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…
anything to sustain the hateful joe roegan podcasts on the platform.
Friendly reminder that your “legally acquired” library of FLAC files never raises its subscription prices!
ive been using apple music for years, mainly like how for edm it tends to have highquality recorded live sets for all djs, and they are seperated instead of being one long continuous track, like youll get
- song
- song2/song3
- song4
- song5
- song6/song7/song8 Most convenient way to listen to them and get all the track names.
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?
And?
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 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.
On desktop install Spicetify in your Spotify client. It does many things, including block ads.
Can’t I just go with piracy
This is more convenient than piracy.
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.
Wow, thank you!
If you are going to steal music you may as well just steal music
Blocking ads isn’t stealing
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.
They have prices? People are paying? 🤔🏴☠️🦜
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.
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.
Let’s say it together: Enshittification
It’s been long underway for Spotify; raising prices is just the lastest step.
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!
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.
Nicotine+/soulseek. won’t copy your spotify lists but you can manually download everything. will take time obviously as you’ll have to search for everything.
You can use slsk-batchdl alongside a CSV of your Spotify Playlists to make quicker work of this.
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!
For Linux you can use ZSpotify. It runs in the command line, just use a burner account to run as in zspotify because it’s against their TOS of course, and might get you kickbanned. It also requires premium, but you only need it for a day at most, in order to run the download. Then you can cancel.
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.
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.
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.
Qobuz catalog is extremely lacking IME.
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!
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?
Tha is 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.
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.
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).
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.
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!
