• BCBoy911@lemmy.ca
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    6 hours ago

    TBH if you’re an artist you’ll probably make more money by NOT being on streaming platforms and having people buy your music directly - spotify in particular pays fuck all, you might as well have your music on The Pirate Bay. Hell, putting your own music on pirating platforms is probably better for discovery, and people who like your music will buy the albums.

  • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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    18 hours ago

    As soon as I need to subscribe to multiple services to find my music I’m going back to piracy. Fuck that anti consumer shit.

      • sircac@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        Probably I should develop other habits, but I find hard to improve the amount of good discoveries I got through Spotify with barely no effort… I do the effort to “obtain” those I like from time to time, yet still the effort is low, efficient and worth of it

        • Phegan@lemmy.world
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          1 hour ago

          My fear is, when do those turn into trashy AI music so they don’t have to pay artists.

          • sircac@lemmy.world
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            52 minutes ago

            I have doubts trashy AI music can trigger me at all… in any case nothing is forever, so I am paying attention to the drift in the offer and quality, at current pace my forecast is that within 5 years my musical habits will have drifted away from spotify to something I do not know yet…

            The only continum in my whole life is my ever growing offline library, modernized with technology pace, and that is fed regularly and more likely will be preserved… and if someday I lost everything, I will still have my love for the music I find worthy to remember…

      • Zink@programming.dev
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        7 hours ago

        fun fact:

        Jellyfin works for music (and audio books) just as well as it does for movies and TV shows!

        And being open source, there are apps specific to certain use cases. Like on ios there’s Finamp for music and Plappa for audio books.

        It also streams in FLAC quality!

        • b34k@lemmy.world
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          6 hours ago

          Plex also has Plexamp which works great for music, if you’re like me and got the lifetime Plex pass long ago.

          • manmachine@lemmy.world
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            5 hours ago

            yee, so far I haven’t found anything close to Plexamp on features that I want, that lifetime license paid for itself a long time ago

        • ThirdConsul@lemmy.ml
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          5 hours ago

          Is there a FOSS music discovery service? I like to listen to 1920’ to 1960’, and the radios and discovery in those era on Spotify work extremely well.

        • DNS@discuss.online
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          7 hours ago

          I used an old ipod to put my songs on, as well as an old iPhone since Apple.has a decent default music player versus the free version of Spotify.

        • flying_sheep@lemmy.ml
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          6 hours ago

          Another annoying part about this is how well everything is integrated.

          • I can switch my playback between mobile phone, PC, and living room sound system at any time
          • I can join a playback session on a Bluetooth speaker that a friend started to skip or queue songs

          All of that is driven by monopoly which is bad, sure, but shit’s convenient af

  • heyWhatsay@slrpnk.net
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    1 day ago

    I had friends try to get me into Spotify, never liked it.

    I use antennaPod for podcasts, highly recommend

  • BlueMagma@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    Have you guys read the article ? Spotify is denying the claim of massive attack and other platforms as misinformation, they are claiming that the firm the CEO invested in is only working towards military defense of Ukraine against Russia’s invasion. I don’t know what is true and don’t have the time to check, but it looks to me like a decent response if true.

    Not saying Spotify isn’t problematic, but that might be overblown misinformation.

    Then again, if you want to cancel Spotify, good, I’m all for it, I don’t like the enshitification they are undergoing. But this reason might not be the one you should put on the resignation form, it might not send the right message to Spotify.

    • some_kind_of_guy@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      Spotify has been shitty from inception IMO. I’ve tried it a couple times at different points and first off, just didn’t like the UX at all.

      The “free” tier is unusable if you’re an active listener and not the type to just have something, anything, playing as background noise.

      My biggest pet peeve with Spotify and most of the other big modern streamers: There’s a tenuous connection between the listed artist and a “real” artist, so there’s no way to tell if you’re listening to something intentionally created that can be found elsewhere, or just procedurally generated slop uploaded by some rando. Google is just as bad if not worse with this since merging Google Play Music with YouTube. Apple seems to get this part right, but I have no other reason to switch.

      Anyway, that’s not even touching any political/ethics/business aspects of Spotify. It’s hard to imagine it becoming any shittier, and I’ve always wondered how they have the market share they do. At some point I realized that it’s kind of just the default option for the more casual listener who isn’t already slotted into Apple or Google for everything. Plus it has official, polished integrations with a lot of other apps/ecosystems (e.g. Discord, Xbox).

      I’d sooner bring lossless versions of all my stuff local and tag every track by hand than give them any amount of money, but it’s clearly not made for me so that doesn’t mean much.

      I’ve been driven more to web radio stations, even terrestrial radio (streamed or actual FM). there are some great free/non-commercial choices out there still with human DJs. (Shout-out to kexp). Human-curated radio is still viable for discovery and going out of your comfort zone musically, and human “taste-makers” still have a place, which is reassuring. There are a few newish low power FM stations around me which are actually good, which is an interesting and unexpected development.

    • bluemite@lemmy.world
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      18 hours ago

      You can put one of the other reasons, such as: a) they pay some podcasters a LOT of money and have one of the worst payouts to artists out of the streaming services b) they donated to the inauguration of a cheeto, c) they are just getting lossless audio, but at a lower quality than some other services

    • Mobile@leminal.space
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      1 day ago

      The company, Helsing, pledges to only sell towards democratic governments. I think it’s a very slippery slope. In my opinion, once you’ve taken a step towards the military industrial complex, you are the military industrial complex.

      I’m not sure how much funding came from the profits of Spotify. It could have come from other investments. Ultimately, you have Spotify leadership involved in a defence company that makes drones. Ethically, I don’t like my money going towards someone who invests in this.

      • HugeNerd@lemmy.ca
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        1 day ago

        Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East and our best ally ever, and really good at licking rocks in the desert too.

    • blargh513@sh.itjust.works
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      20 hours ago

      I was a reasonably happy Rhapsody/Napster user until crypto bros bought it and turned it into fucking garbage. They literally broke the damn app (not phone, entire web app) for weeks after some weird change where they put crypto crap into it. It was entirely unusable.

      After that I gave up. Spotify has far more support and integrations. I don’t care for Spotify and how little they pay their artists, but it works and support is far wider.

      I’d go back to Napster if they weren’t ass as they did actually pay their artists better. Their app footprint is tiny and support is weak. I integrate a lot of stuff with my home assistant and other things; trying to do it with Napster would likely be a frustrating dead end.

      • bluemite@lemmy.world
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        18 hours ago

        Give Qobuz a try. I did the free trials on a few services and found it to be the most feature complete

    • ccunning@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 day ago

      Can’t speak for anyone else, but I read it and also don’t know what’s true beyond the headline which, in my mind, was the key takeaway regardless of the bands motives.

    • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
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      2 days ago

      Spotify: the company that continues to find ways to make YouTube play music not a horrible choice.

      Like… How the fuck.

      • Zahille7@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        I mean yeah, I have a Revanced yt music app so I don’t have to worry about ads or anything. It works damn near identical to Spotify too.

          • Zahille7@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            Not sure, I’ve been using one from a year or two ago, and it hasn’t stopped working for me yet. I do get some prompts to upgrade to premium, but I can just ignore them.

            • rumba@lemmy.zip
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              1 day ago

              I just upgraded to .52 it seems to be workable again.

              was probably just a specific patch level running on it.

      • Nate Cox@programming.dev
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        2 days ago

        The biggest band out of Bristol have told their record label to pull all their songs from music streaming app Spotify, in protest at its founder investing more than £500 million in a military AI company

      • nnullzz@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        They’ve been changing their terms of service over the past year with some shady stuff and have continuously screwed over creators. I’m planning on yanking my music out of there too.

        This explains a bit more

        • protist@mander.xyz
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          2 days ago

          I’ve been a Pandora subscriber for years because it’s just a better service for music nerds imo. Their “radio” function goes way deeper into catalogs than Spotify ever did. Someone please tell me they’re not run by fascists

          • 13igTyme@piefed.social
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            2 days ago

            The parent company , XM Radio, donated to Trump and gives fascists a platform. Also their pay out to artists are among the lowest.

            Which is a real shame because I’ve discovered so many good non-mainstream artists thanks to Pandora’s algorithm.

      • FackCurs@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        The issue for me is that AI generated music has ruined my experience with Spotify. It started recommending lofi beats (easy to generate with AI) and I didn’t want to spend weeks pushing the algorithm to not have it recommend me that crap.

        Other users have complained about the downturn in quality of the weekly recommendations, which is what kept me there in the first place.

        SoundCloud appears to have better recommendations for the type of music I like.

        https://community.spotify.com/t5/Music-Discussion/Half-of-the-weekly-playlists-are-filled-with-AI-generated/td-p/6288755

        https://mashable.com/article/spotify-ai-generated-songs-dead-artists-pages

      • Ilandar@lemmy.today
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        2 days ago

        I’m not sure if you’d call this a “boycott”, but many people have also just never used Spotify because they care more about supporting musicians than convenience.

      • REDACTED@infosec.pub
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        1 day ago

        Likely because of that old military investment drama where a company making drones for Ukraine and EU defence did an investment round and spotify joined, which prompted every russian bot farm to attack spotify because of it. As an European, I feel like paying them even if I don’t use spotify.

  • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
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    2 days ago

    I’ve been using bandcamp for years, and I feel pretty good about it. I’d spend about $10/month and get 1-2 albums, and now I have a pretty big collection. I’ve been unemployed so I haven’t bought new music, but my library is still here and ad-free.

    Bandcamp might enshittify, since it’s privately owned, so make sure you download the drm-free copy of anything you buy.

    • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Bandcamp was sold to Epic Games who then sold it on.

      The outlook isn’t great for Bandcamp, but I can’t see any better alternative that supports new artists to the same degree.

      • 🔍🦘🛎@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        I’ve been waiting for that shoe to drop, but it’s been like 2 years with no changes (knock on wood).

        BTW check out the little Bandcamp instance we have here~ Post your favorite album!

    • Leraje@piefed.blahaj.zone
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      2 days ago

      Bandcamp is better than Spotify - Ampwall is better than Bandcamp. It’s artist owned (developed by Chris from the non-fash Black Metal band Woe). The fees are much, much lower than Bandcamp.

      • Lewo@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Bandcamp has “Bandcamp Fridays” when 100% of the sales go to the artists. The next ones are on October 3rd and December 5th.

      • Holytimes@sh.itjust.works
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        1 day ago

        Problem is ampwall basically has a non viable business model beyond it’s current scale. So it’s likely to never really replace other options. It’s good to have around tho.

      • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        In the Ampwall business model the artists pay to upload their music but listening is free.

        Sounds fine for hobby musicians, but not for anyone professional.

      • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
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        1 day ago

        Interesting. Haven’t heard of this one but from their FAQ and writing it sounds interesting.

        Not sure if a subscription fee for artists will work. Bigger ones can certainly afford it.

        The main problem as I see it now is what any new platform has: getting people to use it.

    • Sergio@piefed.social
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      We post a lot of Bandcamp links on !gothindustrial@lemmy.world because the free song streaming is great and a lot of bands are on there. Eventually they’ll enshittify and get rid of the free streaming or require a signin at which point I’ll move on to something else (dunno what?!)

  • ravachol@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I develop kew (a terminal music player), so I’m biased, but I started kew because I rejected Spotify many years ago.

    I think that kew (or other private/offline music players) together with flacs from Qobuz are actually a great alternative to Spotify. Throw in some Bandcamp albums in there for great justice. Once you have a decent collection, you will feel liberated.

    I especially think that Qobuz needs more exposure.

    https://codeberg.org/ravachol/kew

    https://www.qobuz.com/

    • YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today
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      2 days ago

      I love Lemmy so much cause there’s people that make me feel dumb, and no one that makes me feel smart. It pretty fucking refreshing!

      Also thanks so much for your hard work. I got you on a small donation.

      Edit: super git ignorant, guessing code berg doesn’t have that button. You got a “buy me a coffee” type thing set up?

    • PMmeTrebuchets@lemmy.zip
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      2 days ago

      Not to be stupid (I’m new to trying to get my shit offline and go back to physical media / owning digital copies of all my media) what is a “terminal music player”? I love finding these sorts of projects in my quest to take back my time and money!

    • A_norny_mousse@feddit.org
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      2 days ago

      Simple maths. How many customers does it cost us to platform assholes, conspiracy nuts and nazis, and how many customers does it get us?

      Adding to that how much they pay the idiot, I feel the balance is tipping towards firing him.

      • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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        16 hours ago

        if spotify is getting too much people dropping the service, because of him, they would terminate his role on the MUSIC PLATFORM.

    • wetbeardhairs@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 day ago

      The damage is done. Even if they declined to renew his contract (they wont because the fascists will threaten them) it is just too late. Unfortunately most music is owned by production companies and the individual artists do not have distribution rights to wield against Spotify.