Spotify to raise prices in September
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Just saying; cancelling Spotify and changing to Qobuz takes five minutes. Sound quality is amazingly better, the curated recommendations are done by human beings that love music, and 'just works' with everything that Spotify does. (For us, anyway.) It's French, rather than Norwegian-American like Tidal is, if you're trying to stop spending money on everything US at the moment, too.
wrote last edited by [email protected]For those using spofity connect: tidal has "tidal connect" as well, which is identical and exactly as supported.
Qobuz unfortunately lacks this feature, to my knowledge.Correction: Qobuz has released "Qobuz connect"! I don't know how widely supported it is vs. Tidal connect, though; iFi and Cambridge audio most notably seem to be missing, according to this list.I personally also prefer the tidal algo to Spotify and qobuz, but that is a matter of preference.
It's quite easy to download Tidal content on any device w/o the app as well—for educational purposes, of course.
For some, Tidal may be a better alternative. I've been quite happy with it. Others may prefer Qobuz.
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A big part of it that finally made me pay for spotify is it helping me to find new music. Its not perfect, but when the app actually works correctly it will queue up music similar to the song or playlist you searched and it can help you find new bands or other songs by the artists you like. When i was just listening to my downloaded music I'd get stuck in a rut of the same few albums or artists.
I really like Bandcamps suggestions and weekly newsletter for music suggestions, might be worth checking out. I always felt like Spotify was pushing me towards the mainstream, whereas Bandcamp almost does the opposite. Ultimately, I greatly prefer it.
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Wow, that trade went by very quietly. Glad they're out from Epic at least i guess... scummy as hell behavior from Songtradr...
Yeah, was like just over a year later, they still are the independent & small label place imo, I don't have faith that'll last forever unfortunately. They still are my go to place for discovery and exploration, bandcamp daily still has some interesting finds, I just make sure I download my purchases.
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I have got to admit I canned Spotify subs years ago - but how are they managing to grow their subscriber base whn it is now going to be £11.99 in the UK? That is way, way too high for what it offers...
No biggie. I never had subscriptions. I always thought it was a waste of money.
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There are probably many individual reasons people have for hating Spotify, but here are some of them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pHbS6bgmqE
wrote last edited by [email protected]Also, from Ben Jordan: https://youtu.be/MXudOLStaXA
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There are a lot of reasons for this but mostly because music streaming has been so popular that it wiped out the market for music. Its also a huge pain in the ass to sort and organize music when nobody follows a standard when they rip music so it makes automating things a lot harder as well.
I have several thousand songs I've downloaded over the last 25 years but even with modern tools like MusicBrainz Picard or Lidarr, there's no good way to organize your collection. You wind up with a bunch of singles or oddball songs from a compilation album, from a sampler, or you download an album and half of the songs come from the US version while the other half is from a UK version of the album and the uploader forgot to include a bonus track that comes on that version. Its just a huge mess that you dont see with movies and TV because apart from things like a "Director's Cut" or "Extended Version," you know what you're getting when you download them.
Additionally, playback isnt easy either. Are you going to manually transfer hundreds of files to your phone? Stream from your home media server to your phone and use a bunch of bandwidth? You're getting tired of 30% of your songs so are you going to go through your collection one by one and erase them?
There's a huge convenience factor for services like Spotify. With movies and TV the convenience factor definitely favors the self-hosted side of things.
Since I already had a jellyfish server for TV/Films, I've been testing it for music recently. And the Finamp app is pretty great. I can create playlists and download them for offline listening.
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When I got tired of Spotify's shitty practices, I looked into other streaming services that could compare, and honestly I didn't like any other offerings. So I said fuck it, I'll just download everything and play it locally.
What made the jump easy was a service called Spotidown, I even paid for the ad free version it was so convenient. You literally copy the spotify link for songs and playlists and it let's you download it. There's a couple different services like this, that will make the switch easier.
I mean, you could just pay the artists for their music.
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I have got to admit I canned Spotify subs years ago - but how are they managing to grow their subscriber base whn it is now going to be £11.99 in the UK? That is way, way too high for what it offers...
One of the main thing Spotify has going for it is indie artists, without a label. And so a large portion of my collection will not be on services like Tidal or Apple Music
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When I got tired of Spotify's shitty practices, I looked into other streaming services that could compare, and honestly I didn't like any other offerings. So I said fuck it, I'll just download everything and play it locally.
What made the jump easy was a service called Spotidown, I even paid for the ad free version it was so convenient. You literally copy the spotify link for songs and playlists and it let's you download it. There's a couple different services like this, that will make the switch easier.
Does SpotiDown have a linux version? If not, do you know an alternative?
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I have got to admit I canned Spotify subs years ago - but how are they managing to grow their subscriber base whn it is now going to be £11.99 in the UK? That is way, way too high for what it offers...
Is there any reasonable option that I can use on a Garmin watch standalone? I like to run without my phone and listen to a podcast and Spotify has been my go to.
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Out of curiosity, what is your experience/usage like with this? Spotify is very easy to justify if you heavily use some of their features because there's not a way (that I know of) to replicate them. For example:
- Shared playlists
- Universal links directly to songs
- Playback control from a second device
- Group listen/jam
- Zero overhead for search and discovery. From someone mentioning a band you can find, sample, and add to a playlist in 30s or less
- Public playlist discovery
- Easy crawling. Eg. browsing from Song -> Featured Artist -> Album -> Record label -> Related Artists etc...
From my usage, sacrificing a majority of those is a non-starter because my Spotify usage has become more than mp3 hosting and organization.
I scrobble with Last.FM for music discovery.
I don't really use social features and not sure if they're popular in homelab land. Some people I know share a Plex server.
I'm not a purist about these things tbh, I have an Xbox live subscription, among others, to use social features for pretty much the same reason you're using Spotify. I might have stuck with them if I was using them more.
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My main beef with spotify is their attempt to privatize and monopolize podcasting.
Spotify offers audio hosting and a large userbase, but does not provide rss. A few people I like are trapped in this, and I have no way to listen to their shows apart from using spotify. They refuse to understand that this is an issue, just like youtubers are ok with lock-in.
Podcasting infrastructure is not monopolized yet, like video is. It is even bigger problem for me than underpayid artists.
So boycotting, and if you undersrand that, you should too.
The podcasters that you are referring to being "trapped in this" chose to be "trapped". So don't just be upset with Spotify over it.
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You guys are paying for Spotify?
Their strategy has been for years to make the phone app very constrained if you're not paying, so to have any decent experience that was kinda required.
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Just saying; cancelling Spotify and changing to Qobuz takes five minutes. Sound quality is amazingly better, the curated recommendations are done by human beings that love music, and 'just works' with everything that Spotify does. (For us, anyway.) It's French, rather than Norwegian-American like Tidal is, if you're trying to stop spending money on everything US at the moment, too.
I’m glad to hear this! I’ve just cancelled our Spotify this past week and my partner is looking for a new service (I only listen to the same albums on repeat so I’m going to survive).
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Is there any reasonable option that I can use on a Garmin watch standalone? I like to run without my phone and listen to a podcast and Spotify has been my go to.
Can your watch play mp3s? Most podcasts are available for download that way too.
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I mean, you could just pay the artists for their music.
I do! I go to concerts and buy merch from the artists I listen to, which gives them exponentially more money than the fractions of a penny Spotify gives them. I've paid for Spotify long enough to justify downloading the music I had saved, any future music I want I'll just purchase from Bandcamp or something similar.
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Does SpotiDown have a linux version? If not, do you know an alternative?
Not that im aware of, sorry. There is a Windows based spotidown software, but no Linux. Spotidown is a web based service normally, so you could definitely use it in Linux. I actually downloaded all my music from it using my phone!
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The podcasters that you are referring to being "trapped in this" chose to be "trapped". So don't just be upset with Spotify over it.
I choose to blame platforms for vile intents rather than users for ignorance. I don't see awareness of politics of technology as obligatory for all authors (even less for users), but creators of those platforms know damn well what they are doing.
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I have got to admit I canned Spotify subs years ago - but how are they managing to grow their subscriber base whn it is now going to be £11.99 in the UK? That is way, way too high for what it offers...
I'm going to need a free (ads ok) option that I can try a little bit before I switch the whole family plan over. I tried downloading tidal and another one a little while back, and they didn't last for long. One I couldn't test without a subscription. I don't remember the problem with another. I'm strictly in the convenience camp with this one folks. I just want to press play, I don't have time to think about music otherwise.
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For those using spofity connect: tidal has "tidal connect" as well, which is identical and exactly as supported.
Qobuz unfortunately lacks this feature, to my knowledge.Correction: Qobuz has released "Qobuz connect"! I don't know how widely supported it is vs. Tidal connect, though; iFi and Cambridge audio most notably seem to be missing, according to this list.I personally also prefer the tidal algo to Spotify and qobuz, but that is a matter of preference.
It's quite easy to download Tidal content on any device w/o the app as well—for educational purposes, of course.
For some, Tidal may be a better alternative. I've been quite happy with it. Others may prefer Qobuz.
Qobuz released Qobuz connect back in May
