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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 lost me as a customer as soon as I learned that they gifted 150k to Trump for his inaugaration party
Spotify has a become a shit show lately. I don't like that the CEO is supporting a genocidal state, the platform is full of fake AI artists and playlists. Artists aren't getting paid enough. the prices hikes and the app just feels so bloated with unnecessary bullshit. Because of this, I switched to self hosting my own music server (Navidrome, and Lidarr) and I use the symphonium app on Android. Really happy with that solution
Meanwhile the new Seagate 26tb HDD is going for $270
I've been downloading my media for over 10 years now and I only have like 2 1/2 Terabytes filled, a 26tb drive could hold most people's lifetime media collections.
Owning your own storage and files is the only way to ensure you keep access to the media you want.
Seagate
gotta give even more money to joe fuckhead - bet absolutely none of this will improve artist payouts..
I've had a grudge against Spotify waaaayyyy back when it first launched as an app on the computer.
For some reason, the Spotify app on my Mac wasted a ton of resources and battery. And it made me so mad I've never used them since.
Then years later they made dumbass Joe Rogan the face of the company so fuck all that.
Two things come to mind, spotify was always a browser based app on mac/linux/windows, I think that was way more inefficient in the early days of doing apps that way. The other thing is that spotify originally used its users' computers as cache to serve other users, that might've caused some additional load.
Military defence is expensive
And yet, despite the subscription price or its raise, Spotify still insists on forcing promoted content on your homepage.
I will cancel it
I use Bandcamp when I want to buy and YouTube with ad blocker for streaming.
fuck Spotify, I only listen to downloaded flac and mp3 music and YouTube
Well I am happy to have cancelled this shit a few months ago
I got a subscription two months ago because I had an event where it was simply easier to just use Spotify. I'm going back to plexamp I guess.
What an awful website. You either sell your soul or you throw away your money. No thanks, I will stick to the post title.
Cool I can't pay any less than the zero I currently am subscribed at to not use their service
I cancelled it when they started to crack down on family plans with separate households. It just wasn't worth the money to me anymore. I wonder how much more price hikes the remaining customers are going to tolerate. At some point it becomes cheaper to just outright buy music..
Probably is cheaper for a lot of people who just listen to the same stuff week after week
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.
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…
Let's say it together: Enshittification
It's been long underway for Spotify; raising prices is just the lastest step.
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.
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?
Friendly reminder that your “legally acquired” library of FLAC files never raises its subscription prices!
I'm quite unhappy with spotify. I don't care about the price, but it keeps repeating the same and same music again, and the percentage of crappy AI music is increasing. You can clearly hear it. Their client isn't open source, and it's just a wrapped website. It sucks.
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.
Also Daniel Ek is investing in AI war company:
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/17/spotifys-daniel-ek-leads-investment-in-defense-startup-helsing.html
Just leaving this here from the excellent !PurchaseWithPurpose@lemmy.world 
From that chart Qobuz seems to be the all round best deal. Is there any catch?
I use Qobuz! It works well most the time. And it has a huge library. Some things are not as polished as some of the bigger companies. And there's a lot of Initial setup to get it working..
That said, I would say it's a great option. I do wish it had better continuous play options, as sometimes I listen to a playlist, and then it just stops. But that may be part of the learning curve. I'm not really a big "playlists" guy.. I'd like to start a radio and have it find similar artists (similar to Pandora 12 years ago) But that doesn't really seem to be the way companies are going anymore.
I have several Google mini devices (I know, I know. I'm working on it, but that's a whole other process) and they don't really seem to get along with qobuz all the time.
Overall, I like it, but it still needs work.
I just switched from Tidal to Qobuz and when using Soundiiz like 1/4 of my songs didn't transfer, and when I look songs up a lot of them aren't there at all. The personalized playlist is also disappointing in my experience, so I'm considering switching back.
I have noticed that the search function is very unforgiving. Like, you have to search the exact title, because it will not find a partial name.
That sucks that a lot of songs didn't come up. I've actually been pleasantly surprised with the content. Personally. A lot of my stuff that I thought was pretty niche I've been able to find.
Are you noticing any specific genres are more difficult than others?
The ones I've noticed so far were somewhere in between metal, hyperpop, and generally chaotic electronic music. Specifically:
DEATHWISH by poutyface
MONSTER ENERGY GUN! by KevinKempt
PIN CUSHION by Siiickbrain
Also:
Little Game by Benny
mi tawa lon pimeja ni
There's a bunch of others that I haven't looked through yet. I downloaded a list of songs from my Tidal library with soundiiz so I should do the same with Qobuz then do a diff.
Platform podcasters who spread misinformation
Lol just say Joe Rogan
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.
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
