In this article I’m going to outline how I’m taking ownership of my music collection again.

First I’m going to give my personal motivations for why I’m even doing this.

In Step 0 I’m going to outline how I have created a quick “backup” of my music collection to be able to cancel my subscription.

I then tell you in Step 1 how I have created a plan for building the music collection.

In Step 2 I’m showing you where I buy my music with recommendations in order of my preference.

And then I’ll end with where I’m at and options I might explore in the future in Where to go from here.

Motivation #

Stop me if you have heard it before, but the big companies want you to not own things any more. Subscription this, subscription that. Oh, that toaster? Well of course it has a subscription as well!

Why take ownership of your music though, are there no other areas that are more important? There definitely are. But I realized that I’m spending nearly 160€ per year on music streaming and most artists, but the biggest acts are struggling.

Something is off.

I’ve used Spotify nearly since it became available in Germany (anyone remember the gray UI?). But buy late 2022, early 2023 I was very unhappy with the service. Pushing more and more podcasts that I didn’t care for. Then my discovery playlists got filled with music of artists that I didn’t know but had a massive “featuring” list including dozens of artists of which one was a one I followed (this is, I assume, how I got it recommended). Of course the recommended song was nothing close to what the artist I followed was actually doing.

Given Spotify’s stand on AI music it might have become even worse now.

Then I switched to YouTube Music in May 2023. 11.99€ per month but also having YouTube Premium. A bit more expensive but hey, I’m watching YouTube a lot! The price was later raised to 12.99€ per month.

I’ve written previously about my relationship with YouTube – in short, it makes me waste too much time. But having my music tied to YouTube meant that I had to be signed in to YouTube all the time when I wanted to listen to music. Another hurdle to overcome for me to reduce my time spent on YouTube.

I’ve also started to listen to whole albums more.

All of this made me want to own my music again. Curating my own library and playlists can be fun.

This is not the first time I’ve tried this. I started to purchase CDs from some of my favourite bands. But I couldn’t make the transition stick. But now I have a system that did work for me, though it is still in progress.

If you’re curious to try it yourself, this is how I’m doing it. Keep in mind that it is not all just positives.

Generally, you will be paying more in the short term, until you’ve got most of your library. If you are someone who listens to a lot of new music all the time, streaming might stay the best option for you. If you’re like me though, you might only buy a few albums a year it might be worth it to build up your library.

One downside I already felt when I switched to YouTube Music: Spotify does have great “party” features. Jams etc. which my friends still like to use when we get together. I’m thinking about building some software to solve this with local music, but I haven’t had the time yet.

Last downside, particularly if you have a massive library or space constraint devices: availability. You might need to self-host your own music streaming server.

But with this all said, let me get started with my system.

Step 0: Create a quick backup #

I tried owning all my music before, but failed in the transition period as I couldn’t listen to all the music I wanted to without streaming, as buying and ripping CDs is a time-consuming process. Therefore, I kept my subscription going and then just fell back into the old pattern streaming instead of buying.

This time I needed a way to bridge the transition period quickly. The solution for me was simple: start by pirating the music and then make the library legit step by step.

I understand that this might be unethical to you, and that’s fine. But that was the best solution that I knew to make the transition work. If you don’t want or need to do this, then don’t!

Since I was using YouTube Music it is very easy to rip it. You can use bare-bones tools like youtube-dl or it’s slightly more advanced fork yt-dlp but you will need to do a lot of manual work the get these files into a nice format with tags etc.

I used Glomatico’s YouTube Music Downloader (gytmdl for short) to achieve this. Thanks to the still running YouTube Premium subscription I was able to get slightly higher quality downloads.

A nice benefit of this method is, that it does a pretty good job at tagging the files, and it downloads the lyrics if available. Neat!

With all of that said, it is crucial to not stop at this point. Then you’ve done nothing but enriching your own life and not been giving back to the artists. That’s what we’re going to prepare next.

Step 1: Create a plan #

Firstly, you need to know how you’re consuming your music. If you’re only every listening through your phone speakers or Bluetooth devices, high resolution music will be a waste of money. Even if you have a decent speaker system, you might not need to by high resolution music.

If you buy standard quality music it will be cheaper and most likely MP3, which basically every device under the sun can play. Just look out for the “bitrate” of the MP3 files. Ideally you want 320kbps, that is the highest quality MP3.

I created a simple spreadsheet in the following format:

Based on this, you can decide if Qobuz Sublime is worth it for you. That subscription is 200€ per year in Germany. If you save based on this table, go for it.

Side note: I recommend to immediately cancel your subscription so it isn’t going to renew.

Step 2: Buying #

Now let us have a look at the different ways to buy music.

I’ll mostly be talking about digital download stores where you can buy to own the music. For that we’ll have a look at these services:

• Bandcamp
• Qobuz
• iomoio
• 7digital
• HDTracks

If you only care about the cheapest price, I’ll start with an example. The album Wake Up The Wicked (Deluxe Version) by Powerwolf.

At the time of writing (2026-01-04) these are the prices on different stores:

From this you can see that the high-res Qobuz price is nearly the same as the price of the physical CD.

Download Stores #

bancamp.com #

Bandcamp advertises itself as a place that cares about the artists. They take only 10–15% fee on purchases.

For this reason, Bandcamp is my first choice when I look for music. They also offer a “pay-what-you-want” model, where the artists can set a minimum price (which could be 0€) and you can pay more.

The music is usually available in very high quality, but this can depend on the artist. But if something is lacking quality, you can try to reach out to the artist, and they might add it afterwards (which will be available to you as well).

The only thing I’m not sure about is the pay for artists when the whole label is on Bandcamp. That’s the case with our example Powerwolf.

Qobuz.com/shop #

Qobuz is both a streaming service and a download store. My impression is that they offer basically all the mainstream music. You might not find some niche artists here.

They offer standard and high-res music but not every album is available in high-res. As you saw above, the prices are pretty high.

One special feature Qobuz offers is their sublime subscription. At the time of writing this is 200€ per year in Germany and it offers up to 60% off on some high-res purchases.

I personally don’t find this subscription worth it. For the 200€ alone I’d get a lot of high quality music on other platforms. But you might want to check the maths for yourself.

iomoio.com #

Each track costs 0.14€ and is in MP3. According to their FAQ that’s because they are a company and licensing authority [that] is located outside U.S. area and [they] do not have to follow $0.99/track minimum regulations.

They have frequent sales where you can get songs for as cheap as 0.10€ (from what I’ve seen at least one per quarter).

If you don’t care for high quality, this platform is the best choice.

But be cautious, while most MP3 files have a bitrate of 320kbps, some are lower. The actual bitrate is always listed. I’d personally only recommend 320kkps.

7digital.com #

This site I have not tried yet. But I’ve heard it recommended by quite a few people.

They offer standard and high-res quality music similar to Qobuz. But their pricing is very competitive with even iomoio! But I don’t know if they offer high-res for every release.

HDTracks.com #

Another site that I have not used myself, but heard recommended as well.

The biggest difference for me is that they only seem to show prices in USD. This means you’ll need to consider the exchange rate and may have to pay extra when buying in other currencies. Therefore, I am only listing this for completeness.

Physical disks #

CDs are the classic way to buy music.

New disks can be quite expensive – similarly priced to the high quality albums on Qobuz. But used CDs can be a steal! Flea markets or second hand stores, both physically and online, will offer you the best prices. If you are looking for a specific artist or album, you might have to wait a while for it to be available – or just be lucky.

The only downside with CDs is that you need to rip them yourself and then tag the files. Oh, and you will need a CD drive.

Back to the High Seas #

Lastly, you might need to pirate some music. Again, if you think it is unethical, then you don’t have to do it.

My requirements for me to pirate music are:

• The album is not available in my country or the EU.
• The album is only available as an import that is ridiculously expensive (I’ve seen 80€ for a simple CD that is actually costs only the equivalent of 20€). For me this means that the importer is having a nice payday.

That’s it. But I have to say that I’ve not needed to do it yet.

If you need guidance, refer back to Step 0 for one way to do this. Other ways are available with an online search as well, just stay safe and don’t get a virus or something.

Where to go from here #

This is an area where I’m still exploring options myself. Currently, I’m satisfied just moving the music files from my pc to other devices, though my phone is limiting me a bit.

On my (Android) phone I use Symfonium a very sleek music player that I think is worth the money!

On my computer I use fooyin – a Foobar2000 inspired music player. But I’m still exploring options on Linux.

I might set up a self-hosted music streaming server with gonic or Navidrome in the future. If you are in the market for a complete self-hosted media library, I’d recommend you check out Jellyfin, though I haven’t used it myself.