Free Psychedelic Music: Build Your Collection on a Budget

Building a psychedelic music collection doesn't require expensive streaming subscriptions. If you're considering canceling your subscription, worried about AI-generated music dominating your platform, or simply want to own your music outright, there's good news: you can start a high-quality collection for free or nearly free. In this guide, I'll share curated recommendations and practical tools to help you build your psychedelic library on a budget.

Are you aware that Spotify is planning to add AI generation directly in app? This is notable given the CEO's $700M investment into AI warfare. All that while paying second-least per-stream of all streaming services and introducing minimum thresholds of plays per-month to even start generating any money, and regularly increasing prices while some of us struggle to afford a living.

But I have good news for you: I know that cancelling a subscription to a streaming service might feel hard if you don't have a lot of money or a collection already, so that's why I'm starting a new blog series, where I'm on a lookout for the best free, pay-what-you-want, or budget-friendly releases for you to jump-start your collection.

How to start a psychedelic music collection?

While a lot of us know and love Shpongle, Tipper or Ott, their music on Bandcamp can cost ~$7-11 per album. Which is obviously a very fair price for access to their masterpieces and supporting them, but if you don't own a single album yet and are on a budget, it might feel impossible to switch from a streaming service to owning your music - spending $40 to get stuck with 5 albums on repeat for a month feels wasteful. But I'm here with a solution.

First of all, check out Ektoplazm if you haven't already. Their catalogue is broad ranging from psychill to techno or psytrance. The website is a slightly dated and doesn't include newer releases, but it's fully functional and you'll find a lot of great music there.

Best free psychedelic music

If you find yourself lost easily in Ektoplazm and want more curated experience, here's my selection of psychedelic music that you can get for cheap or completely free:

Globular - Lifts The Curse of Grey Goo Assimilators & Messages from the Resonator

If you're looking to start your collection from scratch, Globular is a top tier choice to get started with. I always wondered what would happen if Shpongle and Ott had a child, and then Globular and Geoglyph dropped Messages from the Resonator. It felt like a perfect synthesis of both artists' strengths. It's probably the Shpongliest album that exists that was not made by Shpongle as well. Lifts the Curse of Grey Goo Assimilators is another bomb from Globular, it's slightly more experimental, but I'm all in for it. Telionomics Matter offers a refreshing sound with its blend of breaks and unique sound design.

Actually, almost all of the Globular discography is free, but those two are my favorites. 100% encourage you to explore it more, he's a very prolific artist and you'll find lots of incredible music on his Bandcamp page.

MantisMash - Simplexity & Pulsating Reality

MantiSmash is a great entry point if you want to get into psybass. While Simplexity is a great, well-known album of his, I was surprised when I found out it was free to download on Bandcamp. Another album I would like to mention is Pulsating Reality. I can't believe I slept on it! Tracks like BasStateOfMind are absolutely mind-blowing Streaming services tend to draw your attention toward an artist's most only popular songs or most recent albums. Exploring their full discographies reveals hidden gems beyond that.

MantiSmash is a great choice for people wanting to get into psybass, he also takes influences from various other genres like dub, dubstep or DnB. If you enjoy his sound, make sure to visit his Bandcamp for more - his first EP is also pay-what-you-want. Make sure to check it out.

Soulacybin - Bug Eyes & Slug Cuddles

While I've long enjoyed Soulacybin, I initially focused on his most popular tracks. It's just how streaming services are made. I missed out on a lot of great music from him, and was quite surprised most of it is available on his Bandcamp at pay-what-you-want. Soulacybin blends psydub/psybass with influences of other genres, creating an unique vibe.

Most of his discography is available pay-what-you-want, with older releases being equally great!

Iacchus - Frogspawn & Betwixt

Iacchus blends multiple genres into unique psychedelic soundscapes, each album is distinctly new and inspiring. I've written a review about Frogspawn, and his latest album Betwixt is even crazier!

Like most of the mentions in this post, his whole discography is available as pay-what-you-want, and it's all worth checking out, so make sure you do.

Bogtrotter - Immersion & Catawompus

Bogtrotter is another great niche artist, less popular than the ones mentioned before. His music is what I call "swamp music" - a blend of bass and glitch. While niche, this sound deserves wider recognition and is worth exploring.

He has also a bunch more releases on his Bandcamp page and most of his releases you can download for free. Highly recommended.

Zenon Records - Selections 2020 vol.2

For a change, I would like to recommend you some psytrance to check out. If you're into this type of music you probably already know Zenon Records very well, but I suppose not everyone is aware they release bi-yearly Selections, which are a great starting point for DJs or collectors to get their hands on some psytrance. I chose this compilation particularly because it contains tracks from Slip Hypnotic, ADAMA, and Evil Oil man - but you will find there also other very popular names who produce different shades of Zenonesque.

If you enjoy psy-tech or progressive psytrance, check out their catalogue. While most of it is paid, they have numerous Selections, as well as some great singles and EPs you can legally download for free.

What to do with your free psychedelic music: Technical Setup

You now have access to at least 24-48 hours of high-quality, ad-free music - all legal and free. Use your default media player or install dedicated software like MusicBee, Foobar2000, PowerAmp or Musicolet for enhanced features.

What if you mostly listen to music on mobile and have limited space on your phone?

You can download/transfer the music to your phone, but if space is limited, there's options. A great one is purchasing the music from Bandcamp. Pay at least $1 for an album (or $0.50 for a single) to add it to your Bandcamp collection, support the artist and unlock unlimited streaming access. Paying $2+ on Bandcamp typically directs equal amount of or even more money to the artist than a thousand streams on a platform like Spotify or YouTube would.

However, Bandcamp doesn't offer synchronized playlists across devices. But there's a solution...

What is Navidrome?

Navidrome lets you run a personal music server on your computer or Raspberry Pi, providing 24/7 access to your library from anywhere. The setup is slightly technical but there's good documentation, so I believe everyone who can use a computer is able to follow a guided process. With Navidrome you can listen to music and make playlists on your PC and you can connect to it via a Substreamer app from your phone and access your whole library. And there's plenty of add-ons, too.

What file format should I go with?

Most popular audio format is MP3, which is fine, but I find the format kind of inefficient - lossy compression with relatively large filesize, limited metadata. Wav format is also popular (it is basically the "raw" audio format, best quality), but it takes a lot of space, which piles up rather quickly. Depending on your preferences/setup, there likely are better options to consider:

• FLAC - stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec - if you're an audiophile or are building a permanent archive, it's probably your best choice. It has the same quality as .wav, but the files are ~40-70% smaller thanks to compression, and even has better metadata support.

• Opus/OGG - FLAC files still take some space. If yours is heavy limited, opus is the best alternative as it takes around half the filesize of FLAC and 1/60th of a .wav file while offering basically indistinguishable audio quality, however it's a less popular/supported format so you have to check out if it works with your setup, convert it yourself, and some metadata might be lost when you do, so it's a thing to keep in mind.

• M4A/AAC - AAC offers good compression, resulting with good quality, small filesize and good metadata support. It is a format native to the Apple ecosystem, but it's popular and widely adopted.

My recommendation is: if you're getting the music for free or from various sources and have lots of space, go with FLAC. If space on your drive is heavily limited, go with Opus to preserve good quality with a minimum filesize. My personal choice are AAC files - I find them to be the perfect balance between filesize, quality and convenience, and if I need better quality for some reason I can always easily get the files again from Bandcamp. If I get them from somewhere else, I usually get FLAC instead (it might be harder to find the album/website again later, or it might just not be there anymore).

Psychill on a Budget: Summary

I've written so much and I still have a lot to say and a lot of music to share left, and I'm still continuing to explore! I hope to have you convinced to start your own collection. But I'm wondering what do you think of this as a series? Do you recommend any other artists or labels to check out? Would you like me to focus more on certain genres in the future, or rather diversify my findings? Or maybe you'd prefer to dive deeper on the technical aspects?