Introducing Unstream: a simple way to search artist-first & alternative sources for music and get off streaming

I quietly made an app over the holiday break. Exciting! It’s called Unstream and was directly borne out of my desire to break out of the streaming ecosystem for music.

You can check it out here, at a URL I still find amusing: unstream.stream

There are 3 main ways to use it:

• On the website you can search artists and see alternative platforms those artists are on, where you can better support them\

• You can share a Spotify or Apple Music URL to Unstream to quickly get that same information using an Apple Shortcut (great for quickly supporting an artist you’re listening to on your phone!)

• There’s also a li’l Mac app that serves up those alternative platforms for the artist you’re currently listening to in Spotify or Apple Music, with a (paid, $2.99) feature to save artists to revisit later

I’ve already found it really fun as a way to see just how many artists have pages on Bandcamp and other sites, and a few fellow musicians I’ve shared early versions of the app learned about new platforms they could be on (or were already on without realizing). I hope this is helpful for folks wanting to support artists they love in ways the streaming apps don’t allow, perhaps even move off streaming, or just have fun with it.

Why did I make this?

A few reasons! First, given my stance on the streaming ecosystem and success finding community (and income) as a musician elsewhere, I’ve now seen the value of pursuing this path as an independent musician. I want to encourage fellow artists explore these alternative platforms as homes for their music.

As a consumer, I’ve paid for streaming services for over a decade, mostly Apple Music. But I’ve wanted to cancel it and build my own library of owned music – to rediscover the joy of finding new music myself, to give Apple less of my money, and to give more of that money to the artists whose music I love. In exploring Unstream, I learned just how many of my favorite artists post & sell their music on Bandcamp.

I built Unstream to serve both of these purposes: help fellow listeners find better ways to support the artists they love more easily, build their own libraries, and ultimately reduce their dependency on streaming, while also encouraging fellow artists to trust & use these alternative models rather than relying on streaming as a conduit to success.

It’s not done yet

I already have a nice list of features to potentially add to Unstream; you can see those or add your own here on the Feedback board.