I've never even looked for an alternative, what started as mild intrigue a decade ago turned into my only window into music, as much as the interface can sometimes drive me mad (and their sometimes cavalier attitude to changing it) I just can't deny that the recommendation engines have introduced me to whole new worlds of music which I love and wouldn't even know exists otherwise
Thanks so much for this comment. I've been looking for funkwhale for a while now and didn't know it! After looking into this pretty well last night, i opted to just uploaded 11Gb of music to host on funk.gravitywell.xyz, grabbed the android app, and now I have access to my music as well as 75 other people's. fantastic!
Give it time and they won't. The desktop redesign they rolled out recently is such a big step in the wrong direction imo. I'm in there everyday and haven't really "gotten used to it" but sure hope I do.