Hi,
So, after doing all kinds of research I figured qobuz is the least evil streaming service and the only one I’d be willing to use.
However, after trying it, I realised that they don’t allow VPNs. Often it doesn’t recognize the IPs as a VPN, but for some servers it does.
So, since I could get locked out at any time, this isn’t a long-term solution for me.
I’m thinking of self-hosting. But then there’s no recommendations. And if I hear anything I like, I need to find the stuff as well, which is gonna be tricky the more obscure it is. I can’t afford to buy more than maybe two albums a month. And often it’s just individual songs I want.
Do I need to drop the luxury of recommendation radio and easy access to nearly every song I like?
No larger streaming service will allow VPNs these days since most of the endpoints hosted by providers have been identified, and blocklist created that are easy to integrate into an API.
The thing with Qobuz is they don’t block you downloading the HQ versions of files. Look at the plethora of tools for this on GitHub.
Make a playlist, point something like QBDX at it, and there you go.
Does anybody know why they block VPNs? Is there some fraud or abuse going on which includes VPNs? I feel they could at least allow it for paid accounts?! I mean unless there’s people who proxy it and re-sell one family account to 36 people… Or the AI companies harvest their catalog…
But all the services are so strict, these days. I can’t even watch (free) Youtube videos from a server because they blocked the datacenter IP address range.
Yes, of course there’s fraud and abuse coming from VPNs. It’s mostly to prevent skirting stupid copyright laws, but plenty of bad actors coming out of the same VPN endpoints you use every day.