Spotify fans threaten to return to piracy as music streamer introduces new face-scanning age checks in the UK
-
What issues are you having with the mobile app?
They're not issues so much as nit-picks.
On the now playing screen, I try to swipe the album image to skip (like Spotify) but it doesn't. Yes, the skip button is right there, but when driving it's needlessly distracting to have to find the small button.
There's no obvious way to see your play history when it's on auto play or radio.
You can start a station from a single song, and you can add song variety to a single-song station, and you can let a playlist end and it will autoplay songs, but you can't create a station from a playlist directly. These seem like the same function but are treated differently.
You can 'collect' or '
' a song from radio/autoplay, and it's implied that it influences the station to do the latter, but all the songs go to their own playlist and sometimes a 'songs you liked from this station' playlist separate from the station and sometimes in the station page. It can unintuitive.There's no API so there's no way for TuneMyMusic to import my playlists from Spotify.
Adding a song to a playlist often fails the first time, I can mash it but it doesn't go, but if I back out and add it again it works.
Some of these can be chalked up to user error, I haven't gotten used to the paradigm change, but the app still feels rigid and "less polished". Like I said, nitpicks.
-
They're not issues so much as nit-picks.
On the now playing screen, I try to swipe the album image to skip (like Spotify) but it doesn't. Yes, the skip button is right there, but when driving it's needlessly distracting to have to find the small button.
There's no obvious way to see your play history when it's on auto play or radio.
You can start a station from a single song, and you can add song variety to a single-song station, and you can let a playlist end and it will autoplay songs, but you can't create a station from a playlist directly. These seem like the same function but are treated differently.
You can 'collect' or '
' a song from radio/autoplay, and it's implied that it influences the station to do the latter, but all the songs go to their own playlist and sometimes a 'songs you liked from this station' playlist separate from the station and sometimes in the station page. It can unintuitive.There's no API so there's no way for TuneMyMusic to import my playlists from Spotify.
Adding a song to a playlist often fails the first time, I can mash it but it doesn't go, but if I back out and add it again it works.
Some of these can be chalked up to user error, I haven't gotten used to the paradigm change, but the app still feels rigid and "less polished". Like I said, nitpicks.
You can import your liked songs fyi but yeah I didn't see anything about playlists or liked artists
-
This post did not contain any content.wrote last edited by [email protected]
You're way better off with your own music collection. That is what I have. I use Tauon music box it handles large playlists well.
-
My concerns with space mostly deals with my cell phone but you make a lot of great point of being able to convert Flac for any use case. Thank you for your input.
TBF, I was answering your question in its original context (is it worth it for audiophiles). Maybe it's just my age, but I was assuming that the majority of audiophiles still keep the bulk of their music collection stored on a desktop PC. But IDK, I'm in my late 30s and out of touch.
Anyway I'm happy to help.
-
Back to Piracy!
️Really though? It isn't necessary. Use Bandcamp, you probably have half your artists covered. The rest - one of those Spotify alternatives: Tidal? Qobuz?
Personally I do selfhost btw. Jellyfin, though I heard of a better alternative specifically for music recently - and forgot the name again
Something lowercase, like a verb... "normalize" or some such.Navidrome! Thanks @[email protected]more like 3% bandcamp availability. i know this is a linux/trans/selfhost/overpayeddev/westeu/foss echochamber, but im not wasting electricity and money on selfhost if a 1tb sd card in my phone can do the same thing offline.
-
Life is the highway you boof
"Life is a one way street, I'm doing doughnuts."
(Aw Man Oh Dear) -
Do you prefer to give your personal id to any site in the world instead of using the same app which you pay your taxes with?
I'd prefer my internet free...
-
I would suggest Qobuz (if available) or Tidal. Deezer's CEO is a hard-core religious nutjob who finances anti-trans orgs and sexual conversion "therapies".
Ah dang.
Thanks for the heads up, I thought I found something nice... -
This post did not contain any content.
There are fans of Spotify?
-
This post did not contain any content.wrote last edited by [email protected]
Just a friendly reminder that the OSA was never about safeguarding kids from seeing porn.
Are the government seriously worried about a child being exposed to Break Stuff or So What on Spotify?
-
is basically a state’s rights argument
No, it's a privacy and individual rights argument. I don't want local governments enforcing it any more than I want national arguments enforcing it.
Kids seeing stuff they shouldn't isn't itself a problem, but it can lead to problems. For example, kids learning to make bombs itself isn't an issue, kids making bombs to hurt others is the issue. Hold parents legally accountable for the latter, not the former.
The furthest I'd be willing to go on this is requiring a payment method (which itself requires sufficient age) to be entered before accessing anything "adult oriented," and even then I'm not completely sold. But this way the burden of verifying age is restricted to things consumers already need to trust, and parents would need to give or allow their kid access to a payment method.
I think you misunderstand. I'm not saying I'm in favor of this law.
By state's rights, I'm referring to the way republicans pretend they want the freedom of choice where they are actually just looking for excuses to keep doing what they're doing. In this way, letting parents choose is functionally identical: parents won't choose, so it is equivalent to doing nothing.
There has to be a cultural shift for anything to change.
Kids seeing stuff they shouldn't isn't itself a problem,
If I'm being perfectly honest, I do not give a shit if 9-year-olds can see titties. Like, my other argument against this government overreach is that I don't know what problem it's supposedly solving that can't just be solved with better sex-ed.
-
There are fans of Spotify?
I'm just as mystified as you.
The only time I interact with the service is when I'm sent a link to a cool band/song and I wind up on the site. "Oh, this again." I really have zero concept of fandom for something like this.
-
Thanks for recommending Navidrome. It looks really interesting.
I was using Spotify, but switched to Spotube. After Spotube was crippled, I was kind of aimless. I really liked having my music available on my cellphone and desktop. It looks like Navidrome will fill the gap perfectly.
You'd mentioned ripping CDs. Would you have some software, you'd recommend (Windows or Linux)? Preferably in FLAC.
I haven't looked at ripping software in a few years, but it was kind of tedious to set up and very manual to get the proper metadata, genres, and cover art. I've got a hundred CDs and that'll take awhile....
I want to leave Windows behind... abcde seems the way to go for Linux.
On Windows I use EAC, it's great but requires a little work to set up. There are a lot of tutorials for it if course.
-
I'm returning to car boot sales to buy cubic meters of CDs.
That, and BandCamp.All my CD's got ripped (and re-ripped) to mp3 in increasing bitrates as storage increased. Bandcamp is where almost all my musicians release anyway, and I've got over a thousand albums through them, happy in the knowledge I support the artists in a fairly direct way.
Sure, I've still got an Apple Music sub (which sucks at times because licensing means a compilation gets split into several albums when whatever deal happens in the background expires). But I'll easily find new music, grab it and give it a go, and if I like it enough I'll dig them out on bandcamp. At some point I'm gonna quit that platform.
Planning to get a modern mp3 player to go offline with my music at some point. Or maybe rebuild the old iPod and put Rockbox on it and hook it up to my linux desktop.
-
Here's a reliable, free VPN: https://riseup.net/en/vpn
Remember to donate to them tough - and btw. they are actually running their services for radical left activists, not filesharing... so I guess it would be cool to please not strain their servers too much.
-
This post did not contain any content.
It's a load of bullshit, for a start the ISP has my details and should be able to attest my connection is rented by someone of legal age and it should be up to me what I let my children (assuming I have any) see and not see on that connection. I already had to click the "yes just give me the porn damn it" agreement on my mobile phone which was less likely to be randomly shared unmonitored and now this overbearing crap. I'll just avoid sites and services that require this.
-
A VPN is a must if you wanna go down this route
Soulseek (and I recommend the Nicotine+ client over the official one) is a fantastic source for all music in all formats, and particularly obscure off-label shit you won't get anywhere else. You'll even have some success finding audiobooks there, although this is very hit-and-miss. I wish audiobook pirates would use it more heavily. It's P2P, like Napster used to be. You'll have to share something or you'll get auto-ignored by most users.
RuTracker is a great non-private/non-ratio-monitoring torrent site for music (does require a free account though). I've never had a single torrent from there that wasn't seemingly seeded by a Godzilla's dick. Obviously it's in Russian, but there's really no difficulty navigating around. The only thing you might struggle with is signing up for an account, but just have your favourite translation tool open in another tab
If you don't mind slow download speeds (from the likes of RapidGator), I enjoy Exystence. It's a blog that shares link to the latest albums and offers both lossy and lossless versions. Nice RSS subscription to have.
If you do find yourself using RapidGator a lot, don't waste money buying a sub directly from them, it's insanely pricey. Instead, get a reseller like Real Debrid, which costs like 10% as much and also covers you for about two-dozen other file hosters. I highly recommend putting as much distance between your credit card and the company as possible, just for safety reasons. Using PaySafeCard is fine, as Real Debrid will never see your details in that case. I don't have any specific reason to be weary of them, I just don't trust random/small/hitherto unheard of companies as a rule.
All good advice. I used to find a lot of stuff by entering "site:rutracker.org" behind my query in my favorite search engine - don't know if that still works but I never needed an account there...
-
what's even the point of age gating "explicit" music?
"oh no! "Speak To Me" by Pink Floyd has the fuck word in it! can't let my kids hear it!"
My parents only let me listen to Spanish language music when I was little, so I wouldn't understand the cursing.
-
I mean, fuck Spotify and all that, but this one is really the UK government's doing.
And soon, this shit will come to every country. They're all drafting laws to mandate real age verification for adult content. The UK is just the first to implement it.
I mean, fuck it. At this point we might as well put our passport numbers in the HTTP headers.
Coming to a pop up near you. If they even bother to ask any more.
-
I'd say it's definitely worth it.
Our brains shouldn't have to work harder to listen to lossy music, which is what happens even if you can't reliably perceive it.
Listening to music on acid (a lot) has really shaped my views of it and how even the most minor things can have a major impact on the final experience.
I'm not an audiophile though and can enjoy music in a wide range of formats and quality; I just prefer FLAC almost anywhere.*
*some songs sound 'better,' or at least more iconic in a lower quality
I'm curious. How does acid change listening to music?
