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…
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.
Just leaving this here from the excellent !PurchaseWithPurpose@lemmy.world
Platform podcasters who spread misinformation
Lol just say Joe Rogan
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.
They age verify in the UK already…
For most people though they won’t be hacking things to use Spotify. I agree £2 a month is OK but for me the issue is they charge a fortune yet pay artists a pittanceTrue. For me it hasn’t come up so far, possibly because my account is registered in a different country. It’s going to be a bit inconvenient but probably time to give them the finger and look elsewhere.
I ripped CDs to FLAC, put them on a Plex server, and use Plexamp on my computer and phone. Now I’ve got my own personal streaming service.
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This is the way to go!
Not everyone will do that though… plenty of people I know have zero idea about that kind of stuff
Unfortunately true. It’s the uninformed (and who don’t care enough to get informed) that allow the violation of rights and privacy continue.
I have a 50TB library of movies and TV, Plex, the *arrs, a dedicated server, and even I dont bother with music because its a huge pain in the ass to deal with. I have a bunch of songs from before music streaming was popular and a few I’ve gotten from SoulSeek since then, but that’s about it. Ripping CDs, labeling and tagging each track, and sorting them into a properly named folder structure is just too much work especially when you get into thousands and thousands of songs. There are software solutions to this but they don’t work very well because music is much harder to deal with when you can have 50 versions of the same song floating around out there.
Somewhere out there is a person with a single folder named “music”, with zero sub folders, containing thousands upon thousands of tracks with names like “1.mp3” and “1 (1).mp3” and they’re totally okay with it.
Just thinking about it makes my skin crawl.
IMO it makes more sense to rip and download music than movies. Music is small files that you listen to dozens or hundreds of times, whereas movies are large files that you might only watch once or twice.
labeling and tagging each track, and sorting them into a properly named folder structure
You need to do the same thing for movies and TV shows though.
Lidarr will do this for you, mostly automated.
To rip CDs, I use abcde (“a better CD encoder”) on Linux. It automatically tags the tracks based on CDDB or Musicbrainz data.
There’s probably a basic app that’ll move it to the right directory structure, but I find Lidarr pretty easy to use. I copy the album across to my server, then in Lidarr I add the relevant album then click the button to manually import it, and point it to the right folder. Lidarr will automatically sort it into the right directory structure. I have it configured to use the structure that Plex wants - folders per artist, then folders per album inside those.
That’s assuming it has data on Musicbrainz. For MP3/FLAC files from albums that aren’t on Musicbrainz, it’s a bit trickier. I sometimes use kid3 (KDE audio tagger) as it can pull from other sources like Discogs and Amazon.
I think you do have a point about the replayability of music versus movies but at the same time I share my server with about two dozen friends and family so its good to have some variety in there along with having a good selection for when you get that random thought about a movie and want to watch it rather than spending 20 minutes finding and adding it to your server
Radarr and sonarr also handle the naming and organization but this all relies upon the files being properly named which can be a chore with music as you regularly see remixes, sample albums, compilation albums, singles, covers, extended play, radio play, censored, uncensored, etc not to mention the quantities of songs out there by artists of varying popularity, which is the root problem with music databases not always finding a match, matching incorrectly, or your downloaded album having songs from multiple different sources that the uploader lumped together. You very occasionally run into this with movies too but its typically because TMDB or whatever source not matching the studio on the release year when a release is delayed.
This probably isn’t much of an issue for you if you’re ripping your own music but that’s becoming more and more rare these days with the transisition away from physical media. I actually bought a blu-ray RW drive for my PC with the intention of ripping DVDs and Blu-rays but gave up because of the work involved (encoding in HandBrake) if you wanted anything but Remux quality.
I honestly wish the days of Napster came back, but I have had good luck with SoulSeek and have read that its possible to integrate with Lidarr but haven’t tried yet. Im sure things will get better in time as these streaming services try to squeeze their customers more and more.
Still no lossless?
Dropped it for Tidal years ago, never looked back.
I’ve started collecting CDs and building my own Jellyfin library so I don’t depend on streaming services.
On Qobuz here. I just buy vinyl then rip it directly from Qobuz generally.
not as far as I know!
Military defence is expensive
Is there any reasonable option that I can use on a Garmin watch standalone? I like to run without my phone and listen to a podcast and Spotify has been my go to.
Can your watch play mp3s? Most podcasts are available for download that way too.
I’m pretty sure it can, but I don’t actually know what subscription services or how it works to get podcasts downloaded. Spotify has been pretty easy. I guess it’s time to look into this stuff. I have been doing this stuff legit for a while, but I guess I could get back on the high seas too if I have to. I just wanted to make sure the people making content were getting paid, but I think Spotify is bad for that too. So tired of good services getting slowly worse.
I will cancel it
Spotify is still a thing?! Who knew… so many better options out there… hoping they crumble between artists leaving and no one wanting to deal with the drama and prices… they are about to be the “new vine” of pitfall and demise! Bye bye bye! Let the company burn!!
What better options are there? I’m old so don’t know
if you don’t mind downloading the music then Nictoine+, it’s a GUI for soulseek. essentially Napster/Limewire. Anything you can get on spotify you can pretty much get there.
Keep in mind, like Napster, it takes time to find things you want. If you have your own server or hell even a cloud server with unlimited bandwidth and a good chunk of space you can put your music on there that way you can just stream it to whatever device you use to listen to music. Essentially a media server.
I have Apple Music because I am a student so, I pay way less than most but it downloads all my songs and playlists and can use it without data. But I also have the iHeartradio app which has my fave radio station plus so many podcasts.
But there is Apple Music, Tidal, iHeartradio, Soundcloud, Amazon Music, SiriusFM, qobuz, there are many.
Awesome thanks
fuck Spotify, I only listen to downloaded flac and mp3 music and YouTube
Lazy doormat Spotify users: “Okay… but this is the LAST, LAST, LAST TIME FOR REAL. Do it again and there’ll be a hashtag and a series of Tiktok memes!”
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“I’m SO good at making money that I don’t care when people cheat me out of it for no other reason than because they feel like it. This is something I am proud of.”
I mean spotify is one of those things where it’s harder to move away and the cost benefit is harder to argue against. It’s not like the streaming bullshit that has happened where everything is fragmented and you’d need 200 substations to watch the movies you want.
The thing that sucks with Spotify is the money they gave fucking Joe Rogan
Look, I can’t expect your assessment of value proposition to align with mine - we are different people.
But if I were a paying Spotify customer, and they gave $250 million dollars to pay someone I think is actively damaging the world, and then started charging me MORE to pay for it, there is ABSOLUTELY no amount of cost benefit and convenience that would keep me there.
I will sit in a dark, silent room motivating on pure spite before I would accept such an indignity.
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Like I said, fuck Joe Rogan, but every big Corp has been responsible for awful shit. At some point you have to live and you have to give in somewhere.
This is coming from someone that self hosts and even I can’t be bothered to self host every fucking random ass song in existence.
My value proposition is that my entire family doesn’t have to listen to ads and I don’t have to spend half my day tracking down songs.
Again, my larger point is that spotify for all its bullshit still isn’t streaming video levels of utter bullshit.
Well, you’re right. Everyone has to draw their own line. I’ll agree with you this is probably less egregious than some, and I personally do make make purchases I shouldn’t from institutions I shouldn’t to get by.
But I do every single one of those holding my nose and acknowledging I’m contributing to a problem.
“I spend hours configuring services so I can have a second sandwich with lunch twice a month.” - Proud little nerd with poor cost benefits analysis.
I’m very happy to skip a fast food trip to not extend my day job for .000005% of my salary.
Ohhhh maybe I’ll save up for a bigger house now that I have opened up budget for that avacado toast!
You are so cool. I am very impressed.
You’re the one out here calling people names, take a moment and think about your comments and behavior. You can only be accountable for your own actions.
Maybe if you don’t want some random person shitting on your stupid comments, you shouldn’t be so derogatory about different use cases. Think about that and how you ended up here being lectured about being a dick on the Internet.
I made a general comment, and my opinion has not changed. You didn’t have to make it personally about you, but you decided to come defend your honor against a nonspecific shitpost. Just like MY opinion is mine, yours is YOURS, and you didn’t need to jump in here.
Heck, I specifically addressed my initial comment to “lazy, doormat Spotify users” and for some reason you decided I was talking about you.
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I dumped it months ago and went back to Deezer.
And?
Ditched Spotify and bought myself a galleon and a tricorner hat instead. Haven’t looked back.
Lidarr + Navidrome + Feishin + Metube
Mullvad for acquiring, TailScale and Symfonium for listening while away from home
This sounds like a lot of setup but probably took a few hours in total to set up the various docker images and get them working together.
I spend my saved money on vinyls, official merch, and SoundCloud or BandCamp purchases for my local library.
A few hours, when you know what you’re doing. A few month when you have to figure it out, and maybe even then, it won’t work, or you’ll have lost a lot of money trying.
This should be a lot easier to do, than it is
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Fair, I should clarify: the few hours is for the music parts only. The homelab set up could easily stretch to months … And I’d still recommend doing it to most, it’s great fun setting it up!
Yarrr! hello there fellow matey! 🏴☠️ Sounds good but, do you also set this up individually on your wife’s and kids phones and devices and keep them updated?
I mostly don’t! The kids are too young, the wife has Home Assistant, Symfonium and has web shortcuts for the arrs. Haven’t had any complaints since I got 2FA and external domain mapped for Hass.
My friend has had good results with jellyseerr with his wife and kids though haven’t got to the point of needing it myself.
Out of curiosity, what is your experience/usage like with this? Spotify is very easy to justify if you heavily use some of their features because there’s not a way (that I know of) to replicate them. For example:
- Shared playlists
- Universal links directly to songs
- Playback control from a second device
- Group listen/jam
- Zero overhead for search and discovery. From someone mentioning a band you can find, sample, and add to a playlist in 30s or less
- Public playlist discovery
- Easy crawling. Eg. browsing from Song -> Featured Artist -> Album -> Record label -> Related Artists etc…
From my usage, sacrificing a majority of those is a non-starter because my Spotify usage has become more than mp3 hosting and organization.
I scrobble with Last.FM for music discovery.
I don’t really use social features and not sure if they’re popular in homelab land. Some people I know share a Plex server.
I’m not a purist about these things tbh, I have an Xbox live subscription, among others, to use social features for pretty much the same reason you’re using Spotify. I might have stuck with them if I was using them more.
One of the main thing Spotify has going for it is indie artists, without a label. And so a large portion of my collection will not be on services like Tidal or Apple Music
It’s cheaper if you have 5 friends and take the family plan. I’m paying ~€2 a month for the last couple of years.
of course there are ways round it, but that’s not my point. Getting expensive
Getting expensive would be the wrong wording. The price of subscription is simply following inflation. Otherwise as long as the price stays the same while people get raises, you could say it’s getting cheaper.
But it could becoming increasingly not worth it. Depends how much % of your pay is spent on the subscription long term, as both of them go up. If the % is growing, then it’s bad, if it’s mostly the same or going down, thats good.
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And yet, despite the subscription price or its raise, Spotify still insists on forcing promoted content on your homepage.
