I wouldn’t expect Spotify to just let people use premium services for free. Fuck Spotify, right there with y’all on that, but this isn’t egregious or unethical behavior for them.

Use Spotify since it has a free tier, for music discovery if you like, but get FLACs and self host. I like Plex for that and it works with what I use.

Music is actually one thing I will always pay for. I use Apple Music because they pay artists more and they offer better quality. And they don’t care, if you’re on a family plan, if not all your family lives with you. I also self host because backups are nice and I can’t access Apple Music at work. I can, however, access Plex. (It’s not that Apple is blocked. It’s that Apple requires 2FA and I can’t bring my iPhone into work.) But, point is either way, self host and stream everywhere. Sucks that Plex went up; I got Lifetime for $80 years ago. (Now it’s $250.)

[–] cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone 25 points 1 day ago (3 children)

nah fuck them; they pay their artists squat but pay millions to white supremacist conspiracy theorist podcasters

[–] lichtmetzger@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

They also randomly delete albums and state increased playcount by AI as the reason for removal, and they also allow random dudes publishing remixes on your own artist profile, because there are no checks in place. You can just fill out the artist name in a text field and publish a song:

collapsed inline media

The artist KARRA recently made a video about it which went viral.
(She also made this meme release up top to prove how broken the system is.)

So fuck Spotify in every way you can. They don't deserve the money, since they're clearly doing nothing for the artists with it.

[–] cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 20 hours ago

Yeah, they write smaller checks than Spotify. Spotify has more subscribers. But Apple pays more per stream.

Spotify sponsors Joe Rogan, and Apple's CEO sucks up to Trump. There are no winners here with regards to politics.

Some say you can't separate music from politicians, and I suppose that's fair. I still pay for music, and if my same ten bucks a month or whatever it is now is gonna go in some small part to some bad fuckers, if more goes to the artists with one than the other, I can consider that the lesser of two evils.

Though you're not gonna hurt Apple and their Trump boot licking by not paying for their music streaming. Nah, you do that by only buying the phone you need, when you need it, not a new one every year like some people like to do. You can only hurt Spotify by not buying Spotify Premium. I like my iPhone okay, but it wasn't as big of an upgrade as the last one, and my next smartphone probably won't be an iPhone at all. Though I won't need to make that decision for another five or six years.

[–] toothpaste_sand@lemy.nl 2 points 1 day ago

This is the right take.

[–] Calirath@sh.itjust.works 4 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

Music is actually one thing I will always pay for. I use Apple Music because they pay artists more and they offer better quality.

If paying artists and hi-res audio are your primary metrics, why not Tidal or Qobuz?

[–] cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

That's a good point. But the issue is, it's always going to be a moving target. Every year I could reassess the streaming services and quit the one I'm on and go with the one that best meets my needs each year. And each year it could be a different one. Ethically, that would be the superior option. But, I'm not perfect, I'm barely ideal, and I use a family plan to help justify my cost. Sure, I pay more, but I also get my wife and a couple other family members the gift of perpetual music as well.

So if every year, or every, however often, I were to reassess, and drop one service, and start another one and ask them to dump the app and get a new app and let me add them on that, all of us are losing our entire library every time we switch across. It's a lot of work. Sure, there are tools to convert your stuff over, but it's still a bit of work.

At this point it's not about who's the actual absolute best at the things that matter the most, at this point it's just which one's good enough for our needs. Also Apple is one of the few streaming services that doesn't give a hoot if your family all lives with you. We had Spotify before and at that point — this was years ago — you had to retype the address every month, and if, say, my niece mistyped it, she'd lose access to her premium benefits for a month. At one point I just sent her an email with the exact text to copy and it was fine, but like if she accidentally left a space at the end or something, if the text didn't match 100%, it was this whole thing — and of course I wasn't compensated for a family member being denied their benefit for the month. Apple does not care. You add the person and they get the benefit without ever having to physically be at that address. I just hope that doesn't change.

(Also, I think Napster pays artists the most now, ironically?)

[–] Calirath@sh.itjust.works 1 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

I appreciate your candour and time given to the response. The (superior) alternatives in respect to the given objectives were given as these were also concerns shared by me and at the time of my personal search they were the top contenders. Napster I recall eliminating early due to bountiful issues and subpar features, however I admit their state in 2025 is unknown to me.

At day's end, the goal of the ideal is never summited by the well-worn path of least resistance. Our thoughts whisper "at least it's better than XYZ" so that our conscience, though we know it a lie, is lightened. But I'm blathering on the piracy Lemmy so I can be ignored.

[–] fu@libranet.de 2 points 9 hours ago

@Calirath @cerebralhawks I'm all for paying for music that is worth listening to. That's why I buy CD's. Then I own it and I can do whatever I want with it.

[–] Arcane2077@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If taking down other peoples' work on fake and easily abusable DMCA grounds "isn't egregious or unethical behavior", your opinion worth less than the dogshit it was written in

[–] cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com -1 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

Okay, so aside from the fact that you're stalking me across communities for whatever reason — if I write a loophole in your employer's code, like a patch, that keeps them from having to pay you, and they like not having to pay you, I haven't done anything egregious or unethical? Or it's only egregious or unethical because it's happening to a company you don't like?

If the law doesn't apply without prejudice blindly and equally for all, what good is it? And who decides who is deserving? Some pathetic Internet stalker? So given your lack of ethics, would you then agree it would be fair to take your wages as well? Or do you draw the line between companies and people, or how much someone makes? Because we might find some common ground there. But on the surface, it appears you are the one throwing dog shit from that which is covering you.

[–] IronKrill@lemmy.ca 1 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

~~if I write a loophole in your employer's code, like a patch, that keeps them from having to pay you, and they like not having to pay you, I haven't done anything egregious or unethical?~~

~~I don't really care about the ethics in the Revanced situation nor the greater adblocking scene. That's a moral question for individuals to answer. From a legal perspective, I don't agree with the removal of original code. While I don't know of a legal precedent for the digital age, the closest physical comparison I can make is to the distribution of a lock-pick or a gun. And we don't prosecute lock-pick manufacturers for selling to a thief, we prosecute the thief for breaking into someone's home with it. Exempting cases where the actual product is illegal, such as specific gun models, but as far as I am aware there is no such law against any software (yet). Even if there were, I doubt it would all under the perview of DMCA. Thus my reasoning for saying this is an abuse of DMCA and my reason for distaste towards the situation.~~

~~Bringing this back to your original comment:~~

~~I wouldn’t expect Spotify to just let people use premium services for free. Fuck Spotify, right there with y’all on that, but this isn’t egregious or unethical behavior for them.~~

~~I wouldn't expect them to either! But I also don't expect them to try and take down material they have no right to take down and I would consider that to be a bit 'egregious'.~~

Edit: You know, I should have actually done the research before commenting. Anyway, I looked further into DMCA intent and it covers some circumvention tools which may(?) apply to adblockers, although I haven't heard of that being tested in court before. Leaving my comment here since it's already federated anyway.

[–] Arcane2077@sh.itjust.works 0 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

I’ve never seen you before. Get help

[–] cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

And yet, you posted two comments to me, on two different communities, on two different instances, completely hostile in both of them.

You should get help. I can only imagine what you're like in real life. Either you're very meek when you're not behind a keyboard, people walk all over you so you bully people online, or you're exactly the same in real life and you hurt people around you. Maybe that's not the kind of person you want to be, either way. If I'm wrong and it is, nothing I say will convince you otherwise. But on the off chance there's any decency in you, take your own advice and talk to somebody.

[–] Arcane2077@sh.itjust.works 0 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

I think you’re letting your imagination get the better of you to protect your ego from self-reflection. All I said was your opinion was dogshit, and it remains so. No amount of fiction about me will change that

[–] IronKrill@lemmy.ca 3 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (2 children)

Except that ReVanced is not distributing anything of Spotify's (to my knowledge). By patching Spotify's app on the user device instead of providing downloads to pre-patched apps, the only thing ReVanced is providing is their own code. The reason they use a patcher system is exactly to avoid frivilous abuses of DMCA such as this. They are not infringing Spotify's copyright in any way.

[–] LiveLM@lemmy.zip 3 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

By patching Spotify’s app on the user device instead of providing downloads to pre-patched apps

Android's sideloading changes were done to end this, you cannot change my mind.

[–] cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

I'll just refer you to what I said to the other guy. So if you see this, you should be able to click through to the thread, see what I said to the other guy, and read my reasoning there. No need to split the argument/debate into two threads.

[–] IronKrill@lemmy.ca 1 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

Fair enough. I actually posted my own comment after I downvoted Arcane's due to their overly agressive and absolutist tone. It's hard to have a discussion when personal attacks are in every reply.