Protection
Boy, this band’s name sure made this headline confusing.
I didn’t realize this was band related until your post
I’m only vaguely aware of them because one of their songs was used as the House theme, and I still thought the article was describing an upcoming cyber attack on Spotify.
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.
You should already be going back to piracy. Spotify is scamming you and artists.
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
My fear is, when do those turn into trashy AI music so they don’t have to pay artists.
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…
nummy treats
Because piracy is way better for artists
I would guess it has a healthier impact on artists as a group than Spotify does, yeah.
The piracy service still sucks compared to Spotify.
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.
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
Yeah I’ve trying to get away from Spotify for years. I still pay for Tidal and yt music too but Spotify service is unmatched by anything out there. It’s not even close.
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!
Plex also has Plexamp which works great for music, if you’re like me and got the lifetime Plex pass long 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
Lifetime Plex Pass here too. I got it long ago.
I still migrated my server and uninstalled it once I tried Jellyfin for a few days because of the performance difference alone.
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.
I’m not sure. In my case with Jellyfin it’s fully self-hosted and not connected to any kind of discovery service.
I appreciate the value of automated music discovery services. I listened to so much last.fm in the early days of it. But like I have posted about before, I have been trying the old fashioned way lately and liking it a lot. I search for the best bands, best songs, best albums of a certain genre or period. It gives me some listicles on music websites and some discussions between what seem like real people, etc.
So then I just start downloading entire albums or discographies, and then work those in to listen at work. Maybe listen to albums as albums, or shuffle play all songs from the artist, or make a playlist, or just shuffle play my entire library.
When a song really jumps out at me, I’ll generally add it to my ever-growing playlist.
tbh you can get by with skipping whole pirate thing and just listen to local and internet radio there’s still a lot of good things out there
OK but why would anyone drink a microphone?
It has lots of vitamins
micro-vitamins
deleted by creator
Honest question, how else do I easily discover music that matches my taste if I don’t use a streaming service?
Honest question: I discover at maximum 1 new song that I like per week. I listen to metal and hard electronic music. As soon as the song has 20 seconds of intro I skip it. Spotify only suggests songs with long intros or songs that are just growling, which I don’t like too much, or that electronic over saturated sound where you only have bass and nothing else.
How can I discover new songs that I like there?
I’ve been using listenbrainz for a bit, and it’s pretty good.
Spotify isn’t the only streaming service, it’s just one of the worst, like ethically.
and to answer your question there are sites like Rate Your Music that let you find albums similar to albums you like.
I’ve made several efforts to try out Deezer, tidal and Qobuz. Their library just comes up short within 2-3 searches for some of the more niche stuff I want to listen to. Depending on what you listen to they can be great, I’m sure, I’d much prefer using Qobuz but for completeness… I assume the only ones that come close are Amazon and Apple and at that point, why even switch?
Which one is ethical and not shit? I left Google play music because it turned into a worse version of itself with a half baked rebrand. Didn’t care for tidal much.
Potentially I Heart Radio to listen to various artists, then internet search to purchase their albums.
Might have to bring back mix tapes and record favourite songs over digital radio!
People in here looking for less evil alternatives to Spotify and you suggest Clear Channel, the company that killed local radio broadcasting and enshittified the airwaves long ago?
Sorry, i didn’t know about that. We still have local radio here in Australia, so it’s not so dire down here.
Spotify used to do that very well, but the last years it enshittified. Now it’s very difficult to find new artists or new music, heck even finding a playlist that isn’t auto generated by Spotify has become a challenge. Everything is now pushed by Spotify and they select which artists you listen to, the artists that make Spotify more money.
Personally I’ve been using SoundCloud for the past 10 years at least and it’s been great.
- Talk to other human beings about music.
Music is not meant to be a solitary hobby. Share what you like, they’ll share what they like.
- Like a piece of music? Look up that producer, or record label if it’s small. Look up the session musicians. Don’t just look up the artist.
Generally it’s not just the artist that makes the music top tier. There are other great professionals involved in the background and good people hire other good people to work in the background.
This is easy. Once you start doing this you end up with a queue of albums you want to get round to listening to. It’s easy enough to find too much music yourself without an algorithm. You start finding the artist radio a waste of your time.
The rabbit holes I’ve been down following a producer, guitarist, or bassist, etc. are usually very rewarding and often you pop up in another place you knew already after finding out about some lesser known great music on the way.
Number 1 is extremely slow, and I like so many tracks nobody I know likes. And if I look up similar artists on Spotify I instantly have the ability to listen to music instead of digging through record labels then manually searching for tracks on… I guess YouTube?
Spotify instantly gives you what the record companies paid for the algorithm to give you.
“Digging” isn’t hard. Give it a go.
But it sounds like you’re listed to “tracks” not albums. Frankly that’s your biggest mistake.
If you like lots of tracks other people don’t, you’ll always be struggling against an algorithm trying to feed you 3 minute songs nobody hates.
Listen to albums and every time you follow a rabbit hole you’ll have 40-80 minutes of music to listen to at least once, multiple times if it’s good.
You’ll find albums that are worth listening to as a whole and some you’ll keep tracks in playlists.
Personally I moved from CDs to Spotify to YouTube music, to buying CDs again, soon to have them on Jellyfin.
Once you get into actually listening to albums, 3 or 4 albums from eBay or charity shops are what I’d have paid for a subscription and if I need to take a break I’ve still got my old music and don’t have any more to pay.
You can of course sail the high seas if you’re strapped for cash or want things instantly. I consider the big 3 labels harmful and have only bought second hand copies. I try to buy from independents and smaller labels when I can directly.
The harm of the major labels is pretty big and frankly streaming has become their most harmful tool. I want to avoid supporting that model or supporting the big 3.
I don’t fully agree with your first paragraph. My release radar is always chalk full of new releases by artists I enjoy.
Digging? I’ve given that a go when I was a kid/teen. I don’t have hours to spend aimlessly surfing and finding music like I used to. I just can’t be bothered anymore.
I’m not struggling against an algorithm, quite the opposite actually. I like some music in different languages too andi get good recommendations based on those as well.
I get it, ra ra Spotify bad. But it’s been all right for me.
My Spotify library does end up on plexamp
I wish more bands I like were on bandcamp
Good. Streaming is for cowards
Totally just bought a Massive Attack shirt from their website. Their “Ceasefire Now” shirts with the Doctors Without Borders quote are amazing.
Those shirts are indeed awesome, but $42 (American)?!? That’s insane for a t-shirt. Or maybe I’m just being a curmudgeonly old man.
I see you haven’t bought a band T-shirt in awhile! (also they use materials that have all sorts of fair trade, organic, and social justice certifications) (also I chose one of the $35 ones)
I’m ok with paying premium for band shirts even though they’re just basic tees with a print. It’s my way of supporting the artist aside from attending live shows, because streaming their music doesn’t really do anything, and buying physical CDs/vinyl isn’t practical for me.
Band merchandise is basically a donation with a reward, it’s not meant to compete on price with store-bought clothing.
Merch is usually a better way to support them than buying their music even (they get a bigger share of the sale).
I don’t quite understand how is protesting the investments into EU drone companies that also supply Ukraine with drones would lead to a ceasefire, but I’m not a mathematician
I feel like i am seeing this more and more. I wonder when the tipping point will begin and we start seeing people leave in droves.
I love it. The streaming services deserve to die, for their shady practices towards artists…
Because the record labels were so much better…
We are in need of a good alternative, where the money we give the service goes to the artists based on how much we’ve listened to that artist personally, not on some amalgamated metrics. I want to be able to open my account and see I’ve given £2 this month for bandwidth and management costs, £1.20 to Taylor Swift, £1.50 to Massive Attack, £1 to Portishead, etc.
If at any point you can make money by buying accounts and playing your own tracks over and over, then the service has fucked up.
This is true. All of the points, and especially the transparency on who gets our money… We are in need of good alternatives, but I don’t think, that transparency is a good business model unfortunately :(
I’m waiting to see how this all will unfold.
Afaik that’s the system youtube uses for videos/streams with youtube premium (and twitch as well with turbo). You can’t see where your money went as the viewet, but supposedly (don’t have sources rn so feel free to correct mr, but I’ve heard multiple creators say this) it’s just the same revenue split as other purchases, applied to the price of your membership and distributed based on what you watch.
The worst part is every little bit gets chopped up before it ever makes it a musician.
Have to pay a label/publisher, then you have to pay a Metadata distributor, and Spotify, plus any other royalties for samples if they’re used.
Fun times.
I wonder if something could be built based on fediverse technology. Artists could host their own instance of some music library software, and have granular control over how it’s monetized - pay per stream, buy a digital copy of a specific song/album, have monthly fees for different tiers of access, you could maybe even sell merch or concert tickets on it - kind of like Patreon, except the instance owner has full control over what’s offered and how it’s monetized. And then in the client for this new thing, you could have a list of all the instances and choose which ones you want to give money to, and if it spoke ActivityPub, you could integrate some sort of feed into Lemmy/Mastodon/etc clients.
Why bother with the federation if every artist is going to have to host their own instance to keep control of how content is played and monetized?
For the same reasons Lemmy is federated:
- Resilience - if one server goes down, only that one artist’s music becomes unavailable
- Control - if the artist owns the server, they can control it/moderate it as they see fit
You can’t really count on either of those things if you’re putting your music up on Spotify, Tidal, etc.
Edit: there would be nothing stopping several artists from handing together and hosting all their music from a single server/instance, if they wanted to. That’s the point though, there’s choice
Okay, so what I really meant was how federation the way it works here would be of any use. It’d actually make the artist lose all control, as everything gets mirrored.
If we use the federation as nothing but a discovery mechanism for other nodes, I guess it would accomplish those goals. But then you could do it without the federation too. Have a central discovery server so that any apps immediately know where to connect, instead of the user having to choose (federation is confusing for normies, remember?)
Right, ActivityPub would really just be the discovery mechanism, obviously you wouldn’t want the actual music to be mirrored to other instances.
If you use a centralized discovery server, you’re right back to where you are with Spotify - at the mercy of whoever controls the discovery server, and shit out of luck if the discovery server goes down. Federation is only confusing for normies because the clients for popular fediverse apps don’t do a good job of making that part clear (or hiding it away).
Since at least the late 80s record labels sucked, not the streaming services suck. Time to just get rid of copyright on music and audio recordings.
Time to just get rid of copyright on music and audio recordings.
I’m sure the musicians will approve of this solution.
Agreed. fwiw Bandcamp is currently kinda like that for their digital tracks tho it was bought out a couple years ago so will begin enshittifying any day now…
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.
Bonus points for purchasing on bandcamp fridays (more money goes to the artists). Two left in 2025: Oct 3 and Dec 5.
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.
Bandcamp has “Bandcamp Fridays” when 100% of the sales go to the artists. The next ones are on October 3rd and December 5th.
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.
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.
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.
Why is Ampwall’s business model non-viable?
Which is great and all, but Massive Attack aren’t on that either.
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.
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!
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?!)
Tidal HiFi is really good, better sound quality, has most music.
They also pay the artists better.
Its also cheaper, somehow.
my only complaint with tidal is they suck at properly assigning music to the correct artists. i’ve opened tickets by contacting their twitter and they sometimes fix the issue but only until the next release of a song
Spotify must die
evicting JOE rogan would be goodstart from spotify
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.
that’s so fucking sick, i’m gonna buy their shirts or something
