ends up, or with what other data it’s correlated. This is why it’s desirable in general to keep data private if it’s not needed to provide the service.