Towards the end of last year, I began my journey of hosting services from my home server. This meant no more subscriptions to Spotify, Netflix, Crunchyroll, and other online streaming services. To replace Spotify, I am currently using Navidrome, which is an open-source web-based music collection server and streamer. I am also using Koito, which keeps track of my listening history much like last.fm.

The immediate pro that comes with self-hosting is that I am no longer paying monthly subscriptions that are progressively getting more expensive. Spotify, back in 2023, sold their individual subscription plan at $9.99/mo compared to $12.99/mo as of today (see all the changes). That’s $155.88 a year! Which in today’s economy gives you the buying power to purchase a single pack of gum … maybe two. I jest. But it’s not just Spotify; it’s almost every other service now!

Another upside is that I get to keep the media I paid for. Frequently, platforms take down songs off their servers due to licensing, the artist’s request, or other issues, and you’ll never know who’ll be next. One artist that comes to mind is Diego Goehring, a music composer who wrote several original scores for the anime Your Lie In April. I used to have several of his songs saved into my playlists, all for them to suddenly disappear one day.

Although it’s nice to own the media I paid for now, it’s not without its pain points. It’s frickin’ expensive! I know I just talked about how moving to self-hosting saved me from coughing up money every month to different streaming providers, but it really just moved where I spent money to another place. First was the initial investment into computer hardware, to which AI data centers decided the time for reasonably priced consumer computer parts was over. Second, buying a VPS (virtual private server) to circumnavigate my CG-NAT ISP. Today’s internet service providers seldom sell their internet plans to allow their consumers to port-forward anymore. So in order for me to access my music library to host, I bought a VPS replacing one monthly subscription with another. Third, I love to listen to a wide variety of music, which translates into having to buy many upon many songs/albums. I do miss the convenience of having practically unlimited music at my fingertips when using Spotify, and it can be argued that I am now being more intentional about what music I choose to listen to, but it raises another issue: music discovery.

I have to admit, I discovered so many great artists using Spotify’s recommendation algorithm. Shoot, some of my favorite artists like Number Girl, itsue, kinokoteikoku, and sooooo many more were found through it. It was also good at recommending new, up-and-coming artists. Honestly speaking, I still don’t have a good and mature methodology for discovering new music. I am subscribed to some YouTube channels such as The First Take, Audiotree, and New Now but they don’t quite fill Spotify’s shoes. I am currently looking into using ListenBrainz as a potential method paired with Explo.

How Explo works is that it uses ListenBrainz’s “Weekly Exploration” playlist to download MP3 files into your media server. Obviously, this means that the music being downloaded is NOT being paid for and could be considered piracy. But it can be argued that it isn’t as the content is published to a public platform where it can be consumed for “free” by anyone. Does the potential of me finding a song worth purchasing outweigh the illicit obtainment of music? It’s a bit of a gray zone for sure, and if I were to make a comparison, it’d be like listening to the radio and deciding to buy a song that piqued my interest, except that the music would be temporarily stored on my server until replaced by the new “Weekly Exploration” playlist.

So would a musician rather have someone pirate their music for a chance of them buying their album, or get paid through streams, which pays many magnitudes lower? At the end of the day, I want to try my best to support musicians while detaching myself from subscription-based music services.

Now, I won’t judge anyone that pirate music, as there are many exceptions, nuances and gray areas. But I do find myself being less tolerant of people who pirate while unashamedly touting that piracy is inherently moral no matter what. That disregards and disrespects the effort and passion that artists put forth into creating their art. I have a lot more thoughts on piracy, but I won’t get any deeper into it than I already have.

All that being said, digital ownership is a doozy, self-hosting is expensive, and being intentional is hard, but I’ll persevere.