Spotify to raise prices in September
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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...
People pay corporations for music? Morons.
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I've settled for Qobuz. Its discovery features are terrible, but it's basically a music storefront with a streaming library. High-quality, had basically my whole library and I can buy albums directly for download.
Oh I didn't know you could buy music from Qobuz, is it a better system than bandcamp? I've never used either so Im at the perfect time to find a good one.
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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...
They have prices? People are paying?
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Does SpotiDown have a linux version? If not, do you know an alternative?
I wrote a little python script to download all my YouTube music songs for my navidrome setup. I'm sure you could do something similar for spotify if you know python.
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I have Apple Music because I am a student so, I pay way less than most but it downloads all my songs and playlists and can use it without data. But I also have the iHeartradio app which has my fave radio station plus so many podcasts.
But there is Apple Music, Tidal, iHeartradio, Soundcloud, Amazon Music, SiriusFM, qobuz, there are many.
Awesome thanks
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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.
Podcasting infrastructure is not monopolized yet, like video is. It is even bigger problem for me than underpayid artists.
It helps a lot that audio hosting is so much cheaper than video hosting
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There is a ReVanced version of Spotify, for people who didn't already know. Block ads and get premium features for free: https://revanced.app/
(There's also YT Music ReVanced)
If you are going to steal music you may as well just steal music
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There is a ReVanced version of Spotify, for people who didn't already know. Block ads and get premium features for free: https://revanced.app/
(There's also YT Music ReVanced)
I used that for the longest time, but lately it stops working several days after I update it. I'm glad though, as now I have Navidrome set up.
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Oh I didn't know you could buy music from Qobuz, is it a better system than bandcamp? I've never used either so Im at the perfect time to find a good one.
Both are great, and I think complement eachother nicely. Qobuz mostly focuses on label offered music catalogues, while Bandcamp has always catered to indies. If an artist offers their music through Bandcamp, I still prefer to make my purchases there, but if the artist is signed to a label then it's a good shot Qobuz has it.
Either service offers the music in the highest quality provided, though lossless versions through Qobuz do tend to be priced a few dollars higher than the regular album.
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If you are going to steal music you may as well just steal music
Blocking ads isn't stealing
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IMO it makes more sense to rip and download music than movies. Music is small files that you listen to dozens or hundreds of times, whereas movies are large files that you might only watch once or twice.
labeling and tagging each track, and sorting them into a properly named folder structure
You need to do the same thing for movies and TV shows though.
Lidarr will do this for you, mostly automated.
To rip CDs, I use abcde ("a better CD encoder") on Linux. It automatically tags the tracks based on CDDB or Musicbrainz data.
There's probably a basic app that'll move it to the right directory structure, but I find Lidarr pretty easy to use. I copy the album across to my server, then in Lidarr I add the relevant album then click the button to manually import it, and point it to the right folder. Lidarr will automatically sort it into the right directory structure. I have it configured to use the structure that Plex wants - folders per artist, then folders per album inside those.
That's assuming it has data on Musicbrainz. For MP3/FLAC files from albums that aren't on Musicbrainz, it's a bit trickier. I sometimes use kid3 (KDE audio tagger) as it can pull from other sources like Discogs and Amazon.
I think you do have a point about the replayability of music versus movies but at the same time I share my server with about two dozen friends and family so its good to have some variety in there along with having a good selection for when you get that random thought about a movie and want to watch it rather than spending 20 minutes finding and adding it to your server
Radarr and sonarr also handle the naming and organization but this all relies upon the files being properly named which can be a chore with music as you regularly see remixes, sample albums, compilation albums, singles, covers, extended play, radio play, censored, uncensored, etc not to mention the quantities of songs out there by artists of varying popularity, which is the root problem with music databases not always finding a match, matching incorrectly, or your downloaded album having songs from multiple different sources that the uploader lumped together. You very occasionally run into this with movies too but its typically because TMDB or whatever source not matching the studio on the release year when a release is delayed.
This probably isn’t much of an issue for you if you're ripping your own music but that's becoming more and more rare these days with the transisition away from physical media. I actually bought a blu-ray RW drive for my PC with the intention of ripping DVDs and Blu-rays but gave up because of the work involved (encoding in HandBrake) if you wanted anything but Remux quality.
I honestly wish the days of Napster came back, but I have had good luck with SoulSeek and have read that its possible to integrate with Lidarr but haven't tried yet. Im sure things will get better in time as these streaming services try to squeeze their customers more and more.
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Both are great, and I think complement eachother nicely. Qobuz mostly focuses on label offered music catalogues, while Bandcamp has always catered to indies. If an artist offers their music through Bandcamp, I still prefer to make my purchases there, but if the artist is signed to a label then it's a good shot Qobuz has it.
Either service offers the music in the highest quality provided, though lossless versions through Qobuz do tend to be priced a few dollars higher than the regular album.
Looks like I'll be using both then lol, thanks for the input!
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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.
Qobuz catalog is extremely lacking IME.
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There is a ReVanced version of Spotify, for people who didn't already know. Block ads and get premium features for free: https://revanced.app/
(There's also YT Music ReVanced)
On desktop install Spicetify in your Spotify client. It does many things, including block ads.
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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...
spotify pays me half a cent per stream, the profit margins for them must be fucking insane. and the music sounds like shit. I'd much rather people pirate it than support these leeches
if you want to support artists you like, buy the music, ideally on bandcamp. if you do have to steam it, Deezer at the very least won't vandalize the audio
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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...
Friendly reminder that your “legally acquired” library of FLAC files never raises its subscription prices!
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Ugh, yeah I haven't considered that. We do have prime, but we're really close to getting rid of it. We don't watch Prime Video because it feels ridiculous to navigate and everything seems like an addon they want you to pay more for. I'd assume music is similar.
No addons that I know of, but they do an annoying thing where they change which specific version/release/album of a song is available, so your playlists end up missing songs even though the song itself is still available and you have to correct the playlist.
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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]As much I despise Spotify, I'm trying out Qobuz and it's just not really it.
No folder organisation for playlists or albums.
No Linux application.
No lyrics.
No support for smart speakers.
No information linking to artist tours and merch.
No dedicated classical music app.
Generally lacking when it comes to non western artists.
Prides itself on providing high quality music, yet still only has lower quality masters for some artists compared to Apple Music, Tidal, and even Spotify.
I want to love it, like the way it loves and respects the music industry, with it's special magazine etc, but it's just not it.
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now I don't want to be that person but I'd like to give artists some money somehow. Like I dislike AI as it rips people off - there is a (difficult) middle line to tread
I buy merch or direct where I can. I generally pirate older stuff or stuff I would not pay for or cannot find anywhere. I got a rip of dogma and I wll buy the4k to encourage a sequel.
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spotify pays me half a cent per stream, the profit margins for them must be fucking insane. and the music sounds like shit. I'd much rather people pirate it than support these leeches
if you want to support artists you like, buy the music, ideally on bandcamp. if you do have to steam it, Deezer at the very least won't vandalize the audio
What do you think about Qobuz as a musician?
