I have a bunch of Fanxiang 4TB drives, eg S880. I didn’t set out to have so many but crucial, Samsung, etc all failed way too often in early life.
I bought a few on a lark and stocked up on those and pine 64 stuff to do a 36 node ceph cluster (if you figured i got the idea from Jeff Geerling you get a gold star!)
Last year my heat went out during below freezing temperatures and I lost three Toshiba drives, out of three total.
Cluster is almost 2 years old and I degoogled with it. I have an additional rack of raspis and orangepis that run my k3s cluster, Jellyfin runs on that along with some additional infrastructarr.
The k3s nodes run off of virtual iscsi images served by ceph, rgw gateway for s3 compatible api, and the only public exposure requires access to my zerotier network. My home router runs it, then my phone and laptop and that’s all within the zerotier free plan.
The Fanxiangs have exceeded my expectations and they are competitively priced. Watch their eBay store for the occasional bulk discount deal. Give one a try, I run my laptop and desktop on them now as well.
I just discovered Qobuz, its a French music streaming app that feels more like a record store than a streaming platform. You can also buy tracks, many of them in audiophile quality. Their pro plan includes a discount on lots of tracks.
What you dont get is anything algorithmic or AI at all. New music discovery is fully back on your hands but you’ll have to decide for yourself if the editorial content is enough to offset that
I am splitting my purchases between subvert.fm (over bandcamp these days, look into it and make your own call) and qobuz is the only music streamer I’ll use, they are at the top end of artist compensation per stream.
Discovery is a more interactive process for me now, but, i personally find it more rewarding. YMMV.
Even if you decide this isn’t for you, please use subvert or bandcamp or direct purchase in those rare cases that they offer it.
Stay away from the big names in this space, go to live shows, buy direct merch, we need to do anything we can to remove every intermediary between us and the artists we love and that provide the soundtracks to our lives.
I realize that I’m saying this all from a place of privilege. To those who can’t afford these things, i have been in that position. Do what you have to do, support artists as best you can, but only if you reasonably can. Look out for yourselves first.