Music streaming... any tricks to filer out AI slop? Or a good service that outright bans it?

a month ago by Murse to c/techsupport

I'm a fan of symphonic metal, and something about that is telling YouTube Music that I must fucking love repetitive, soulless AI slop featuring guitar sounds.

It's probably just time to set sail, but I do appreciate the convenience of streaming. Seeding a playlist with a single song has let me to a lot of music that would have otherwise flown under my radar, but every fucking time it plays something I haven't heard before nowadays, it's just more AI slop. Thumbs-downing them doesn't seem to do shit.

Youtube Music is the only service I'm aware of that work doesn't block (which... honestly why would they disallow Pandora, but leave Youtube?? I digress...) so that's what I've been using. But I do have my phone, so I could run an alternative off of that.

The obvious answer would be YT with filters, but... I don't actually see a way to set a filter - you just search a song and it does its thing. If I could just block every channel made after... idk, 2022, that would pretty well solve the issue... Is there a way to do that? That'd definitely be the easiest option.

Otherwise, is there better streaming service (which for me means decent selection of metal / actually categorizes its subgenres, and active ban of AI slop)?

The convenience of running this from my workstation just isn't worth the amount of garbage flooding YouTube.

schipelblorp 8 points a month ago

Maybe Deezer? They at least algorithmically identify and label slop and they say they won't recommend it to you.

If you want to start experimenting with the winds, soul seek is a good harbor.

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Murse 3 points a month ago

I'll check them both out - thank you!

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NaibofTabr 7 points a month ago

somafm.com has human-curated internet radio streams, including one for metal. No service to sign up for, no login, no fees, just an in-browser player or direct stream links.

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logi 7 points a month ago

Tidal tags AI generated music and allows you to filter it out. They also pay more to artists than most.

I believe Qobuz does something similar but their page is TL and I DR.

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Murse 4 points a month ago

Tidal sounds decent per the page you linked, but there's no trial without plugging in credit card info. I'd be willing to fork out some cash for a decent service, but I'm hesitant to give them my financial data just for a 'free' trial. Do you use Tidal? If yes, good experience? Pros/cons?

Pulling up Qobuz now.

Edit - fawk, Qobuz does the same thing. That TL page established a really solid stance against the AI enshittifying music, so I'm tempted to dive in just for that. But, same spiel: any review for Qobuz? (sounds like you don't personally use it, but @anyone else reading this)

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Sludge 3 points a month ago

I subscribe to both tidal and qobuz. I tend to prefer qobuz overall but I do think the playlists generated by tidal are better. I also like that tidal makes their API easy to access if you want to build something that utilizes your subscription (I have an app running on a raspberry pi that generates playlists that are outside of the normal stuff I'd get from their recommendation system).

I also don't love MQA (it's effectively snake oil and unfolding a 44khz track doesn't magically make it higher quality. I will take a 192khz track but don't try to tell me MQA is somehow better, because it's not...)

Overall my streaming is 75% Qobuz and 25% tidal).

Glad to answer any additional questions.

Qobuz also offers a free service to port your Spotify library and playlists over into Qobuz so you don't have to start from scratch if you don't want to.

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Murse 1 point a month ago

Better playlists from Tidal, but you use Qobuz more? What does Q do better that keeps you gravitating to them?

...does Qobuz have a dark-mode tucked away somewhere in the settings? Jfc I feel like I'm reading print off a lit lightbulb lol - that alone might be the tie breaker.

MQA

...man, I wish my ears were good enough to tell the difference between formats. They used to be... that preference for symphonic metal might be taking its toll! A decent quality MP3 is pretty much indistinguishable from the fancier formats to me, unless I have it obscenely loud, which... muh ears...

Speaking of volume, does either server do a better job of keeping their tracks at a fairly stable decibel level? I think this is more dependent on the recording itself vs the software that plays it, but we all know the struggle of a song coming on that's way too quiet, so you turn it up to a normal decibel level; then it finishes AND THE NEXT ONE COMES ON AND RATTLES YOUR FUCKING SKULL! ...or tools built in to address basically that but within a single song (symphonic metal loves doing this - open with just symphony to establish a contrast, then LOAD-ASS GUITAR! then back and forth throughout the song. Sounds amazing against silence; in other environments like work or driving, doesn't pan out so well)

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Sludge 1 point a month ago

I tend to search for artists directly and the qobuz version often times has a 24 but version where the tidal version is 16 bit. Honestly there's a lot of overlap.

When I say playlists I mean the daily playlists are better in tidal. I do really like some of the more static curation from qobuz like the taste of qobuz or quobozissime or whatever it's called... I honestly like having access to both.

I use Roon to access both platforms at once. Roon normalizes the track volume for me. I can also do that through my blue sound node.

Qobuz does have a dark mode, at least on the mobile app.

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Yerbouti 1 point a month ago

Tidal is actually great. You can get studio quality, if that's something you care about, they give 3x more to artists than spotify, share your playlist, good track radio, and indeed filter out all the ai crap. Honesty I have to say it's a great service.. I buy as much as I can on bandcamp, and use Tidal for streaming.

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logi 1 point a month ago

I use Tidal and am happy with it. I changed from Spotify a few years ago because Spotify pissed me off locking away podcasts, Tidal pays better to musicians and the audio quality was better (at the time?). I can tell you that on Tidal I have never been subjected to slop.

Today I might have a hard look at Qobuz as well, except that my Tesla (I really did buy it before Elon went completely off the cliff) has Tidal support but not Qobuz 🤷‍♂️ My streaming boxes support both.

Music streaming is weirdly European with Spotify from Sweden, tidal from Norway and Qobuz from France.

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GloriousGasHole 4 points a month ago

I use Qobuz and don't have to deal with AI slop. They don't really have many algorithms that give you like 6 daily playlists like Spotify, but I prefer that. It feels more intentional. I also really like that they have human curated playlists, even though I don't always like every song on them. In a world that is always pushing algorithms at you, its nice to listen to songs I don't love to expand my music tastes a little. I've listened to a lot of music I otherwise wouldn't have because of their human curated playlists. You can even buy music from their website, which is pretty nifty.

https://community.qobuz.com/...

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makou 3 points a month ago

I know you said streaming is convenient but you can make playlists with a playlist maker, copy the playlist link and download it using a spotify downloader (illegal way of course). Rest of the songs and albums you can download with SoulSeek

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HubertManne 2 points a month ago

I only liste to songs I choose when it comes to music unless im listening to the radio.

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emb 2 points a month ago

If I could just block every channel made after... idk, 2022, that would pretty well solve the issue... Is there a way to do that?

When searching, you can add before:2022 for this effect. I realize that doesn't help with the recommendation engine, but it's something.

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Murse 3 points a month ago

First hit was AI slop from 2026 Q_Q

If that used to work, they patched it. I hate enshittification so much.

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emb 3 points a month ago

I played around with it, and it does seem to work sometimes. I don't get it... I tried filtering searches for 'heavy metal before:2010' and 'slop before:2021 after:2018', and results appeared accurate. But if I try "openai before:2022" a good majority of the results are from the past few days or weeks. It makes zero sense all around why those filters wouldn't be absolute.

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emb 2 points a month ago

That sucks, sorry! I had read that it worked, but I honeslty don't search much so I thought it still did.

Amazing how Google used to be a good search engine company, vs how terrible YouTube search is.

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mrdown 1 point a month ago

Go to the social media and check if they performed in certain places

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Murse 2 points a month ago

I check periodically, but it's pretty rare for them to show up in the US at all, let alone the neck of the woods I'm stuck in.

I've only been to a couple of live performances, ever. Up until semi-recently, the cost was insurmountably prohibitive. ...and of the like four fucking shows I've been to, the most recent was Disturbed... and shortly after the lead singer slithered over to Isreal to fucking sign the bombs used in the genocide on Gaza. I don't understand how you could champion the lyrics in their songs, then turn around and do something so glaringly evil.

Used to really like them. I can't bring myself to separate the art from the artist, so they're on the shit-list and off the play-list.

...and it's kinda killed my desire to attend another show like that. Not that there's any causation from my attendance there, but that feeling of disgust remains.

Never meet your heroes.

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The_Jit 1 point a month ago

I believe what they meant is to see if a band is real, search online if they have ever played at a live venue.

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Murse 1 point a month ago

Oh... yeah I think you're right. I misread that. Still salty about Disturbed, though. Q_Q

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