Honestly the best store right now all these years later is still iTunes. Great price, better than mp3 quality, no DRM. Largest catalog available by a long shot, especially for international stuff.

If you need lossless, I use a combo of Bandcamp and Beatport. Bandcamp is great because most (maybe all?) of the money goes to the artist, but it has very little and tags are usually off. Beatport is crazy expensive but sometimes your only option for lossless. (Edit: checking out Qobuz as others suggested, seems to be another good option similar to beatport in offering and price)

Also: I know this is a piracy sub but the downvotes are not warranted. I’m all for piracy especially large manufacturerd mega-artists where the money just goes to the label anyway, but it’s still super important to support indie artists when you can especially if playing their music at clubs and shows etc (which is why I buy music instead of streaming). All that said tickets and merch are the best way to support!

Yeah I’m not sideloading anything that’s not worth me saving $2 a month.

I mostly watch YouTube on iOS, Apple TV, or the web on my work computer. So piped etc is not an option for me, this works well.

Really harsh language there

I disagree, I think HEVC has better overall compression quality than AV1. But it’s also wrapped up in licensing problems so AV1 can be more compatible especially if you’re using windows

Exactly this, avoid re-encoding at all costs. Giant hard drives are real cheap these days

Right? Glad I could help :)

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I use my home countries credit card no problem! You may have to manually approve the international charge depending on your bank. Been doing it for over 5 years now, no issues yet. I use my primary account, although I don’t use any google services other than YT so I don’t care if my account gets suspended.

I just put this on another post about YT, but seems relevant here:

Adblocking on YouTube is an uphill battle, especially on mobile.

Sign up for a VPN trial, set it to a random country. I think I used Argentina or something. Sign up for YT premium, the prices will shock you. I pay ~2$ US a month for a family subscription.

Turn off your VPN, and enjoy YT premium on the cheap, in your native country.

2$ a month is honestly very worth be not having to deal with sideloading and any of that, and having it be Ad-free on all my devices including my Apple TV is very worth the price. Also I can share it with 9 people

Adblocking on YouTube is an uphill battle, especially on mobile.

Sign up for a VPN trial, set it to a random country. I think I used Argentina or something. Sign up for YT premium, the prices will shock you. I pay ~2$ US a month for a family subscription.

Turn off your VPN, and enjoy YT premium on the cheap, in your native country.

Just providing a solution

I absolutely love my LG, panel quality is unmatched, but wow is webOS terrible. Got an Apple TV and will never look back, worth every penny. Especially for how often I airplay it “just works” every time

I second handbrake. I don’t have experience with AMD but I use VTB hardware encoding on my Mac and it’s crazy fast and video quality is excellent

I think an existing laptop or tablet is probably the best way to go here. Only hard part is a remote

Amen