YouTube, Soundcloud and Bandcamp, depending on which one is more convenient at any given moment. I don't like the idea of paying a monthly subscription to listen to music, so I either try and listen completely for free, or buy songs outright. Whenever I first tried Spotify, it felt like the way it was set up (on the mobile app at least) was geared towards making it as annoying as possible to use it without paying for premium. I'd already been using Soundcloud/YouTube before trying Spotify, so I just stuck with those.
Bandcamp is my go to for when I actually want to pay money for music. It only gives you a limited number of free listens on each track before it forces you to pay, which is a downside. But there's a lot of music on there that you can't find anywhere else, and artists get a bigger cut of the revenue than iTunes (and a much bigger cut than any streaming services), so it's a good way to directly support artists. Also, I'm a (bedroom) DJ, so a lot of the reason for me using Bandcamp comes down to the fact that I need to get my hands on the actual music files.
Edit: I will say that Soundcloud's mobile app is really slow though, which is pretty annoying. And that listening to music on YouTube became vastly more enjoyable after installing an adblocker. Also, one of my main reasons for using YouTube/Soundcloud is that there's a lot of DJ mixes on them. Lastly, I used iTunes instead of Bandcamp up until a few months ago, and I still use it sometimes, 'cause bigger releases tend to be on iTunes rather than on Bandcamp.
Thanks for the tips. I like to try to get money in the hands of the artists, but Spotify turns out to be even worse at that than I had thought. Streaming works well for me, but it might be time to go back to purchasing my music and streaming it through plex and using YouTube for DJ mixes.
YouTube, Soundcloud and Bandcamp, depending on which one is more convenient at any given moment. I don't like the idea of paying a monthly subscription to listen to music, so I either try and listen completely for free, or buy songs outright. Whenever I first tried Spotify, it felt like the way it was set up (on the mobile app at least) was geared towards making it as annoying as possible to use it without paying for premium. I'd already been using Soundcloud/YouTube before trying Spotify, so I just stuck with those.
Bandcamp is my go to for when I actually want to pay money for music. It only gives you a limited number of free listens on each track before it forces you to pay, which is a downside. But there's a lot of music on there that you can't find anywhere else, and artists get a bigger cut of the revenue than iTunes (and a much bigger cut than any streaming services), so it's a good way to directly support artists. Also, I'm a (bedroom) DJ, so a lot of the reason for me using Bandcamp comes down to the fact that I need to get my hands on the actual music files.
Edit: I will say that Soundcloud's mobile app is really slow though, which is pretty annoying. And that listening to music on YouTube became vastly more enjoyable after installing an adblocker. Also, one of my main reasons for using YouTube/Soundcloud is that there's a lot of DJ mixes on them. Lastly, I used iTunes instead of Bandcamp up until a few months ago, and I still use it sometimes, 'cause bigger releases tend to be on iTunes rather than on Bandcamp.
Thanks for the tips. I like to try to get money in the hands of the artists, but Spotify turns out to be even worse at that than I had thought. Streaming works well for me, but it might be time to go back to purchasing my music and streaming it through plex and using YouTube for DJ mixes.