I’ve written a lot about ways of listening to music; in the current decade about liking YouTube Music but then about de-Googling. What’s new is that I’m spending most of my time with Plexamp and Qobuz. The trade-offs are complicated.

YouTube Music · I liked YTM because:

1. It let me upload my existing ten thousand tracks or so, which include many oddities that aren’t on streamers.

2. It did a good job of discovering new artists for me.

3. The Android Auto integration lets me say “Play Patti Smith” and it just does the right thing.

But the artist discovery has more or less ran out of gas. I can’t remember the last time I heard something new that made me want more, and when I play “My Supermix”, it seems to always be the same couple of dozen songs, never anything good and new.

Also: Bad at classical.

I think I might keep on paying for YTM for the moment, because I really like to watch live concerts before I go to bed, and it seems like YTM subscribers never see any ads, which is worth something.

Plexamp · I wrote up what it does in that de-Googling link. Tl;dr: Runs a server on a Mac Mini at home and lets me punch through to it from anywhere in the world. I’ve been listening to it a lot, especially in the car, since YTM got boring.

My back inventory of songs contains many jewels from CDs that I bought and loved in like 1989 or 2001 and subsequently forgot all about, and what a thrill when one of them lights up my day.

I still feel vaguely guilty that I’m not paying Plex anything, but on the other hand what I’m doing costs them peanuts.

But, I still want to hear new stuff.

Qobuz · I vaguely knew it was out there among the streamers, but I got an intense hands-on demonstration recently while shopping for new speakers; Phil at audiofi pulled up all my good-sound demo tracks with a couple of taps each, in what was apparently CD quality. Which opened my eyes.

What I like about Qobuz:

1. It pays artists more per stream than any other service, by a wide margin.

2. It seems to have as much music as anyone else.

3. It’s album-oriented, and I appreciate artists curating their own music.

4. Classical music is a first-class citizen.

5. While it doesn’t have an algorithm that finds music it thinks I’ll like, it is actively curated and they highlight new music regularly, and pick a “record of the week”. This week’s, for example, is For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women) by Japanese Breakfast. It’s extremely sweet stuff, maybe a little too low-key for me, but I still enjoyed it. They’re coming to town, I might go.

6. This isn’t the only weekly selection that I’ve enjoyed. Qobuz gives evidence of being built by people who love music.

What don’t I like about Qobuz? The Mac app is kinda dumb, I sometimes can’t figure out how to do what I want, and for the life of me I can’t get it to show a simple full-screen display about the current song. But the Android app works OK.

As for Qobuz’s claim to offer “Hi-Res” (i.e. better than CD) sound, meh. I’m not convinced that this is actually audible and if it in principle were, I suspect that either my ears or my stereo would be a more important limiting factor.

Records! · Yep, I still occasionally drop the needle on the vinyl on the turntable, and don’t think I’ll ever stop.

And a reminder · If you really want to support artists, buy concert tickets. That thrill isn’t gone at all.