Zach Adams Web Developer and Programmer

How to replace Spotify

May 13, 2014

A while ago I became frustrated with paying $10 a month to Spotify. Sure it’s a fantastic service but I enjoy doing things my way and Spotify’s desktop app was very rigid when it came to customization.

The tools we’ll need in order to get rid of Spotify once and for all are the following:

This entire process may take up to a day (depending on your music library) so be warned!

First download and install Foobar2000 using the link above. The newest version and default setting will do fine.

Next read and follow the guide linked above created by /u/mrlex. It’s very thorough but may take you about 20-30 minutes to get foobar2000 the way you like. Just a warning that Foobar2000 is extremely customizable but it can take a while to find your perfect setup.

After you have your Foobar2000 setup just the way you like comes the tricky part. It used to be easy to download your Spotify playlists with services like SpotyDL but those service have been closed (for obvious reasons). It’s also difficult to obtain a text list of your playlists, so we’ll have to do it by hand. ThePirateBay is obviously awesome for this. If you’re really psychotic about your music quality you’ll want to join a site like what.cd but just to warn you now it is very difficult to get in for some people. To give you an idea here’s the interview process.

To search for your music on services like ThePirateBay I would suggest that you pick torrents that have a lot of seeds and always scan for viruses in the files you download. The quality you’re looking for in MP3’s is around 320kps however 180kps will do for most people. Also if you’re not lacking in space on your hard drive I would suggest downloading formats such as ALAC and FLAC as they are always the highest quality.

To search for music downloads on Google type in the music you want like normal but add “filetype:torrent” to the end of your search and Google will search torrent sites for you. Follow the same process as ThePirateBay and always air on the side of caution.

Once you have all your music downloaded and Foobar2000 configured the way you want tell Foobar to look into your music folder by going to

File > Preferences > Media Library> Add.. > Select the folder containing your music library

It may take a bit for Foobar to find your music for you but once it’s loaded Foobar remembers all your music.