Life is the highway you boof

Do you prefer to give your personal id to any site in the world instead of using the same app which you pay your taxes with?

I would suggest Qobuz (if available) or Tidal. Deezer's CEO is a hard-core religious nutjob who finances anti-trans orgs and sexual conversion "therapies".

Why do you think they keep blowing thelself up?

I have honestly no clue what you mean. Could you explain?

You’re mostly supporting the industry that encouraged your favorite artists to kill themselves once they’re not profitable anymore

Which is why I'm actively searching for the best possible options.

When I learned that Spotify is fleecing artists, I moved to Tidal.

Then I learned about the French Qobuz, which pays artists even more, and I switched.

I support artists on Bandcamp. I buy physical CDs and will soon fire up a vinyl collection.

I'm aware that 100% of the money I spent on art doesn't go to the artist, but even if it's 10%, it's going to be 100% more than if I resorted to piracy.

Supporting piracy to show corpos the finger is the equivalent of stealing CDs from a music store, because the store price includes the store's margin, transport costs, manufacturing costs, and only a (relatively) small percentage goes to the artists.

Why would I support local artists if an artist from abroad makes the music I love?

And, if their music is not available locally, nor they have a Bandcamp/similar account, how do I support them if not through streaming services?

is basically a state’s rights argument

No, it's a privacy and individual rights argument. I don't want local governments enforcing it any more than I want national arguments enforcing it.

Kids seeing stuff they shouldn't isn't itself a problem, but it can lead to problems. For example, kids learning to make bombs itself isn't an issue, kids making bombs to hurt others is the issue. Hold parents legally accountable for the latter, not the former.

The furthest I'd be willing to go on this is requiring a payment method (which itself requires sufficient age) to be entered before accessing anything "adult oriented," and even then I'm not completely sold. But this way the burden of verifying age is restricted to things consumers already need to trust, and parents would need to give or allow their kid access to a payment method.

There are fans of Spotify?

Thanks for recommending Navidrome. It looks really interesting.

I was using Spotify, but switched to Spotube. After Spotube was crippled, I was kind of aimless. I really liked having my music available on my cellphone and desktop. It looks like Navidrome will fill the gap perfectly.

You'd mentioned ripping CDs. Would you have some software, you'd recommend (Windows or Linux)? Preferably in FLAC.

I haven't looked at ripping software in a few years, but it was kind of tedious to set up and very manual to get the proper metadata, genres, and cover art. I've got a hundred CDs and that'll take awhile....

I'm returning to car boot sales to buy cubic meters of CDs.
That, and BandCamp.

Here's a reliable, free VPN: https://riseup.net/en/vpn

A VPN is a must if you wanna go down this route

Soulseek (and I recommend the Nicotine+ client over the official one) is a fantastic source for all music in all formats, and particularly obscure off-label shit you won't get anywhere else. You'll even have some success finding audiobooks there, although this is very hit-and-miss. I wish audiobook pirates would use it more heavily. It's P2P, like Napster used to be. You'll have to share something or you'll get auto-ignored by most users.

RuTracker is a great non-private/non-ratio-monitoring torrent site for music (does require a free account though). I've never had a single torrent from there that wasn't seemingly seeded by a Godzilla's dick. Obviously it's in Russian, but there's really no difficulty navigating around. The only thing you might struggle with is signing up for an account, but just have your favourite translation tool open in another tab

If you don't mind slow download speeds (from the likes of RapidGator), I enjoy Exystence. It's a blog that shares link to the latest albums and offers both lossy and lossless versions. Nice RSS subscription to have.

If you do find yourself using RapidGator a lot, don't waste money buying a sub directly from them, it's insanely pricey. Instead, get a reseller like Real Debrid, which costs like 10% as much and also covers you for about two-dozen other file hosters. I highly recommend putting as much distance between your credit card and the company as possible, just for safety reasons. Using PaySafeCard is fine, as Real Debrid will never see your details in that case. I don't have any specific reason to be weary of them, I just don't trust random/small/hitherto unheard of companies as a rule.

what's even the point of age gating "explicit" music?

"oh no! "Speak To Me" by Pink Floyd has the fuck word in it! can't let my kids hear it!"

I mean, fuck Spotify and all that, but this one is really the UK government's doing.

And soon, this shit will come to every country. They're all drafting laws to mandate real age verification for adult content. The UK is just the first to implement it.

I'd say it's definitely worth it.

Our brains shouldn't have to work harder to listen to lossy music, which is what happens even if you can't reliably perceive it.

Listening to music on acid (a lot) has really shaped my views of it and how even the most minor things can have a major impact on the final experience.

I'm not an audiophile though and can enjoy music in a wide range of formats and quality; I just prefer FLAC almost anywhere.*

*some songs sound 'better,' or at least more iconic in a lower quality

I mean, fuck it. At this point we might as well put our passport numbers in the HTTP headers.

Coming to a pop up near you. If they even bother to ask any more.

I think there are going to be a whole lot of phishing and blackmail scams in the future, preying on the stupid computer illiterate masses putting in their personal information into fake "age verifiers" to access porn or other adult content.

I jerked it to the Hanson mmbop video back in the nineties.

Found out later the girl was a boy.

You can judge all you want, but the general thing is that horny teenagers will jerk it to almost anything.