Technology

Let's say it together: Enshittification

It's been long underway for Spotify; raising prices is just the lastest step.

Just saying; cancelling Spotify and changing to Qobuz takes five minutes. Sound quality is amazingly better, the curated recommendations are done by human beings that love music, and 'just works' with everything that Spotify does. (For us, anyway.) It's French, rather than Norwegian-American like Tidal is, if you're trying to stop spending money on everything US at the moment, too.

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.

Man, music is one of those things where file sizes, quality and performance all conspire to make both offline media and self-hosting so viable. I never understood Spotify's role.

I mean, you can like physical media and understand why Netflix was more convenient than digging through enormous TV DVD boxsets. But who the hell didn't have a MP3 dump of hudreds of CDs by the time Spotify started being a thing?

I'm quite unhappy with spotify. I don't care about the price, but it keeps repeating the same and same music again, and the percentage of crappy AI music is increasing. You can clearly hear it. Their client isn't open source, and it's just a wrapped website. It sucks.

Friendly reminder that your “legally acquired” library of FLAC files never raises its subscription prices!

Also Daniel Ek is investing in AI war company:

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/17/spotifys-daniel-ek-leads-investment-in-defense-startup-helsing.html

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.

My main beef with spotify is their attempt to privatize and monopolize podcasting.

Spotify offers audio hosting and a large userbase, but does not provide rss. A few people I like are trapped in this, and I have no way to listen to their shows apart from using spotify. They refuse to understand that this is an issue, just like youtubers are ok with lock-in.

Podcasting infrastructure is not monopolized yet, like video is. It is even bigger problem for me than underpayid artists.

So boycotting, and if you undersrand that, you should too.

spotify pays me half a cent per stream, the profit margins for them must be fucking insane. and the music sounds like shit. I'd much rather people pirate it than support these leeches

if you want to support artists you like, buy the music, ideally on bandcamp. if you do have to steam it, Deezer at the very least won't vandalize the audio

Just leaving this here from the excellent !PurchaseWithPurpose@lemmy.world

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When I got tired of Spotify's shitty practices, I looked into other streaming services that could compare, and honestly I didn't like any other offerings. So I said fuck it, I'll just download everything and play it locally.

What made the jump easy was a service called Spotidown, I even paid for the ad free version it was so convenient. You literally copy the spotify link for songs and playlists and it let's you download it. There's a couple different services like this, that will make the switch easier.

spotify lost me as a customer as soon as I learned that they gifted 150k to Trump for his inaugaration party

There is a ReVanced version of Spotify, for people who didn't already know. Block ads and get premium features for free: https://revanced.app/

(There's also YT Music ReVanced)

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!"

You mean replacing a bunch of people with AI didn’t work?

Fediverse has quite alot of indie musicians. Check out LABR http://labr.online/ or the indie beat https://theindiebeat.fm/ and try some new music and support creatives directly.

Spotify has a become a shit show lately. I don't like that the CEO is supporting a genocidal state, the platform is full of fake AI artists and playlists. Artists aren't getting paid enough. the prices hikes and the app just feels so bloated with unnecessary bullshit. Because of this, I switched to self hosting my own music server (Navidrome, and Lidarr) and I use the symphonium app on Android. Really happy with that solution

Tidal seems to be a pretty good alternative.

Also, you can use some FOSS alternatives like SimpMusic, InnerTune (or some fork), ViMusic (or a fork).

For PC you can use the FOSS YouTube Music alternative.

Still no lossless?

Well my decision to cancel Spotify last month is already paying off.

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.

anything to sustain the hateful joe roegan podcasts on the platform.

I'm paying £20/m for a lossless family plan from Deezer... That's how they get you 😭. Now I'd have to apologize to my family members if I took away their subscription. Used to be around £17 when I started a few years back.

I do not recommend getting a family plan.

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.

What pisses me off is that I can't have a family plaln associated with my main Google Workspace account. Because it's a Workspace account. So if I want to have a family plan for YouTube Music I need to have it associated with a gmail account not my workspace account. That's such bullshit, if you ask me!