I’ve never used the free tier on Spotify and I don’t understand how anyone can. The ads alone would make me throw off my headset in disgust. So yeah, not going to affect me, and I do enjoy reading the lyrics a lot.
That said, I am experimenting with swapping over to Apple Music because I feel Spotify has become too expensive.
I recently flipped to apple music and apart from seeing a few songs missing on albums i don’t really listen to anyway, it’s only been an improvement. the lossless audio is quite nice
The ads alone would make me throw off my headset in disgust.
For a mobile, there is a modded apk,I’ve never heard ads there. For a PC, web player in Firefox with uBlock Origin, there are no ads at all there. The same goes for Tidal, I’ve never paid for these apps.
Well, that’s very specific case to be honest. In that case you can just download whatever you want beforehand, from soulseek, for instance. Generally people make preparations in advance for such things.
Zotify works very well at downloading Spotify lists, from playlists to whole discographies. You have to sort the output a little as you’ll often get multiple copies of tracks due to remastered editions, songs released as singles etc. But overall it’s an incredibly easy way to download music.
spotx - well, I tried, but honestly, I don’t need one more app especially when everything works in the browser. Plus, I prefer portable setups and there’s no portable version of spotx, so, it’s pretty useless for me.
It’s explicitly said on the Spowlo GitHub page that they use YouTube for downloading, so, there’s no way to get 320 kbps tracks or flacs. Instead, I’d recommend to try some Qobuz/Deezer-based solutions, there are quite a few of them there. Or use slavart or something like this, or good old soulseek, there’s even an Android client for it.
Most people don’t pirate stuff on their phones. I use an iPhone and my hundreds of gigabytes of pirated stuff is available on my iPhone via plexamp/plex/etc.
They were so much more expensive than Pandora when I tried them out and the free tier was too awful to want to reward them with my money, so I did pay but it went to a competitor. Their music recommendations were terrible compared to Pandora, too.
I don’t use Pandora now though, they got bought by SiriusXM who I will never pay again after they made cancelation such a difficult process.
With xManager, the free tier comes quite close to premium. No ads, play whatever music you like. The only issues are lower sound quality & no downloads, which are really non-issues since you can just find other sources to download the music from, at flac quality
Spotify is not profitable right now; their current revenue doesn't come anywhere close to covering their costs. The only reason they're able to survive is investors holding on to the belief that, some day, it'll be possible to actually make the numbers work.
Musixmatch has a free, public database where lyrics are displayed. To contribute to the database, users can sign up and contribute lyrics, synchronizations, translations, and structuring to get points and move up levels. Musixmatch's points have no redeemable value, but are instead a marker of a particular user's contributions.
It is fucked up that the fans who are transcribing do not get a cut, but it’s not like they were misled to believe they would make a cut before they started doing it. The people doing that are doing it out of a passion for the music.
I’m not saying they shouldn’t be paid of course they should, if it was up to me I’d say make them all rich. I just think it’s a stretch to imply that Spotify is stealing anything here
The writers almost certainly do get a cut. Musixmatch does not own the copyright to any of the lyrics, and as such, negotiated with the copyright holders in order to be allowed to store, display, and sell access to the lyrics. This almost certainly involved some amount of money changing hands.
Spotify is paying money for access to the lyrics and using that as a feature in their product. A chunk of that money is almost certainly going back to the actual writers.
Spotify isn’t gate keeping access to the lyrics - you’re free to look them up on musixmatch or any of the other lyric sites and services. They’ve simply added them to their subscription services. You don’t know what gate keeping means.
You also still haven’t answer how anyone “stole” anything? Who stole what and from who?
“rentseeking behaviour” is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard used to describe a subscription service.
Is that all this is - you dislike subscription services?
They can’t gatekeep something that is available freely and easily outside of their service. They’re putting their implementation of the lyrics being matched to the music inside their subscription service. That’s not “gatekeeping”.
You still haven’t explained how anyone “stole” anything either.
Yes I have. You just keep ignoring everything I say.
You haven’t, so do it in reply to this. Who stole what from who?
Do I need to explain a 6th time what gatekeeping is?
I think you need someone to explain what it is to you tbh lol. Like I said, is this just you thinking that all subscription services are bad and “gate keeping”? Do you think needing to buy a ticket to go to a theme park is “gatekeeping”?
Who is profiting off uncompensated labor? Who stole what from who? You keep dodging the questions lol.
Spotify pay Musixmatch for lyrics. Spotify are paying for a service. If Musixmatch are “stealing” lyrics from somewhere that’s not Spotify’s problem.
Do you just believe that ALL subscriptions and payments to access something are “gatekeeping” behaviour? Answer the question. Is a movie theatre requiring you to buy a ticket before you can see the movie “gatekeeping” and bad? Is having to pay to watch netflix “gatekeeping”?
This is getting unbelievable in how much you are dancing around answering any questions about your crazy train of thought.
Them things is huuuuuuuuuuge. Like you can fit two regular size squids inside one and the big ones at that.
All wriggly and covered in equal parts suckers and slime.
Life is like that, my friend. You got all sorts of movement in it and it's trying to slip away from you AS (get is? as) it grips onto you.
Them suckers is painful too, because they got fish hooks in them. Squid fish hooks are natures fish hooks, that's why they used to use them as fish hooks.
Of course they had to catch the squid to cut its arms up and once they managed that no one wanted to use the hooks anymore as they had just went through the trouble of inventing a non-hook-related method of catching sealife.
Eh, I switched to Spotify last year (++, of course) and there’s a lot to be said in favour of the Spotify algorithm when it comes to music recommendations, as opposed to YouTube.
I do. While I get your point, I mostly use it so that I don’t have to maintain my own music library. But maybe I should try switching to something like Navidrome.
Have you checked out the made for you playlists? The Monday discover and Friday new music playlists have been key in how I find music the past like 10 years.
They don’t really work for me. I listen to different genres, different languages. Sometimes I only like a single song from an artist. My taste is weird. I usually discover new music organically through friends, or sometimes I’ll hear something playing somewhere and stuff.
To me, it seems like the Spotify algorithm has a heavy bias towards newer songs, and also towards English songs. Both of those are a minority in my playlists, but somehow that’s all it recommends me.
Spotify algorithm pushes artists that pay them to push them to you. Get your recommendations via more organic means if you can. That means blogs, real people. Screw the spotify recommendation slop (and I say this as someone who has spotify premium.)
YouTube sound quality is poor, and 99% of your bandwidth being devoted to video is wasteful. Just use SoundCloud or something. Better yet revanced patched YT music or xmanager Spotify.
Spotify capping out at 192 was a nope for me hahaha. Someone on Lemmy mentioned AppMus had hi-rez lossless and regular lossless and I was like “yep done”
I don’t like iTunes though, so on my computers it’s still flac o’clock.
YouTube’s sound quality is comparable to Spotify’s - IIRC it’s 128kbps AAC versus 160kbps MP3. Also, a static video’s bitrate is around 300-400kbps, so you’re not wasting that much bandwidth
YouTube supports 160kbps opus, which should be pretty much transparent to our ears. But the audio is reencoded in the uploaded video, which then gets reencoded by YT again.
These multiple lossy reencodes are probably why YouTube audio sounds worse then Spotiy. Artists upload there songs as lossless wav/flac, which the gets reencoded/compressed a single time.
Didn’t know that YouTube had 160kbps audio… I checked a auto-generated upload on yt-dlp, and while it had an Opus stream, all of the audio streams were encoded at 128kbps.
Both Opus and properly-encoded AAC audio should be virtually indistinguishable from the original source, but I do believe that Opus performs slightly worse in blind ABX testing. Again, you’d barely be able to tell the difference, so sound quality is basically the same.
(As for encoding, I believe that YouTube uses the source audio if it’s already encoded as AAC, which most video editors do by default, and music distributors send the same lossless source to YouTube as they do to Spotify, so I don’t think re-encoding will make a difference)
ublock origin blocks spotify ads well. I have found a lot of new artists using spotify, I avoided it for a pretty long time. When I find artists I like I usually buy their stuff on bandcamp cause i can get flacs
Using Spotify without premium, as Spotify offers it, is unusable. There might be other options than paying, but the vanilla Spotify experience is horrendous
That’s true. But to be fair, I have added one song and synced a few. I didn’t do it because I wanted pay, I did it because I wanted the song’s lyrics to be on Spotify and on the app.
They built a service and people seem to like it, so I don’t mind.
That is what I do, however it is very tedious when you want to listen to full albums, and add info to the file such as the album art and artist. Services like Spotify also sync your Library and playlist automatically across devices.
I made myself a python script to automatically tag and download entire albums from youtube at a time. I use syncthing to automatically sync it all. Quality isn’t the best but I can’t tell anyway so
Yup, can understand if your library is small, but for bigger libraries that's definitely the most inconvenient thing you can do.
Speaking from experience because I was basically forced to do it that way when I didn't have regular internet access yet. My library was longer than 50 days. Just Hip-Hop alone was above 100GB.
I used to find a shitton of music that way, but the inconvenience was real. Worst was music that I had to tag myself for example. Love mp3tag but that's shit.
I find it inconvenient to have limited skips and depend on one service to give you the song you want with the version you want. Also spotify ui doesn’t make sense to me, things just don’t work at times. Not to mention the ads.
I don’t like paid services, especially when you can get the same or most of the same stuff for free. It’s just not worth it for me, so that is my suggested alternative, doesn’t work for everyone.
Not really trying to argue with you but we were not discussing your preference haha😅 Just trying to say spotify premium is pretty convenient at a cheap price
Unlike movie and tv streaming music streaming convenience is no contest for piracy if you’re an enthusiastic.
And this is coming from someone would download albums and discogrpahies, using programs to meticulously tag and organize them. I wish I had the time and patience now, and for the highlights of my collection I will, but with my music craving a music stream subscription is well worth it.
You can download audio from YouTube as 160kbps opus files, which aren't lossless sure but it's the highest quality you can get from YouTube if alternate means aren't an option.
Well if you save the opus or aac it’s only single lossy compression, not double unless the uploader used a lossy file as their input. But if that was the case, ripping mp3 would be triple lossy compression…
For mp3 sure, but for opus standards 160kbps is great. I read that 128kbps is generally considered the most you need but 160kbps smooths over any artifacts, assuming the source file doesn't have them.
Then you probably don’t know any better because the vast majority of YT uploads are terrible quality. If you have anywhere near decent headphones/earbuds you can hear the difference immediately.
Well I’ve used spotify with and without headphones on popular phones, I can’t tell the difference from youtube. I usually download the music directly from the original uploader.
I was big into downloading before streaming services were a thing. Music streaming is one of the few services that’s totally worth my money: no hassle and I rarely have to resort to other platforms to find what I want (very different from video streaming, which totally sucks when it comes to that).
100% this. Paying $12 a month for basically all music I’ll ever want to listen to, is just an amazing deal. It’s so convenient. Felt the same when Netflix came about. But now when I need like 6 services, and there’s still lots not on them. Piracy is just so much more convenient.
Felt the same when Netflix came about. But now when I need like 6 services, and there’s still lots not on them. Piracy is just so much more convenient.
Yep, that’s the step they forgot: be more convenient than the pirates.
Can I use any of those at the same time I am playing a game on ps3/ps4/ps5 they way they have integrated spotify? I use spotify because it is available on the devices I use. I would use bandcamp on them if it were an option as I love my collection there but, it is not available on many of the devices I use.
I like this model, because YT has niche creators and I dont have to care about “Spotify changes X” news. Note: I have 1.5GB songs stored locally and listen ~30 minutes daily. I acknowledge discovering new songs is slower
You nailed it. People’ve been using it for so long they don’t want to use any number of paid or free services to automatically move all their playlists and whatnot over to a different service.
I don't get why anyone would use the free tier - not being able to choose songs would actually drive me insane, let alone the ads - but $11 monthly for essentially all the music anyone could ever want, plus solid playlists and recommendations, is a perfectly good value for me. Admittedly, I listen to music all the time and it's a pretty big part of my life, so it's an easy sell.
I guess the free tier is still an improvement over radio, but regardless, producing and distributing music has costs, and I'm more than happy to pay for it. Given that Spotify isn't even profitable, having lost about a billion dollars last year, I'm not sure how long this situation will last, but for the time being, I really don't mind it.
11$/month is 132$/yr. That’s a significant amount of money - about the same as my car insurance, broadband or phone bill. Putting a bunch of good music in a playlist and letting it roll is nice enough, especially with a 3rd party app to mute ads automatically. Besides, I don’t feel sorry for Spotify. The reason they’re hemorrhaging money isn’t a lack of profitability, but due to the massive royalties going to record companies.
For the median American that works full-time, who earns around $56,000, the cost of Spotify is 0.2% of their income.
Obviously everyone is in their own financial situation and for some people that will still be a burden. But for sake of comparison, in 1989, the average cost of cable TV was $18, and that's of course in 1989 dollars. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that $11 for unlimited access to basically all music at any time is a pretty good value for the money.
That said, if it is still onerous to someone, they're obviously not in ideal circumstances and I'm really not gonna fault them for just pirating.
Swedish student (Median full-time wage here is 35’790 USD equivalents before an avg ~30% payroll tax), not taking loans, working part time teaching (and occasionally nursing) to make ends meet, so yeah, pretty cash strapped atm.
Also, note that I already do have access to all the music in the world for free via youtube if I want something specific, or spotify for “radio style” infinite listening. 1440SEK/132USD is for added conveniences. No real need to pirate anything.
If $132 a year for unlimited access to pretty much all the music in the world is a significant amount of money to you then Spotify is the least of your worries.
Also your car insurance is $130 a year? What are you driving, a cardboard box and only in your living room? Your broadband only costs $132 a year?
Swedish student (Median wage here is 35’790 USD equivalents), not taking loans, working part time teaching (and occasionally nursing) to make ends meet, so yeah, pretty cash strapped atm.
As for my car, not a cardboard box, but apparently there are 25 packs that cost as much as I bought it for five years ago. Just the mandatory traffic insurance, but it ends up at almost exactly same price.
Also, note that I already do have access to all the music in the world for free via youtube if I want something specific, or spotify for “radio style” infinite listening. 1440SEK/132USD is for added conveniences.
Spotify is funding military AI tech. That’s enough for me. I’m on android but I’d still rather use Apple Music, plus they pay artists slightly more, and tidal pays more than them.
I hate to tell you but everyone is funding scary military tech, even if you’re not an American tax payer. If you’ve flown on a Boeing plane, used Microsoft software, worn Oakley sunglasses… all that revenue goes to companies who do or support that research
I mean I just named some of them, my point is you can’t avoid funding the military unless you live under a rock. Such is the military industrial complex
You said there’s no other option, I just listed some options. Also Funkwhale is decentralised, there’s no corporation backing it. Ofc, you can also just download the music you like.
😂 practically no other option, my friend. Haven’t heard of Funkwhale though, sounds interesting. And no, as I mentioned in my first comment, downloading isn’t feasible for people with eclectic tastes cuz I just can’t keep up with my spontaneous “need” to listen to that one album that hasn’t even crossed my mind in 20 years
Because it’s fantastic? Because it has almost all the music out there? Because it has an app on every device under the sun? Because it has amazing artist discovery? Because it lets you know of upcoming shows in your area?
Why wouldn’t you use Spotify if you’re a music fan? I’ve got 200gb+ of music on my NAS that I use Plexamp to listen to but I still subscribe to and use Spotify more.
Do people use “Spotify” as a generic term for steaming?
No, they use it to mean streaming from Spotify…?
You asked why people use spotify still, and I answered with many reasons why people specifically use spotify. Not every streaming service is the same, and spotify is widely regarded as the best.
That’s got nothing to do with why people use spotify though.
I don’t care if their CEO invests heavily in Military AI, neither do I care about them paying slightly less peanuts than Apple and Tidal. Bands make money from shows, not from CD sales or streaming. Execs make money from streaming and cd sales.
Because they have the best offer and it’s well worth the money. If you want to avoid shady CEO’s you might as well go live in a cave. And last I checked artists are doing absolutely fine financially.
So someone can ignore the ads, ignore not being able to chose a song, and ignore no download. But having to open musixmatch in a separate app is the straw that broke the camels back
It seems they were right going by how upset people are in here. Many of these people that are carrying on like spoiled children will no doubt subscribe to premium now.
The goal is that now that they’ve been caught pirating lyrics, they have to pay MusixMatch for their lyrics, perhaps on a per request basis, so they lose money by making it available.
Even then you might not see them. I’ve noticed recently that a ton of songs that used to have the lyrics attached no longer show the lyrics or have the button to show them. And I do have premium.
The only reason I don’t pirate music is because of discovery. I haven’t found a good way to find new music without using a streaming service. And then, I’m already using a streaming service, so why bother.
This. Back when I was a spring chicken I had nothing better to do with my time than download random songs and albums. Ain’t nobody got time for that now.
Streaming is fine to discover music, but you are not guaranteed that an album you like will be there for you the next time you want to listen to it. I do listen music in Spotify with a modded app, then I download the albums I liked. There are albums that I can’t listen to Spotify anymore, but I still have the audio files in my Subsonic server.
Sure, it’s easy to download one song. But I watch maybe two movies a month, yet I listen to thousands of songs in that time. Downloading songs individually doesn’t even come close to the convenience of streaming. Not to mention the lack of music discovery and social features.
There’s different ways to automate it. There was a thread a while back where someone outlined their system. He kept the free Spotify account and had a script that checked it every week for his new recommended playlists, then it would download it automatically. He used an other software to host the library.
The funniest thing to ask money for. Just have genius.com open or stream the song on YouTube, the lyrics are probably in the description or at the very least the comments.
Note that it’s not really a Spotify streaming app, rather it uses your (free) Spotify account for playlists, search, recommendations, etc. and then goes and find the song you want to play on YouTube, and the lyrics from scraping websites I think. Pretty clever.
It’s all about having the .lrc file, it gets read automatically (as long as it’s named like the song file) by mpv player and many android players.
It’s a simple text file containing the lyrics with timestamps. You can get them from deezer for example with certain downloaders. Or look for them on Soulseek.
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