Spotify to raise prices in September
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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
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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.
Amazon’s Prime Music? Most people have prime anyway, I think that comes with the ad version. Less than Spotify to switch to add free.
If you still have access to any .edu email addresses, you can get student rates for Apple Music, and probably others.
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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.
If you're on Android you won't need a family plan, just get ReVanced and patch YT Music so it's ad-free and plays in the background.
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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...
Fediverse has quite alot of indie musicians. Check out LABR http://labr.online/ or the indie beat https://theindiebeat.fm/ and try some new music and support creatives directly.
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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...
What pisses me off is that I can't have a family plaln associated with my main Google Workspace account. Because it's a Workspace account. So if I want to have a family plan for YouTube Music I need to have it associated with a gmail account not my workspace account. That's such bullshit, if you ask me!
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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...
You mean replacing a bunch of people with AI didn’t work?
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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...
wrote last edited by [email protected]Third one in a little over two years. They say it's to keep up with inflation as if they're a retail store operating on razor thin margins and people accept that. Meanwhile, they're donating to fascist political parties and shafting artists by leveraging loopholes to pay out fewer royalties.
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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.
wrote last edited by [email protected]That's definitely a nice feature for sure but getting Jellyfin to even recognize the album/songs means they all need to be properly labeled and filed correctly and that some database somewhere needs to have that album's metadata available which can be real hit or miss. SoulSeek seems to be decent for labeling and allows you to choose who you're downloading from but its still a clunky mess at the end of the day.
I'm all for self hosting as much as possible but for me personally its just much more convenient to use a streaming service for music, and these days I find myself listening to podcasts the most which aren't going to be available on the high seas (nor would I bother if they were because I'm not going to listen to them again).
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You mean replacing a bunch of people with AI didn’t work?
Never will. All the tech bros can stomp and wine. But it will never replace real people with real skills. It’s fucking stupid that these business majors can dictate stupid decisions.
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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 is still a thing?! Who knew… so many better options out there… hoping they crumble between artists leaving and no one wanting to deal with the drama and prices… they are about to be the “new vine” of pitfall and demise! Bye bye bye! Let the company burn!!
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Spotify is still a thing?! Who knew… so many better options out there… hoping they crumble between artists leaving and no one wanting to deal with the drama and prices… they are about to be the “new vine” of pitfall and demise! Bye bye bye! Let the company burn!!
What better options are there? I'm old so don't know
