I feel you! Getting rid of Spotify took me a long time. The thing I discovered that changed the game for me was multi genre tagging for my music. Cause, at least for me, that’s what I really liked about Spotify: opening the app and clicking a recommended playlist which normally centered around a certain genre/vibe.

When I first starting building up my digital music library, having to make specific playlists for each mood felt like way to much work. But now I use Auxio on my phone and use mp3tag on my computer to add genres to new music that I download (+syncthing to sync my library from computer -> phone). Some are less then accurate but reflect that desire for certain vibes. For example I use a ‘nostalgia’ genre tag which for me just means 2010s recession pop that I listened to as a kid.

The real nice thing is that now songs appear in multiple genres. So if want to shuffle 'sad piano ballad’s that include a rihanna song, I have that with one click, but I also have that song in my ‘nostalgia’ genre!

It does take a fair amount of work to tag, but now that I have about 1500 songs all tagged the way I like, I don’t miss spotify’s convinience at all!

edit: also, metrolist is a great app I use when a friend recommends a song and I want to stream to see if I like it before going through the effort of buying / soulseeking it

Ooo I haven’t! I will definetly try it out. Thanks for the rec :)

grapheneos :) its been great! still have to use a burner google account sadly cause I live in a horrible traffic car city and need google maps.

Going with the drives idea! Got some more ssds and am just gonna do weekly backups using vorta.