I’ve had an Apple Music subscription for years and use it A LOT. I tried some alternatives (Tidal, Sirius, and maybe one other?) and wasn’t super happy with the options.
Is there a service that people recommend that is good, like $10/month or less, maybe gives better pay to artists? I’d like to spend on a better company if possible too. If Apple has enough money to buy gold trinkets for elected officials they probably don’t need more from me.
Edit: Thanks for all the responses. Some good ideas for sure. Gonna start with qobuz and band camp. Cheers!


If you’re on Linux, Rufin is an awesome player for those coming from streaming services. Offers familiar interface and functionality. Can be used with local files or Navidrome/Jellyfin/Subsonic instance.
Also, seconding Soulseek through Nicotine+, and there are programs allowing you to download music from streaming services, too.
Was curios about Rufin, but I can’t get it to work. I have music in a local folder, but when I try to add my music folder I get this error:
“Library persistence failed: integer value outside SQLite’s signed range”
Same as the other person said. Rufin is distributed as Flatpak, and thereby it has limited permissions.
Give Rufin access to your music folder. The easiest way to do this is using Flatseal.
I had the same problem. I had to manually give permission to Rufin to access my music folder. I used the 84 point answer here to help figure it out.
Incidentally, after some messing around, I think I’ll stick with Strawberry cuz I’m a weirdo who likes rating my music out of 5 stars.