here's a list of programs/sites/whatever that were helpful to me when i was moving away from using spotify & back to downloading music:
soulseek - peer to peer downloading program, has most music you'd want. there's "rules" to it though and the UI is a little confusing, but you can figure it out. there's tutorials. i believe in you
cobalt.tools, ytiz.xyz, yt-dlp - mp3 downloaders, for the songs that you can't find on soulseek
musicbee - music player, extremely customiseable. reminds me of when i used itunes back in the day. has a lot of good features, including syncing music over to your phone
lastfm & listenbrainz - sites that keep track of your listening stats. i'd recommend this even if you still choose to use a music streaming service
syncedlyrics - cmd thing that gets you timed song lyrics, like the ones spotify has. there's no UI but it's easy enough to use. just grab the lyrics and timestamps it spits out and paste it into musicbee
music presence - program that shows what song you're listening to in your discord status, in case you use discord and enjoy the thought of other people seeing what you're listening to, which i do for some reason
i'm not going to lie to you and say that switching away from spotify/streaming services is an effortless task, it took me half a whole day of nonstop Work to get all my music downloaded and sorted out, but i will say that it was worth it!! and you should do it 👍 if you want to
Spotifymate - not 100% reliable, but very helpful in downloading songs from your spotify lists to your mp3 folder.
MusicBrainz Picard - named after Starfleet's esteemed bald man, a program for all your tagging and renaming needs.
Mp3Tag - fewer features than Picard, but a bit easier to use. I like it especially for mass renaming of the tracks. Offers 3 days free without registration, and it counts only the days when you use it. Usually, one afternoon of using it gets you sorted out.
As a much-superior alternative to Spotifymate, take a look at casualOnTheSpot. It will grab entire public playlists, albums, or artists. It does have some bugs, but persistently retrying when it starts having issues, or re-running your query will almost always work.
