Spotify re-invented the radio

might have something to do with their motto "don't make us popular"

Been using it for years. The ad thing is recent but it's safe. They have to make money somehow and it was only an ad when I was downloading the app off of their updater. After that the actual Spotify app is add free.

It builds a custom spotify apk that you install. Except for the parts it cganges, expect it to be the same, logging in included.

I checked that and still don't know what it does...

That would enter the pirate subject wouldn't it?

Anyway yeah using the free option provided by Spotify seems like the worst case scenario.

Huh, I think Spotify is a poor podcast client, compared with the competition.

I think Real Debrid is worth it.

if only they’d pay the musicians worth a shit<

afaik that's mainly the fault of the music labels, they charge quite good money, but they don't give it to the artists: https://blog.groover.co/en/tips/loud-clear-spotify-2/

In this case, it's a good thing that Spotify is an European and not an US company. Less incentive for enshittification. At the same time, the main reason they fuck over musicians so much is not so much Spotify but because of record labels and ads themselves. The record labels are the ones with the financial power, holding the copyrights. It's not that Spotify doesn't pay labels, they do, then in turn the labels keep most of the money and fuck over the artists. At the same time, the record labels came last to the streaming game. Blinded on the madness that was the Napster and peak P2P era, a war they lost, they didn't want to even sell digital copies. Many awards and labels didn't considered digital sales, legitimate sales. An many rogue artists sold or gave their digital albums for free to protest this. So they were always behind the curve. When Apple forced the labels to sit at the table for iTunes, they had no bargain leverage and were forced to accept shit terms in exchange for the hope that streaming would stop piracy. As a result, the tech giants got to keep most of the revenue bag and that's been the status quo ever since.

On the other hand, adverts don't pay. We tend to forget this because the likes of Google and Facebook are so massive. But the only reason they make any money is because of how massive they're. Adverts are a shit form of payment. Too expensive and no one wants to advertise with you, too cheap and you can't cover even the platform maintenance, it's a delicate balance. The result is you need millions of eyes to make any significant amount of money from an advert. There's a reason cable and open air TV has devolved into 15 minutes of advertisement per every 20 minutes of entertainment.

Spotify pays a fraction of a cent for every play. It takes 150 plays of a song to make a dollar from advertisement, and most of that dollar is gonna stay with the record label. This is significantly worse for indie and small up and coming artists. They simply can't make a living out of Spotify unless they are already big and have a massive following. This hurts the whole industry as it becomes harder and harder to nurture new talent.

The up side is that, although they are getting shafted by Spotify and the labels, a subscription play is worth more than a free play. Up to ten times more than a free user play. So your subscription does help pay artists more. The down side is that less than 25% of Spotify users pay for a subscription.

As someone who was once a small artist on Spotify, they do actually pay really well. Better than most places.

To each their own. For me, I really like the Discover Weekly/Daily features to discover new music and I can’t see how I would ever “already have MP3s of all the good music” since that’s an ever changing set. Heck, I still have a ton of old mp3s I used to rip and/or download, but I haven’t listened to them in a while.

I would gladly pay for a similar AYCE movie subscription, but I refuse to sign up for a ton of different services and play the “which service is that movie on again?” game. Instead it’s a very different approach for me.

Deep.

Not sure how this is emptily shilling though. Am I paying for a service? Yes. Will I stop paying for a service if they start “refusing features?” Also yes.

Like I said in another comment, I was happy with Netflix back in the day, but now, nope. I have self hosted alternatives.

If a service is not worth it for me, I stop paying. Different people have that line at different levels, and for me, today’s Spotify Premium is worth it. In the future it may not be.

No need to be so hostile.

/Iam14andThisisDeep

See how they down vote you.

Let me try to give a voice to the people down voting.

I hope that in the future they make a separate subscription model for each of these services.

$2/month I get the pause feature.

$5/week I get to control my own volume.

$4/month I don't have to loudly shout the brand name of the commercial to go back to my podcast.

This is how websites keep the lights on and you shouldn't be so ungrateful. We all know the pursuit of infinite profits means all these companies will continue to find more ways to squeeze customers. So I'll go down with this ship even though just 5 years ago it was crazy to see a 2 minute unskippable ad but now there's 3 of them and you're an asshole for wanting to remove that.

What would the internet look like if we got rid of how companies advertise to us.

In the future you should consider what you're saying before speaking out against enshitificatin and encroachment of mass marketing into our lives. It feeds. It never stops feeding and I am meat.

Also as a service I think it’s much more polished and better working than its competitors, even if it is shiftier for free users.

Deemix and Deezer is better. Spotify streams in low quality.

I would also like to know if you're PMing him

Why do you think they aren't paying for it?

Literally the opposite. Pirating takes time, effort, resources, and I lose access to "everything" - I only get what I take the time to download and store.

If a product I pay for provides a great service, I'll keep using it. It's worth the money for excellent user experience and convenience. It's when they keep upping the price while reducing the features or content that bothers me, and that's when I'd rather spend the time pirating than paying them for a worse product.

deleted by creator

I switched from Spotify back to Bandcamp and Apple Music. Fuck Spotify.

I pay for a service. They jack the price. They remove features. They add restrictions. They punish paying users.

The result is that I stop all of the above and do what's best for me. Fuck them. They did this to themselves.

On android, have premium, use the app a good amount, never encountered the issue you are reporting.

When Sirius bought Pandora and started bleeding subscribers, that closed doors for Spotify. No way to increase revenues but by increasing ads.

Spotify is losing money, they gain nothing by having free users, if they convert some people to paying customers it's worth it for them. You can't expect to listen to music for free when license holders charge ridiculous fees.

Data gathered: you listened to the music we selected for you. Not the best data

I remember the early days when iPods were still a thing and you had to buy music on iTunes. I don't miss that at all. Imagine the price of buying every individual song of your current Spotify playlist, you're getting a steal in comparison now.

I have no clue what you're talking about. I've had Spotify premium for 5-ish years and nothing has randomly changed. The UI changed a bit here and there but nothing you couldn't ignore if you wanted to and that's it. I get all the music on the planet and podcasts, it's a good deal if you ask me

That's why we pay for a good service instead. The subscription is a fraction of a cost you'd get from paying to "own" the media, and it's not like you still can't combine the two either. It's not one or the other.

And this is why I buy vinyl.

How do you combine a subscription service with having ownership of the media? If you're not happy with Spotify just got to iTunes or the likes and buy the individual songs. Or what am I missing here?

Buy merch and stream is the best I can come up with that makes it easy for me to listen to the music I want and support the artist.

Resonate is a good alternative streaming service for folks who don’t want to feel locked in (https://resonate.coop/) Not as clean as Spotify but pretty decent for something bootstrapped.

Spotify matches that description.

Just curious, how much would buying an album cost you, and how big is your actual music playlist? Then let me know if it's not a reasonable fee.

I only sail the seas when the industry is forcing my hand to do so by refusing to provide either adequate service, adequate coverage or reasonable pricing.

I'll have to dust off my tricorn soon if the industry keeps onto that trajectory.

Oh yeah, I should check out my last.fm, I set up scrobbling forever ago and then just forgot about it.

I was making that comparison, yes

For a company worth over a trillion dollars, there's this unmistakable layer of couldn't-give-a-fuckness to all their products.

From a store that ships blatantly fake products, through the video service that misses subtitles on like half the movies, or looks like it's been transferred from a well used VHS, to the music service that used to let you listen to full albums, but on playing you notice that a bunch of tracks are missing from it.

And the race to the bottom ain't even over yet.

The only thing Spotube does with the Spotify API is fetch your lists and recommendations. Everything else it streams off Youtube (Music). Sometimes this is a bit wonky.

YMusic

I know, it's pretty silly and very dishonest. I just find it so bizarre that the boundaries of what these finances can provide are drawn around these lines. Skipping songs was "profitable" 1 week ago, but now it isn't? It is very goofy.

They got rid of spotify stations but you can make a "radio" playlist from any song or other playing. Not as good still but better than nothing I guess

Because money.

Never heard of stations before today, wish I got a chance to try it though. Looks like it came out just after they removed the radio feature from the main app. Damn...

I tried Pandora, I think for a year or two. It's alright but after a while I started falling into the same artist bubbles I experienced with post-radio Spotify. It's owned by Sirius which isn't doing so well (and I can't stand their marketing practices) so I can't imagine they've got as much resources to devote as Spotify. The app is a little buggy and rudimentary but not completely lacking polish.

The behavior when your Internet drops out (like if you happen to go driving out in the sticks) leaves a lot to be desired, but you can save playlists so it's not a huge deal. There's this one live version of a song that just does not want to stay deleted from my playlist. Oh, and you can't use it outside of North America without a VPN. It's little stuff, it's not experience-breaking for the most part.

I do like that you switch between different algorithms for a radio station. Something like "fan favorites", "artist only", "deep cuts", maybe one or two more options. It's overall not a bad alternative, the bad parts obviously stick in my head better than the good but I'd probably still be using it weren't for my European friends all using Spotify and sharing songs/playlists with me like that.