I don't quite grok music streaming services. Sure, I understand that I get all the music IN THE WORLD!!!111 while I'm current, which is impressive, but that only works if I accept that I'd get tired of $7-10 of music each month or am happy paying $7-10 a month for life. (Amazon's service runs $7 a month if you have Prime.) Fair enough; there are many albums I'd listen to but regret buying, but would I get $7-10 a month of ever proverbial "joy" from that music?

If your daily playlist churns less and you tend to buy for the long term, wouldn't it be better to own an album a month?

I've made this argument on this site before.

But there are really two issues, aren't there?

  1. How to most affordably pay for a license to your music, subscription or "own", and...
  2. How to access it when you want to listen.

Spotify has apps for every platform. Apple Music famously even has an Android app. My mp3 files have... well, no great options for my phone or work computers.

How do I get ubiquitous access to music files that I own?

I used to use Amazon Music, which gives Prime users like me access to Amazon Prime Music streaming (the "free" subscription) and all the mp3 tracks you've purchased from Amazon, which lets you get around your favorites that aren't in the Prime Music library by... buying them. Seems fair, but you see the issues -- One, I have to buy all my music from Amazon going forward. Two, I can no longer add my own music files I had pre-Amazon. (I actually have 100 grandfathered tracks from when Amazon let you upload music, but that only goes so far.)

I've also tried Foobar 2000 on iOS (direct app store link), which, wacky dated UI aside, works well, but requires that you have your files on the phone, iPod-style, which Apple makes prohibitively expensive. Thanks, Mr. Cook. Can I have an SD slot, please?

Now, after a few failed experiments, I use Astiga, essentially a web-based third-party interface to music files you have in cloud storage. It's a competent app. It supports playlists, and gives you the normal Albums, Artists, Genres, and Songs lists. And it doesn't downsample afaict.

There are some foibles. My least favorite is that it sometimes splits albums into two for... I don't know. Small changes in id3 information? Different file types? (I have some AAC and mp3 mixes, I'm afraid.) But ultimately quote competent.

For sources, it supports, at a minimum...

  • pCloud
  • Backblaze
  • Dropbox
  • FTP
  • Google Drive
  • OneDrive
  • Amazon S3
  • SFTP
  • WebDAV

I've considered keeping a box running at home and SFTPing into it, but decided against. Instead, I've opened a pCloud account and gotten a little less than 10 gigs for free, I believe. With the exception that this isn't nearly enough space, it's worked great. I've added a throw-away OneDrive account too to get twice the songs, but OneDrive often requires a new login to keep Astiga's access current. pCloud has not. pCloud wins by about a mile.

There's even an official Astiga Android app. There are also serviceable, though not great, pCloud apps for iOS and Android. Right now, I use CloudBeats on my phone. YMMV.

Admittedly, I do use a throw-away email address and there's ยญnothingยญ on my pCloud other than music. I trust most online services and these apps about as far as I can throw them. I really wish I could give read-only access to specific folders in OneDrive, but for some reason what's there now doesn't quite suit.

So Astiga and pCloud wins -- except for the lack of space. I listen to significantly more than 20 gigs of music regularly.

pCloud has a paid tier of 500 gigs for $175 lifetime or 2 TB for $350, on sale for Black Friday for $122.50 and $245. On its face, this seems ludicrous. $123 to host files I own? Super. $123 is a lot of music (the "opportunity cost" in this equation), maybe 10-12 albums on Amazon (my cloud "alternative"), but it's also a great price for 500 gigs of online storage with plenty of throughput.

I think I'm finally going to bite on the 500 gig plan. Again, I don't think I'd put anything particularly sensitive on pCloud, but I would load it up with music. It looks like I have just under 100 gigs of tracks on my "real" OneDrive account now, so that's lots of room to grow. And it would mean I could stop ripping at 256 and go full FLAC if I wanted, for instance.

Looks like I'm back in the "Rip. Mix. Burn. Cloudify. Stream." crowd.

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