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platforming someone like joe roegan,
paying next to nothing for small music artists, and enshittifying with ads and other things,
I hate spotify with a passion. Despite this, there are a few reasons I’m still on it:
- Sharing music is trivial (less so now due to link cleaning)
- I love exploring new music and the Discover Weekly feature has been quite effective.
- Flawless Last.FM compatibility.
If anyone has alternative(s) they recommend I’d love to try them out.
alternatives? tidal / apple music / deezer
1 tidal’s share feature links to other music services too (you get the option to pick whatever when you share something so no one gets left out) granted, they use a service to scrape other services to know what’s where and who has what, but still
2 I have both tidal and apple music, and used to have spotify - imo the former two are just better at recommending new stuff close to your preferences as well as adjacents. you also get recommendations for stuff you don’t normally listen to in a separate playlist, so the spread is there. people just haven’t tried to live with them long enough, or just refuse to believe there are other things out there that can be better, or both
3 tidal is, apple music is, and also deezer
Discover Weekly feature has been quite effective.
That used to be me.
I listen mostly to old swing, jazz, etc. It was fine. How can you mess it up?
And now I’m getting damn AI slop, pretending to be 1930’s music.
I didn’t watch this, but i just cancelled Spotify for my own reasons. None of which cost. So I’m just going to assume everyone is on the same page.
I’ll tldr this without even watching the video:
- Spotify is not paying artists enough / not paying artists at all if streams are under a certain amount; the gist is it’s industry fuckery though at play
- Spotify CEO is funding a military company
- Some people are fed up with music they like being removed from the platform, whether by the artist or otherwise.
- Plus above, increased move to ownership/physical media as people realize continued monthly costs are not worth it.
For me it’s all of these plus the ICE recruitment ads.
…People listen to ads with their music?
If you don’t pay for Spotify Premium, and you don’t have an ad blocker, Spotify Free is riddled with VERY LOUD AND DISRUPTIVE ADS.
Quiet Sufjan Stevens song fades to silence
”PISSING ALL BY YOURSELF HANDSOME?”
I only used Spotify briefly years ago. I had no idea you could actually block the audio ads they send you? That’s pretty cool if so.
It’s surprisingly easy. I use uBlock Origin in Waterfox (Firefox fork). The audio ads still “play”, but silently.
Not me, but i guess so. Either way there’s no way I’m supporting that.
My phones DNS does it. I still usually use one of the free modded APIs though, because the lack of control is annoying.
Do you hate brown people?
Do you enjoy cosplaying like a weekend warrior? Then come down to your local ICE office and get paid by following your two passions!I guess… Haven’t heard it.
Haven’t watched it either, but it’s a great list. I’d add
- the embracing of AI slop
- the great algorithm relentlessly pushing the same 10 tracks down my throat in a library with 10000+ songs
Spotify has also pushed AI music more, as it means they don’t have to pay the artists.
don’t forget they gave $250m to Bro Rogan. weird priorities for a music streaming service.
Plus above, increased move to ownership/physical media as people realize continued monthly costs are not worth it.
For me it’s the opposite. I tend to get really into a pandora station for a few months, then get tired of it and it’s almost permanently played out to me. Even going back to it years later it will feel old. For someone like me, physical media just doesn’t make sense. Paying pandora $5/month to have ad free (and DJ free) music when I’m driving or exercising is worth it to me.
Pandora has been and hopefully will always be fabulous.
Whatever the ‘music DNA’ system they use predates a lot of algorithms and works incredibly well.
Whatever works, but music, or the music the algorithm provides for you, being permanently played out after a few months, does indicate the algorithm is not providing you with music of any depth.
People used to listen to albums for many years, or longer. I still listen to music I grew up with my parents listening to.
Like I said that’s cool if it works for you - great, but I think you might be missing out on depth. I would say this is a big check mark against streaming services. It might be that many people now consuming music this way are not really getting the music listening experience they would have pre-streaming services. (Don’t get me wrong there have always been people who never really had that deep a connection to music, and just listened to whatever was in the charts at the time.)
why everybody is leaving “the thing”
look inside
net profit margin doubles
The ICE ads FINALLY pushed my wife to leave the platform.
Fuck Spotify. I’ve blocked Spotify for anyone connected to our WiFi. Spotify. ChatGPT, Deepseek and other AI shit. And Twitter, Tesla, Spacex and soon also Tiktok. Whtehouse.gov shows .com instead (childish, but brilliant). We have lots of guests all year doing activities and accommodation here. If anyone wants to do this crap, they can do it over their own data.
Love this.
What alternatives are people using? I switched to Amazons service a while back but didn’t like it at all.
I’ve been happy with Tidal. Their library is extensive, you get better sound quality and it’s cheaper than Spotify. No podcasts or audiobooks but I use different services for those anyway.
This question deserves better reaponses. If you can’t or don’t want to self host, Tidal and Qobuz are probably the best alternatives. Tidal doesn’t do podcasts though so if you need to replace that as well, take a look at Antenna pod which as a bonus is available on F-Droid.
MP3s and FLAC. The only thing the services offer that’s even remotely useful is finding new music that I might like but… gasp I was doing that before the internet, too.
I’ve been converting my FLACs to Opus 256 and have been very happy. I use copyparty to host the music on my PC and stream it to my phone when I need to.
What’s the benefit of Opus 256? Haven’t heard of that before.
It offers the same clarity as MP3 320 with a smaller file size It’s just more efficient compression
Is it like V0?
Very similar but V0 is less efficient because it’s bogged down by maintaining comparability. Opus will typically use somewhere between 25-50% less data while maintaining the same level of audio quality.
A couple of weeks ago I opened Spotify and SoulSeek on split screen and began the process of looking through my library and downloading all my music. Then once I was done, I went on Bandcamp and bought a few albums from some of my favourite artists that I couldn’t find on SoulSeek.
It took me a couple of hours over the course of about 3 days, but it was well worth it in the end. I now have everything I had on Spotify saved onto my phone and PC. It feels very liberating, and I can now delete my Spotify account.
Tidal. It’s okay but the windows desktop app is buggy. Keeps playing a different track than it shows on the UI. Search isn’t great. Android app lacks voice input support.
I have been self hosting since 2008. Went through around 7 different apps since then, and I am currently using Navidrome, which is a fork of Subsonic with the android phone app Symfonium. For a while there self hosting looked pretty bleak around 2020, but it seems to have found a resurgence which I love because the development has been big again leading to more modern looking players and a lot of great new functionality.
Symfonium is awesome! I use Jellyfin for my media server.
I have gone with a combination of buying/downloading music that I really enjoy and using Qobuz. The quality of music is great, but the selection and discovery just aren’t as good as Spotify.
I set up a Plex server with all my old media, I downloaded my old music collection from my google data (if you ever had your own files stored in Google Play back when it wasn’t just a store but also a media player, it’s still downloadable from Google). I use the plex amp app, it looks like a Spotify skin but works with my personal collection. It’s been pretty great, I run it off an old beat up gaming laptop and 20tb USB drive.
Now leave YouTube
Spotify is the only monthly subscription I have.
I’m happy with it.
I mean it’s evil but. You pick your battles I guess.
It’s literally the worst app on my phone. Nothing works properly.
