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 guys are paying for Spotify?
I guess some people are, as long as it’s a good balance of convenience and price. Ages ago, Napster, Kazaa and DC++ were considered more convenient than buying music. I guess torrents are used for that these days.
There’s a P2P app from the same era as KaZaA, originally released the same year (2001), that’s still in active use today: Soulseek. It’s a great way to find obscure music, some of which isn’t on streaming services and is extremely difficult to obtain otherwise.
Usenet is good for less popular stuff too. Torrents die once the last seed is gone, but some Usenet providers have over 10 years retention, and you always get full speeds over an encrypted connection with no uploading required.
Edit: Support artists where possible, but sometimes there’s music that’s impossible to find, and that’s when these services come in handy.
Do I need an invite for usenet?
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
The problem is there’s some 90s albums I can’t find anywhere - not on Discogs, not on eBay, not on Marketplace. The record labels are usually long gone. But they’re on Soulseek. I’m not sure what else to do to get them.
There’s also things like DJ sets/mixes that were never sold, only ever distributed online for free.
And that Judas priest CD in the cellar somewhere, sometimes you have paid the artist already so soulseek comes in handy.
Of course… I mean you don’t want them coming around your place to see you do you (Judas Priest that is)
Of course… not quite my point but yours is valid. I’d just like a more ethical alternative which I know is asking far too much in 2025
Bandcamp?
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.
I work a desk job. I cant put pirated music on my work computer or ill get fired. Only real option is a pay service.
I don’t like to bring my personal stuff on my work computer, but I can use my phone for all that stuff instead. You could use a BT speaker to blast pirate metal in the office.
I thought about using my phone but I dont have unlimited data on my phone. I also dont have unlimited data at home so id run my phone and internet down faster. Phone is the real issue as its not much cell data at all per month.
An offline solution exists too, but then you would need to sync a few gigabytes of mp3 files on your phone. Not quite as convenient, but at least it wouldn’t use any mobile data. Actually, it’s still a whole lot nicer than dragging a CD player and a few discs with you. If you’re into retro, you totally can get CDs too…
Firefox & ublock and there are no publicities.
My 'ol android apk doesn’t work any more thoug… and can’t find a new one (Hint hint, blink blink)
I’ve been using a cracked yt music since the Spotify crackdown. I miss my playlists often :^(
must be hard paying 5 bucks for an exporter :^(
Can’t be fucked looking into how to grab my playlists. I’m sure I will eventually
Same with pi-hole.
We have the duo plan, for me and my wife. Kids don’t need one yet.
I don’t no. But as they keep removing features from the free account, and here in the UK you at least need an account now to play anything people do
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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What bubble?
the modded app chad bubble
Wrong assumption 👋
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I never said it wasn’t a successful service. I’m only genuinely surprised that so many people pay for what I personally consider marginal improvements. Also thanks for being the usual internet jerk ready to snap at any comment he doesn’t like: now I have an idea of who may pay for that subscription.
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Damn, you got me! Now I have to rethink my whole plan to undermine Spotify’s revenues one comment a time!
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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.
They don’t have any other recommendations apart from those human made ones though? Couldn’t find what I wanted.
The UI is awful and their artist pages are normally blank for indy artists.
The migration is pretty seamless though, and they apparently pay their artists way better.
They have the human made ones, they have the “artist radio” function that plays songs similar to a band you like, they have a weekly top 30 based on stuff you’ve been listening to. The headline ‘albums of the week’ are based on what they like, which I don’t think is unfair - I’ve really enjoyed some of them.
I listen to a lot of metal and electronic, and I’ve always found the descriptions excellent - usually several paragraphs even for the most obscure of bands. Was well impressed that they had Lambrini Girls as one of their ‘albums of the week’, and their album at studio quality. Not that that’s essential for punk. Admittedly I don’t listen to a lot of indy, but they’ve always had what I’ve wanted to listen to.
My main complaint about the UX is that it’s nearly identical to Spotify, but I suppose there’s not much else you can do. Something particular about it that you dislike?
Thanks for the long reply.
Did not know the radio function existed. On mobile at least I can’t find it on the artists page? I have to go into the … Menu on a track in a playlist?
I listen to a lot of instrumental stuff while working, so I may be going too indy? Someone like soundcriters should should have something on their page?
https://open.qobuz.com/artist/5003476
I dislike that you have to go to a playlists page to play it in shuffle, you can’t do it from the playlists menu.
Double clicking should play a track but doesn’t.
At my PC now, where the radio option doesn’t seem to exist at all!?!
“Go to Radio” on the app. Hmm…
Yeh, found it in the android app (on tracks, not artists). Not there on desktop though.
I can play the radio on the app to my desktop though… Guess that works. Not exactly great UX though.
Thanks for pointing out that it exists though!
Strange, it has the ‘autoplay more like this’ option on the web player (which does basically the same) but not the explicit ‘artist radio’ option. Huh.
Ah, I turned off auto play because it would randomly start playing other music instead of continuing my massive playlist…
I also just switched to Qobuz. I like to listen to albums and playlists. The UI is more minimal than Spotify which I enjoy. I like the fact it’s not constantly trying to push new things like podcasts, concerts etc. on me. I just want to listen to music and pay the artists for it!
I’m on Tidal right now and currently considering the switch to Qobuz. There’s no official (or unofficial) Linux client which is kind of a bummer. Tidal at least has a half-decent unofficial one…
Yeah, I could just use the web player or strawberry but I just prefer having a dedicated app.
Yeah, the web client works just fine on Linux. A good native client would be better, of course, but I’d rather use the web one than a half-assed native one.
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.
Do they have an API? I use a lot of third party recommendation services, to avoid Spotifys and would love to make sure I can create playlists into it
Im 90% sure they have an API, I’ve seen github projects that mention using it
might be possible to just build a TUI for it then. I’ll look into it.
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
Thank you for the correction! I have updated the comment.
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).
Qobuz catalog is extremely lacking IME.
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.
Man, music is one of those things where file sizes, quality and performance all conspire to make both offline media and self-hosting so viable. I never understood Spotify’s role.
I mean, you can like physical media and understand why Netflix was more convenient than digging through enormous TV DVD boxsets. But who the hell didn’t have a MP3 dump of hudreds of CDs by the time Spotify started being a thing?
I wouldn’t have subbed to Spotify on my own. I’m inherited into my wife’s family plan. For me the biggest benefit is just discovering new music. I used to have a big MP3 library, but after a couple computer upgrades, they’ve kind of disappeared over the years. Having Spotify there has been really convenient for just listening toto old stuff I’ve lost as well. This said, if my FiL cancels, I probably wouldn’t sub for myself anyway.
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Yea it is a bit of a pain, but also I haven’t found a reliable setup like rrsuite for music.
Ideally it should allow for noticing a song on Spotify and transfer direct to the server
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.
I was like 9 when Spotify was incorporated
Your parents failed you by not having an MP3 dump of hundreds of CDs to give to you.
Dummy
Like a million songs come out every week. Can’t keep up when it’s mostly digital now, no cd to get. But you can rip Spotify!
You could just be young. By the time I was old enough to start pirating Spotify had already existed for years and it’s just significantly easier than getting into a tracker. My wife has yearly playlists she’s been making since she was a teen and doesn’t want to loose those.
“Youngins” dont understand that when Spotify came on the scene people had already stopped playing music on CDs and MP3s largely. It was when the ipod and iphones already existed and people were getting ripped off by apple for $1.29 per song that they wanted to listen to.
I vividly remember at the time trying to tell people to try Spotify instead of paying for literally every song they wanted to listen to, and people were skeeved by it because it sounded too good to be true
God this made me remember my parents getting me an iPod touch and a 50$ gift card. I listened to an owl city album for days on repeat lmao.
I actually know plenty who still hold onto them…
Friendly reminder that your “legally acquired” library of FLAC files never raises its subscription prices!
I will never part from locally stored music. I do, however, would love to have my collection run through a recommendation algorithm for discovering new music.
Yep. Hooray for self hosting!
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.
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.
Meh, their attempts at privatizing podcasting is why I’m mad at spotify, but same token there’s been a few podcasters that definitely go to the spotify platform for reasons, some in the monopolized format…
Since I don’t have a spotify, I don’t listen to those. I agree with above don’t just be upset with spotify, I blame the platform yes, but I also blame the people who got in bed with them.
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
Just leaving this here from the excellent !PurchaseWithPurpose@lemmy.world
Platform podcasters who spread misinformation
Lol just say Joe Rogan
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)
Can’t I just go with piracy
This is more convenient than piracy.
Having the files locally is more convenient though
How is having any song you want being one search away less convenient than having to curate and organize a music collection, and then go digging though folders to find the song you want?
Look, I’ve been collecting music since 1998 and even I admit that streaming is a lot more convenient. Only reason why I still collect music is because I am a DJ and don’t always have a reliable wifi or data connection at every gig. But even then I’ve culled the vast majority of 50k+ tunes down to about a 1000 of the best and most popular on the dance floor. Then swap songs in and out as needed. The modern era makes it easy to re-obtain a deleted track, and often in higher quality than I originally ripped it at (I use a spectrum analyzer on my collection to verify).
Often without internet access so having it local is pretty important.
On desktop install Spicetify in your Spotify client. It does many things, including block ads.
Wow, thank you!
I heard the ReVanced patching stopped working recently. Is that not the case anymore?
Not sure cause I use YT Music ReVanced instead for the larger music selection.
If you are going to steal music you may as well just steal music
Blocking ads isn’t stealing
spotify lost me as a customer as soon as I learned that they gifted 150k to Trump for his inaugaration party
There are ways you can use a Spotify account registered in another country and you basically pay about £2 a month. I’m mainly into 80s and 90s music and used Spotify to discover music, and once I come across a song I like I add the album name to a list (i.e. note it down) and find the CD from a second hand shop or failing which obtain the FLAC files some other way. This way I now have an offline library that has most of the songs that I love. Spotify will be there as long as I can just pay £2-ish but the moment they try the age verification or raise prices, its bye-bye for them.
They age verify in the UK already…
For most people though they won’t be hacking things to use Spotify. I agree £2 a month is OK but for me the issue is they charge a fortune yet pay artists a pittanceTrue. For me it hasn’t come up so far, possibly because my account is registered in a different country. It’s going to be a bit inconvenient but probably time to give them the finger and look elsewhere.
I ripped CDs to FLAC, put them on a Plex server, and use Plexamp on my computer and phone. Now I’ve got my own personal streaming service.
Not everyone will do that though… plenty of people I know have zero idea about that kind of stuff
Unfortunately true. It’s the uninformed (and who don’t care enough to get informed) that allow the violation of rights and privacy continue.
I have a 50TB library of movies and TV, Plex, the *arrs, a dedicated server, and even I dont bother with music because its a huge pain in the ass to deal with. I have a bunch of songs from before music streaming was popular and a few I’ve gotten from SoulSeek since then, but that’s about it. Ripping CDs, labeling and tagging each track, and sorting them into a properly named folder structure is just too much work especially when you get into thousands and thousands of songs. There are software solutions to this but they don’t work very well because music is much harder to deal with when you can have 50 versions of the same song floating around out there.
Somewhere out there is a person with a single folder named “music”, with zero sub folders, containing thousands upon thousands of tracks with names like “1.mp3” and “1 (1).mp3” and they’re totally okay with it.
Just thinking about it makes my skin crawl.
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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This is the way to go!
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?
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’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.
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!
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.
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.
Lazy doormat Spotify users: “Okay… but this is the LAST, LAST, LAST TIME FOR REAL. Do it again and there’ll be a hashtag and a series of Tiktok memes!”
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“I’m SO good at making money that I don’t care when people cheat me out of it for no other reason than because they feel like it. This is something I am proud of.”
I mean spotify is one of those things where it’s harder to move away and the cost benefit is harder to argue against. It’s not like the streaming bullshit that has happened where everything is fragmented and you’d need 200 substations to watch the movies you want.
The thing that sucks with Spotify is the money they gave fucking Joe Rogan
Look, I can’t expect your assessment of value proposition to align with mine - we are different people.
But if I were a paying Spotify customer, and they gave $250 million dollars to pay someone I think is actively damaging the world, and then started charging me MORE to pay for it, there is ABSOLUTELY no amount of cost benefit and convenience that would keep me there.
I will sit in a dark, silent room motivating on pure spite before I would accept such an indignity.
Like I said, fuck Joe Rogan, but every big Corp has been responsible for awful shit. At some point you have to live and you have to give in somewhere.
This is coming from someone that self hosts and even I can’t be bothered to self host every fucking random ass song in existence.
My value proposition is that my entire family doesn’t have to listen to ads and I don’t have to spend half my day tracking down songs.
Again, my larger point is that spotify for all its bullshit still isn’t streaming video levels of utter bullshit.
Well, you’re right. Everyone has to draw their own line. I’ll agree with you this is probably less egregious than some, and I personally do make make purchases I shouldn’t from institutions I shouldn’t to get by.
But I do every single one of those holding my nose and acknowledging I’m contributing to a problem.
Move those goal posts baby, anything to not look like a jackass online 🤣
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You are so cool. I am very impressed.
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I made a general comment, and my opinion has not changed. You didn’t have to make it personally about you, but you decided to come defend your honor against a nonspecific shitpost. Just like MY opinion is mine, yours is YOURS, and you didn’t need to jump in here.
Heck, I specifically addressed my initial comment to “lazy, doormat Spotify users” and for some reason you decided I was talking about you.
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I dumped it months ago and went back to Deezer.
