Fuck AI

I use Bandcamp, is great for discovering new artist, some bands let you download full albums to your device for free and best of all, you can use it without an account.

You can also access it with Newpipe.

I use this program called "qBittorrent" to get music. Then when I find stuff I like, I find other means to get money to the makers of it (like merch or the like).

If I could actually put money into Bandcamp I'd go with that one for actually getting money to them, but they don't accept any currency or payment scheme I can offer.

Buy and rip CDs, buy music from Bandcamp and Mirlo, and if your preferred music is not there you could buy merch or something and get the album from soulseek/torrent. If the artist has a patreon or similar drop a couple bucks.

I use jellyfin as my media server, super easy to setup. You can use tailscale to access jellyfin from any device without having to put it on the internet.

I like deezer personally.

Another for Deezer. In the last couple months, I've tried Tidal, Qobuz and Deezer. Qobuz seems the best if you're into music and building your own playlists. They pay the best royalties and do a bunch of human curating, including a weekly zine for current releases. They don't have an automatic playlist that I could find. Deezer has the best recommendation engine of the three, at least for the genres I listen to.

Tidal or Qobuz, Tidal is better than Spotify anyway and offers lossless for the same price as Spotify's lossy garbage.

I’m pretty content with Apple Music