Spotify is officially raising its Premium subscription rates in the US come July, following reports of the move in April. The platform is increasing its Individual plan from $11 to $12 monthly and its Duo plan from $15 to $17 monthly — the same jump as last year’s $1 and $2 price hikes, respectively. However, its Family plan is going up by a whopping $3, increasing from $17 to $20 monthly. The only subscribers getting a break are students, who will continue to pay $6 monthly.

Spotify announced the price hikes less than a year after its previous one last July. Before that, Spotify hadn’t raised its fees since launching a decade and a half ago. I guess it was too optimistic to hope the next increase would also take that long, especially with Spotify’s continued focus (and money dump) on audiobooks.

Premium subscribers should receive an email from Spotify in the next month detailing the price hike and providing a link to cancel their plan if they would prefer to do so. Users currently on a trial period for Spotify will get one month at $11 after it ends before being moved up to a $12 monthly fee.

  • foggy@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    I’m all for pirating, but tbh music streaming apps are a service that is still in the “worth it” range. Not where Spotify is going, but, maintaining a library of high quality music with all the assets, and serving it to all your devices over the Internet is not a small feat to do securely.

    I’ll probably switch to tidal for now while I start building up my library to include stuff beyond what I like…

    • PixelAlchemist@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      You should check out Plexamp while you bridge the gap. It has tidal support built in, and you can self-host your own collection as you build it up. Then when you’re done with tidal, you don’t have to learn or download a new app.

      • JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl
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        4 months ago

        There is no point to self hosting music streaming in my opinion.

        Just have syncthing sync your music folder on your SD card to your server. Everything local and available when you want it.

        Plex is slowly being enshittified too it seems, just slower.

          • JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl
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            4 months ago

            I do, but the music streaming on jellyfin is nowhere near as nice as plexamp.

            Just syncing all of your files locally is far superior to either unless your library is like >250GB.

            Streaming is a different use case than playing your own music which is essentially what plexamp and jellyamp are doing with extra steps. There are much better local music players than either option.

      • li10@feddit.uk
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        4 months ago

        Done. Until it can’t find a decent quality option for an album you’re searching for.

        A guy I know decided to move away from Spotify and pirate music. The amount of effort he went through means it’s something I’ll probably never try.

      • wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Just some perspective: I’ve been self-hosting stuff for 7y now, started with plex on a nas. I have tried a couple times to get the *arr stack working, one at a time and fuck me it’s complex and the risk of fucking up the config and data crossing the clearnet without a VPN, noooope fuck right off with that. That risk/reward just is too skewed for me.

        • Norgur@fedia.io
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          4 months ago

          it’s not that complex, really. Yet, the variant I described doesn’t do anything torrenty. It scrapes the songs from tidal.

        • Norgur@fedia.io
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          4 months ago

          Since all music services I’ve tried so far are laughably shit at that anyway, Last.fm is your friend. Besides, Plexamp tries to get you into a Tidal subscription and suggests things from there, so you’ll get stuff here nad there.