Welcome back 🏴☠️🦜
as an independent artist I just wanna add: the best thing you can do to support artists and bands is to buy directly / on bandcamp. spotify pays shit to artists, you need millions of listeners to get any meaningful amount of cash
of course that isn’t a sustainable option if you listen to a lot of different music. so piracy is an option that I wouldn’t mind. hell, if you like my stuff and just write to me I’ll send you mp3s for free
not in a lossless format?
This exactly. Pirating is still preventing the artists from getting paid for their work. Choose to buy albums from companies like Bandcamp over just simply stealing their work.
Don’t threaten, just do it!
I don’t get why people are so stubborn to move away from corporate products.
I was dragging my feet because I really liked the algorithmic features. As much as I hate “AI” being jammed into everything these days, I really liked their DJ feature, and the “crate a playlist from a prompt” was a lot of fun to play with!
My favorite generated playlist was “Determined music for poopwalking home from Taco Bell”
That being said, they’ve been corrupting their music exploration tools with corporate interest for a while, so it’s been becoming less desirable as a result
Personally, the open source community’s aversion to algorithms is what’s holding me back. Say what you will about them, but I’ve found many great songs thanks to Spotify’s algo.
Soulseeks recommendation algorithm is top notch, almost organic. You click the ‘browse users files’ button.
If you’re just looking for an engine that recommends you music based off your likes, the FOSS community could utilize the Music Genomoe Project to build a tool too do that based one a folder or Playlist of music provided to it. I would be surprised if there already wasn’t a FOSS tool to do that.
I hate Spotify and would like to stop paying them even 1/5th of a family subscription. But I have researched alternatives and haven’t found one that meets my need to manage offline files, playlists, and the current playback session across many (and I mean many) devices.
people like having their stuff.
Well… with streaming services people don’t actually have anything, because nothing in there is theirs to own ;)
sure. though it would be easier to talk someone into jumping off a bridge than to convince them to give up something they mostly hate but enjoy one crucial feature of
…funnily enough, it may actually be better for musicians if people left spotify, considering the absolute pennies they pay per stream.
Don’t threaten, just do it. Enshittification must end.
The only reason we have mainstream paid video streaming now is because early Netflix was genuinely better than dodgy, pop-up riddled mirrors on movie4k.to. The convenience was well worth 8 bucks a month. Same for Spotify.
Fast forward 10 years and Spotify wants me to pay 15 €, scan my face and listen to forced podcast ads AND pay extra for paywalled audiobooks that used to be free? Meet my good old friend youtube-downloader, then.
The news can’t easily report on users actually returning to piracy; who would admit to it? And how would you get data on it? Much easier to truthfully report on users who talk about returning to piracy.
Should never have left it behind to be honest.
Age verification is a great success I see. I feel so much safer now with this shit in place so kids can’t watch porn…
…on major/regulated sites only.
The worst was watching porn on spotify…
It has absolutely nothing to do with kids watching porn.
Of course.
*so that the government can say kids won’t watch porn.
Rule 1 of computers that everyone who has taught an ICT class learns - if little Timmy wants titties, he finds a way.
God forbid people teach their kids sex/getting off is a drug and can be abused.
Who taught you sex is a drug? As long as words mean their definitions, it’s categorically not. Plus it’s probably kinda harmful to pile on the stigma already surrounding sex by conflating it with drugs and all the stigma that comes with that.
Hopefully I’m wrong, but it’s kinda giving a nofap pseudoscience red flag to me.
Parents definitely should be teaching their kids about this stuff at the appropriate time, but they should stick to the facts.
First they came for the sex, then they came after the drugs. Now they’re trying to take my rock and roll
I’ve heard music is a drug, too. It was all drugs, all along. We probably should’ve known, honestly.
Life is a drug if you hit it right
I thought life was a highway?
Life is the highway you boof
Did you know that rock and roll is actually a plate of spaghetti?
Spaghetti = Carbs = Sugar = Addictive Drug
yeah but I lost my poor meatball.
A fellow Bread Harrity super fan I see? I’d like to get all up in that beautiful man’s wet spaghetti 🍝
Sex on drugs is awesome…
I mean… it is a rush of dopamine and can become addictive. Same as a videogame or gambling though. Not a drug but can get unhealthy if it leads to maladaptive daily functioning.
I mean, fuck Spotify and all that, but this one is really the UK government’s doing.
And soon, this shit will come to every country. They’re all drafting laws to mandate real age verification for adult content. The UK is just the first to implement it.
I mean, fuck it. At this point we might as well put our passport numbers in the HTTP headers.
Coming to a pop up near you. If they even bother to ask any more.
I think there are going to be a whole lot of phishing and blackmail scams in the future, preying on the stupid computer illiterate masses putting in their personal information into fake “age verifiers” to access porn or other adult content.
It’s a good thing it’s so easy to tell them from the “trustworthy” ones…
Its not like every industrie can somehow lobby every consumer right away when someone wants to make a new law… oh wait they do…
Actually, I don’t think this is industry mandated. I don’t think it’s in the interest of tech and content companies to create more friction to access their services. This one seems to have more to do with the governments wanting to exert more control over online affairs, and of course, over its citizens.
Yea my point was if people stopped using the apps then the big players will lobby the governemt to revert shit like that. But i also think that long term all big players would love to normalize taking your picture to open their app. Every bit of information they can sell is a win for them.
Ah I see, misunderstood your point then.
I guess that’s also why Google is going to use some kind of AI to determine whether or not a profile is underage. That way, existing adult users of their services are (most likely) not affected.
In my opinion, draconian government overreach in matters of civil liberties is one of the few instances where we should be on the side of big tech companies.
what are “spotify fans”? Spotify paid 150k $ for Trump’s inauguration party, f them. They do not deserve my money
I left Spotify for many reasons including this. They’ve only proven that they do not care about artists at all. I remember before I left, many of the tracks that came up “based on my playlist” were just random AI generated crap.
ah from shady porn sites, like spotify and wikipedia. definitely protect kids from porn there. /s
Is wikipedia on the list? I see reddit is, lol. We might see an influx soon.
not yet, but the wikimedia foundation has been fighting against it expecting that it would be a class 1 site and require it.
We have to protect wikipedia
Here’s one way to help: https://kiwix.org/en/about-us/#our-story
Download Wikipedia to your own device. If it’s ever blocked or taken down you still have access and can help share information with others.
You can download different versions (e.g. without images) and different languages based on your needs.
There’s other resources available via kiwix as well but I’ve not really explored them to be honest
Does it run a local web server or is it all static files? Is it searchable?
We turn various online educational contents (such as Wikipedia, for example) into ZIM files, and these can be opened by Kiwix even if you have no connectivity whatsoever.
https://flathub.org/apps/org.kiwix.desktop
The ZIM file format is an open file format that stores website content for offline usage.[1] The format is defined by the openZIM project, which also supports an open-source ZIM reader called Kiwix. The format is primarily used to store the contents of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, including articles, full-text search indices and auxiliary files.[2][3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZIM_(file_format)
Edit:
All content files are indexed and compressed in ZIM format, which makes them smaller, but leaves them easy to search and selectively decompress.
The ZIM files are then opened with Kiwix, which looks and behaves like a web browser, or with a suitably enabled conventional browser. Kiwix offers full text search, tabbed navigation, and the option to export articles to PDF and HTML.[8]
So I feel like I’m now hearing more successful pushes for censorship through this stuff.
Just last week I learned how Texas has a bill that makes it so if anyone ever invested in green technology that they wouldn’t be allowed
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/08/24/texas-boycott-companies-fossil-fuels/
I saw a post saying /r/period required an age check.
They’re gonna censor as much as they can with this.
That makes no sense, surely everyone has invested in green energy through workplace retirement plans, no?
I already moved to piracy for music because these days Spotify isn’t even giving the normal shuffle option for free users
Yeah I know it’s cheap but I’m a student so…
It’s a load of bullshit, for a start the ISP has my details and should be able to attest my connection is rented by someone of legal age and it should be up to me what I let my children (assuming I have any) see and not see on that connection. I already had to click the “yes just give me the porn damn it” agreement on my mobile phone which was less likely to be randomly shared unmonitored and now this overbearing crap. I’ll just avoid sites and services that require this.
I’ll just avoid sites and services that require this.
It’s not the site wanting to do it. It’s a requirement from Parliament in the UK.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Safety_Act_2023
The Online Safety Act 2023[1][2][3] (c. 50) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom to regulate online content. It was passed on 26 October 2023 and gives the relevant Secretary of State the power to designate, suppress, and record a wide range of online content that is deemed “illegal” or “harmful to children”.[4][5]
The Act creates a new duty of care for online platforms, requiring them to take action against illegal content, or legal content that could be “harmful” to children where children are likely to access it. Platforms failing this duty would be liable to fines of up to £18 million or 10% of their annual turnover, whichever is higher. It also empowers Ofcom to block access to particular websites. It obliges large social media platforms not to remove, and to preserve access to, journalistic or “democratically important” content such as user comments on political parties and issues.
I mean, you don’t have to go there if you want, but it’s probably Parliament you want to be irritated with, not websites following British laws.
If I am paying for my account personally, with a card in my name, what more do they need?
They want to scan your face to get as many images of people of stated ages to feed into their facial recognition system. Do not for one moment think it is for anything else.
Edit: it is like how Facebook had a 10 years ago you looked like this! Post a new comparison photo today!’ Specifically because they want to know how people age for their AI shit.
Well sure, the real reason is always data harvesting.
Yeah, they want to be able to ‘People that look like This listen to This’ so that advertisers have more options when they are locking down commercials.
Its as if law makers don’t learn from history. Do they not know what happened in the 90s and early 2000s when stores wouldn’t sell M rated video games or CDs with mature content labels? We found ways to get around that. We would go to stores that didn’t check or care, got our older sibling or friend to buy it for us. We burned copies of our friends CDs, or downloaded stuff off line with Limewire and Napster.
Same shit when there was prohibition in the US. People drove cars across the great lakes to bring alcohol into the US. People brewed there own spirits in bathtubs with radiator coils.
If people want to anomalously watch their favorite weird kinky shit or listing to music they like, they’re going to find a way. And, if the easiest way to do that is through piracy, that is what they are going to do.
Let this be a reminder to never turn away from piracy. It needs to constantly be in the background and if any company gets like they always do, then it comes back out. But if we let the knowledge fade away then it’s impossible to rebuild it.
Piracy preserves media.
Piracy preserves art.
Piracy makes sure, that future generations still have access to the creations of humanity.
Data hoarding is a service to the public.
“Keep circulating the tapes!”
I initially perceived piracy similarly to how or perceive reading about archaeology and such, so the fact that someone is sincere in hating p2p copying and calling it immoral just felt preposterous.
Yet now it seems plenty of normies will agree. Then go listen to something they didn’t pay for on YouTube or Facebook or whatever, because “everybody uses that”. What “everybody uses” is fine, see. What they condemn me the pirate for is using ed2k, torrents and such other technologies. Even when I’m literally downloading public domain stuff or abandonware.
It doesn’t take much for media though to parade out the “lil guy and change the opinion of people about how your basically attacking small indie creators”
