---
title: "sayonara spotify?"
pubDate: "Dec 28 2024"
description: "A small review of Navidrome and flo after a month+ of usage. Can it replace Spotify and am I ditching it?"
draft: false
---

## why?

As you've maybe seen in my blog post about [leaving social media (or most of them)](/blog/leaving_social_media_or_most_of_them/), I've wanted to get out of the big social media platforms due to a lot of scandals involving privacy violations, free speech censoring, and so on. Spotify is quite similar to those in multiple ways, which people like [Richard Stallman rants about](https://stallman.org/spotify.html). There's even a [Wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Spotify) for criticism towards Spotify.

It doesn't sit right with me that Spotify has _"so much market power that it can impose increased surveillance on its users by threatening to cut them off"_, or how artists are "forced" to join their platform to compete for publicity and getting almost no income at all from their platform. I want to support my favorite artists more by actually buying their music directly instead of basically "legally pirating" their music through Spotify - which mono talks about in his ["ditching spotify" blog post](https://monocyte.bearblog.dev/im-ditching-spotify/). 

> _I also recommend reading [Kit's post](https://kerosyn.link/burn-spotify-to-the-ground/) to get an artists perspective as well. It very well written and includes multiple topics regarding the problem with Spotify._

Additionally, I don't want to keep scrolling for the perfect or latest song in random playlists. I want to have a much more controlled relationship with my music; listening to entire albums like they were made to be, knowing my music library more, supporting my actual favorite artists, even making mixtapes with the music I actually "own", and so on. [Other people](https://blog.wolves.rest/limewire-spotify/) feel the same, considering buying MP3s again or even selfhosting a streaming service themself ([like Tim](https://timharek.no/blog/spotify-logged-me-out-because-i-logged-in) and I!).

Also as a developer I'm not happy that [Spotify have cut access for their APIs](https://www.kode24.no/artikkel/utviklere-raser-spotify-kutter-tilgangen-til-api-ene/82302595). This reduces innovation and transparency, and hinders educational uses where beginners (or advanced users) can try out friendly frameworks with services they are familiar with, like for example [this women's journey to make a playlist her mom can dance to](https://towardsdatascience.com/spotify-api-audio-features-5d8bcbd780b2).

## how?

First of all, I love getting to selfhost my own stuff at the moment! So I started researching that a little over a month ago, and found [Navidrome](https://www.navidrome.org/) - a self-hosted, open source music server and streamer. It was basically plug-and-play with their Docker Compose setup as I'm not planning on exposing it to the web, but rather just access the server by VPN. It has a ok+ UI, with a Spotify theme as well lol. I currently use this as my desktop client, it works well and I can't wait for [playlist covers to be added](https://github.com/navidrome/navidrome/issues/406)!

As I mostly listen to music on the go, I wanted a good iOS client for Navidrome and that's when I stumbled over [flo](https://client.flooo.club/) - an open source Navidrome client. It's still in the early stages of development, [currently in version 1.4](https://github.com/kepelet/flo), as the project started in June by the developer. I must say all kudos to the creator! The app is sleek and modern, I can download my music easily for offline listening, see how much storage space is being used, and it even got a cool analytics page now! Can't wait to see it develop even more in the future.

Now, the platform isn't perfect and doesn't have all the fancy stuff Spotify has. But, I've found so many cool websites which can cover some of the missing features that I want. 

- _**You want to explore new music?**_ Check out [bandcamp](https://bandcamp.com/) (they have a _suprise me_ section!) or [Every Noise at Once](https://everynoise.com/). 
- _**Oops, you don't have the newest album from your favorite artist and need to buy it?**_ Check out [qobuz](https://www.qobuz.com/) for the more widely known artist and their high quality, lossless music, or [bandcamp](https://bandcamp.com/) again for some lesser known and niche artists. Or even better, check if your favorite artist have their own website to buy their music or go to your local music shop and ask the owner if they got some FLACs or MP3s for you! (I know iTunes works good aswell)
- _**Damn, you miss podcasts don't you?**_ Well, good news! A lot of podcasts use RSS to automatically distribute their new episodes to multiple platforms, so you can just use a podcast client, that supports RSS-feeds, to listen to the latest podcast. Or, if you're like me and your favorite podcasts have moved to platforms like [Podme](https://podme.com/), consider buying a subscription there. They pay their own podcasters, who are behind a premium wall, while giving you the opportunity to listen to all the RSS feeds you can find out there!

## sayonara spotify, or???

Have I ditched Spotify fully now you might ask? Well, not quite. At the moment I'm on a mission to just have one song playing for the entire year of 2025 to see the ridiculous analytics for that. Additionally, I'm trying to get my friends/family to understand why I want to do this, as well as get all my favorite music and last decade "off" the platform and into a big markdown document. 

As previously mentioned, I've switched over to Podme for podcasts, and I'm trying to up my music library a bit by buying new music. Currently my music library consist of music I got from my old MP3 drive, as well as all my [vinyls](/vinyl) in FLAC/MP3 format. I can't wait to see it grow even more!

But to answer the question - _can it replace Spotify?_ - I would have to say a 100% yes! For me atleast. And I bet that by the end of 2025 I've gotten of their platform.

To finish off this blog post I'll show you my (hopefully) last, and accurate, Spotify wrapped from 2024.

### wrapped24

```bash
**TOP ARTISTS**
- MF DOOM
- Tyler the Creator
- Pikekyss
- Vansire
- FlowerBoyDeMii

**TOP SONGS**
- Kaikai Kitan
- New Genesis
- Eg fins, WTF?
- U
- jazz is for ordinary people

**MINUTES LISTENED:**
33,916

**MY MUSIC EVOLUTION 2024**
- _Dec23 - Jan24:_ surf crush beach indie (Royal Otis, TV Girl, Wallows)
- _Feb24 - Oct24:_ frutiger aero noise breakcore (FlowerBoyDeMii, Ftlframe, Mayo)
- _Nov24:_ gloomcore fantasy ambient (tomchmupz, ⋅ ⋅-⋅ ⋅- ⋅⋅⋅ ⋅ -⋅⋅, Naboo Garden)
```