I don't get why anyone would use the free tier - not being able to choose songs would actually drive me insane, let alone the ads - but $11 monthly for essentially all the music anyone could ever want, plus solid playlists and recommendations, is a perfectly good value for me. Admittedly, I listen to music all the time and it's a pretty big part of my life, so it's an easy sell.
I guess the free tier is still an improvement over radio, but regardless, producing and distributing music has costs, and I'm more than happy to pay for it. Given that Spotify isn't even profitable, having lost about a billion dollars last year, I'm not sure how long this situation will last, but for the time being, I really don't mind it.
11$/month is 132$/yr. That's a significant amount of money - about the same as my car insurance, broadband or phone bill. Putting a bunch of good music in a playlist and letting it roll is nice enough, especially with a 3rd party app to mute ads automatically. Besides, I don't feel sorry for Spotify. The reason they're hemorrhaging money isn't a lack of profitability, but due to the massive royalties going to record companies.
E: spelling
For the median American that works full-time, who earns around $56,000, the cost of Spotify is 0.2% of their income.
Obviously everyone is in their own financial situation and for some people that will still be a burden. But for sake of comparison, in 1989, the average cost of cable TV was $18, and that's of course in 1989 dollars. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that $11 for unlimited access to basically all music at any time is a pretty good value for the money.
That said, if it is still onerous to someone, they're obviously not in ideal circumstances and I'm really not gonna fault them for just pirating.
Swedish student (Median full-time wage here is 35’790 USD equivalents before an avg ~30% payroll tax), not taking loans, working part time teaching (and occasionally nursing) to make ends meet, so yeah, pretty cash strapped atm.
Also, note that I already do have access to all the music in the world for free via youtube if I want something specific, or spotify for “radio style” infinite listening. 1440SEK/132USD is for added conveniences. No real need to pirate anything.
If $132 a year for unlimited access to pretty much all the music in the world is a significant amount of money to you then Spotify is the least of your worries.
Also your car insurance is $130 a year? What are you driving, a cardboard box and only in your living room? Your broadband only costs $132 a year?
Press X to doubt.
Swedish student (Median wage here is 35'790 USD equivalents), not taking loans, working part time teaching (and occasionally nursing) to make ends meet, so yeah, pretty cash strapped atm.
As for my car, not a cardboard box, but apparently there are 25 packs that cost as much as I bought it for five years ago. Just the mandatory traffic insurance, but it ends up at almost exactly same price.
Also, note that I already do have access to all the music in the world for free via youtube if I want something specific, or spotify for "radio style" infinite listening. 1440SEK/132USD is for added conveniences.
Spotify isn't the only company offering a monthly fee though.
It's convenient. It's where all my playlists are... that said, I'm open to alternatives?
Listen on YT with adblock
Download audio with Newpipe (OPUS 160kbps)
Manage files with Amaze
Listen with VLC
I like this model, because YT has niche creators and I dont have to care about "Spotify changes X" news. Note: I have 1.5GB songs stored locally and listen ~30 minutes daily. I acknowledge discovering new songs is slower
160kbps? Jesus no lol
For Opus codec its when you hit diminishing returns stage
You can just use NewPipe background player. NewPipe lets you create and save playlists. No ads.
Well, piracy, but I'd say apple music or tidal, etc are even better than Spotify. There are services for transferring your playlists.
Some are paid but if it's just a one time transfer you could do them all in a free trial window.
Been using Soundiiz.com for that!
That's the one! I'm sure there's many options though.
People, don't let your playlists stop you from shopping around streaming services.
download mp3s from youtube. Use rhythmbox on linux and metro on android. Metro even tries to find the lyrics online
Now thats what inconvenient is.
Yup, can understand if your library is small, but for bigger libraries that's definitely the most inconvenient thing you can do.
Speaking from experience because I was basically forced to do it that way when I didn't have regular internet access yet. My library was longer than 50 days. Just Hip-Hop alone was above 100GB.
I used to find a shitton of music that way, but the inconvenience was real. Worst was music that I had to tag myself for example. Love mp3tag but that's shit.
I find it inconvenient to have limited skips and depend on one service to give you the song you want with the version you want. Also spotify ui doesn't make sense to me, things just don't work at times. Not to mention the ads.
If you pay for premium you won't have most of those problems...
I don't like paid services, especially when you can get the same or most of the same stuff for free. It's just not worth it for me, so that is my suggested alternative, doesn't work for everyone.
Not really trying to argue with you but we were not discussing your preference haha😅 Just trying to say spotify premium is pretty convenient at a cheap price
I'm saying if you find it worth it to pay fir premium go ahead, I don't.
There's cracked apks out there for Spotify if you're completely against paying
Unlike movie and tv streaming music streaming convenience is no contest for piracy if you're an enthusiastic.
And this is coming from someone would download albums and discogrpahies, using programs to meticulously tag and organize them. I wish I had the time and patience now, and for the highlights of my collection I will, but with my music craving a music stream subscription is well worth it.
Mp3s from YT are garbage quality, it's double transcoding from YT's already low quality input.
Yeah. If you’re gonna be downloading music from youtube, might as well just torrent flac or at least 320kbps quality instead.
Torrents mostly have pop music ime.
(Popular music trendy, ie Brittany Spears, Eminem, etc.)
This is the most 2001 comment I've read this week.
😂 torrents and Usenet have everything.
Any good spots for oz music? Hiphop...
I’m not sure, don’t listen to it sorry. Pirate bay?
Um, you need a hookup?
You can download audio from YouTube as 160kbps opus files, which aren't lossless sure but it's the highest quality you can get from YouTube if alternate means aren't an option.
And that's trusting that whoever uploaded the track had a good quality source. And it's still double encoded.
Well if you save the opus or aac it's only single lossy compression, not double unless the uploader used a lossy file as their input. But if that was the case, ripping mp3 would be triple lossy compression...
Any official uploads from recent years are going to be just fine. And if not then maybe their spotify upload is broken too
Hq is equivalent to 320kbps, noticably better than YT quality
160kbps is garbage tier.
For mp3 sure, but for opus standards 160kbps is great. I read that 128kbps is generally considered the most you need but 160kbps smooths over any artifacts, assuming the source file doesn't have them.
I haven't noticed any quality issues and I only listen to mp3s from youtube
You can download relatively good sounding audio from YouTube but you need to be using the right format in YouTube-DL, which not all downloaders do
What about NewPipe?
Then you probably don't know any better because the vast majority of YT uploads are terrible quality. If you have anywhere near decent headphones/earbuds you can hear the difference immediately.
Well I've used spotify with and without headphones on popular phones, I can't tell the difference from youtube. I usually download the music directly from the original uploader.
I was big into downloading before streaming services were a thing. Music streaming is one of the few services that's totally worth my money: no hassle and I rarely have to resort to other platforms to find what I want (very different from video streaming, which totally sucks when it comes to that).
100% this. Paying $12 a month for basically all music I’ll ever want to listen to, is just an amazing deal. It’s so convenient. Felt the same when Netflix came about. But now when I need like 6 services, and there’s still lots not on them. Piracy is just so much more convenient.
Felt the same when Netflix came about. But now when I need like 6 services, and there’s still lots not on them. Piracy is just so much more convenient.
Yep, that's the step they forgot: be more convenient than the pirates.
Can I use any of those at the same time I am playing a game on ps3/ps4/ps5 they way they have integrated spotify? I use spotify because it is available on the devices I use. I would use bandcamp on them if it were an option as I love my collection there but, it is not available on many of the devices I use.
personally I don't find that convinience worth it for the money/ads and other inconveniences, but that varies from person to person
That is what I do, however it is very tedious when you want to listen to full albums, and add info to the file such as the album art and artist. Services like Spotify also sync your Library and playlist automatically across devices.
Fwiw, some youtube to mp3 converters will let you convert full playlists (don't remember which, but there are a few).
4k Video Downloader is one example, but I believe you need to pay for playlist downloading?
I've never had to pay, so worth looking around
I made myself a python script to automatically tag and download entire albums from youtube at a time. I use syncthing to automatically sync it all. Quality isn't the best but I can't tell anyway so
Momentum is the driving force behind all enshitification.
Because it’s fantastic? Because it has almost all the music out there? Because it has an app on every device under the sun? Because it has amazing artist discovery? Because it lets you know of upcoming shows in your area?
Why wouldn’t you use Spotify if you’re a music fan? I’ve got 200gb+ of music on my NAS that I use Plexamp to listen to but I still subscribe to and use Spotify more.
I'm saying use one of the many streaming alternatives.
Do people use "Spotify" as a generic term for steaming?
Do people use “Spotify” as a generic term for steaming?
No, they use it to mean streaming from Spotify.....?
You asked why people use spotify still, and I answered with many reasons why people specifically use spotify. Not every streaming service is the same, and spotify is widely regarded as the best.
That's got nothing to do with why people use spotify though.
I don't care if their CEO invests heavily in Military AI, neither do I care about them paying slightly less peanuts than Apple and Tidal. Bands make money from shows, not from CD sales or streaming. Execs make money from streaming and cd sales.
Hey, if those aren't caveats for you, or just just prefer an interface too much to care, by all means, do you.
I will.
Maybe ask the question you actually mean next time rather than the exact opposite one to what you want answered.
You nailed it. People’ve been using it for so long they don’t want to use any number of paid or free services to automatically move all their playlists and whatnot over to a different service.
Maybe people are happy with Spotify?
What would you suggest as an alternative?
I love their algorithm
The random algorithm needs to be polished though.
Random usually sucks for everything that I've used.
They should have two... True random and one that 'radioifies' your library.
Basically exclusively because of Spotify Connect and the network effect. A lot of the music I listen to isn't even available on Spotify.
I prefer Deezer's recommendation algorithm. I don't have experience wity other streaming services.
If you have an eclectic music taste and don't spend your life next to a computer, there's practically no other option
Tidal, Deezer, Qobuz, Funkwhale, Apple Music, Youtube Music, just to name a few. Spotify has no shortage of competition.
My point is there’s little actual difference between them. Identical services provided by greedy corporations with shitty track records
You said there's no other option, I just listed some options. Also Funkwhale is decentralised, there's no corporation backing it. Ofc, you can also just download the music you like.
😂 practically no other option, my friend. Haven't heard of Funkwhale though, sounds interesting. And no, as I mentioned in my first comment, downloading isn't feasible for people with eclectic tastes cuz I just can't keep up with my spontaneous "need" to listen to that one album that hasn't even crossed my mind in 20 years
Apple music, Tidal, etc.
Spotify is funding military AI tech. That's enough for me. I'm on android but I'd still rather use Apple Music, plus they pay artists slightly more, and tidal pays more than them.
I hate to tell you but everyone is funding scary military tech, even if you’re not an American tax payer. If you’ve flown on a Boeing plane, used Microsoft software, worn Oakley sunglasses… all that revenue goes to companies who do or support that research
I wouldn't pay a recurring fee to any of them either.
I mean I just named some of them, my point is you can’t avoid funding the military unless you live under a rock. Such is the military industrial complex
Why do people use Spotify still? Momentum?
Edited for clarity, I'm not saying music streaming I'm specifically referring to getting it from one company.
Whose CEO heavily invests in military AI
And pays artists' (and of course labels) the least out of their competitors?
I don't get why anyone would use the free tier - not being able to choose songs would actually drive me insane, let alone the ads - but $11 monthly for essentially all the music anyone could ever want, plus solid playlists and recommendations, is a perfectly good value for me. Admittedly, I listen to music all the time and it's a pretty big part of my life, so it's an easy sell.
I guess the free tier is still an improvement over radio, but regardless, producing and distributing music has costs, and I'm more than happy to pay for it. Given that Spotify isn't even profitable, having lost about a billion dollars last year, I'm not sure how long this situation will last, but for the time being, I really don't mind it.
11$/month is 132$/yr. That's a significant amount of money - about the same as my car insurance, broadband or phone bill. Putting a bunch of good music in a playlist and letting it roll is nice enough, especially with a 3rd party app to mute ads automatically. Besides, I don't feel sorry for Spotify. The reason they're hemorrhaging money isn't a lack of profitability, but due to the massive royalties going to record companies.
E: spelling
For the median American that works full-time, who earns around $56,000, the cost of Spotify is 0.2% of their income.
Obviously everyone is in their own financial situation and for some people that will still be a burden. But for sake of comparison, in 1989, the average cost of cable TV was $18, and that's of course in 1989 dollars. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that $11 for unlimited access to basically all music at any time is a pretty good value for the money.
That said, if it is still onerous to someone, they're obviously not in ideal circumstances and I'm really not gonna fault them for just pirating.
Swedish student (Median full-time wage here is 35’790 USD equivalents before an avg ~30% payroll tax), not taking loans, working part time teaching (and occasionally nursing) to make ends meet, so yeah, pretty cash strapped atm.
Also, note that I already do have access to all the music in the world for free via youtube if I want something specific, or spotify for “radio style” infinite listening. 1440SEK/132USD is for added conveniences. No real need to pirate anything.
If $132 a year for unlimited access to pretty much all the music in the world is a significant amount of money to you then Spotify is the least of your worries.
Also your car insurance is $130 a year? What are you driving, a cardboard box and only in your living room? Your broadband only costs $132 a year?
Press X to doubt.
Swedish student (Median wage here is 35'790 USD equivalents), not taking loans, working part time teaching (and occasionally nursing) to make ends meet, so yeah, pretty cash strapped atm.
As for my car, not a cardboard box, but apparently there are 25 packs that cost as much as I bought it for five years ago. Just the mandatory traffic insurance, but it ends up at almost exactly same price.
Also, note that I already do have access to all the music in the world for free via youtube if I want something specific, or spotify for "radio style" infinite listening. 1440SEK/132USD is for added conveniences.
Spotify isn't the only company offering a monthly fee though.
It's convenient. It's where all my playlists are... that said, I'm open to alternatives?
I like this model, because YT has niche creators and I dont have to care about "Spotify changes X" news. Note: I have 1.5GB songs stored locally and listen ~30 minutes daily. I acknowledge discovering new songs is slower
160kbps? Jesus no lol
For Opus codec its when you hit diminishing returns stage
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Opus_quality_comparison_colorblind_compatible.svg
Learn something new every day!
What devices can play OPUS format?
What's OPUS compression like?
You can just use NewPipe background player. NewPipe lets you create and save playlists. No ads.
Well, piracy, but I'd say apple music or tidal, etc are even better than Spotify. There are services for transferring your playlists.
Some are paid but if it's just a one time transfer you could do them all in a free trial window.
Been using Soundiiz.com for that!
That's the one! I'm sure there's many options though.
People, don't let your playlists stop you from shopping around streaming services.
download mp3s from youtube. Use rhythmbox on linux and metro on android. Metro even tries to find the lyrics online
Now thats what inconvenient is.
Yup, can understand if your library is small, but for bigger libraries that's definitely the most inconvenient thing you can do.
Speaking from experience because I was basically forced to do it that way when I didn't have regular internet access yet. My library was longer than 50 days. Just Hip-Hop alone was above 100GB.
I used to find a shitton of music that way, but the inconvenience was real. Worst was music that I had to tag myself for example. Love mp3tag but that's shit.
I find it inconvenient to have limited skips and depend on one service to give you the song you want with the version you want. Also spotify ui doesn't make sense to me, things just don't work at times. Not to mention the ads.
If you pay for premium you won't have most of those problems...
I don't like paid services, especially when you can get the same or most of the same stuff for free. It's just not worth it for me, so that is my suggested alternative, doesn't work for everyone.
Not really trying to argue with you but we were not discussing your preference haha😅 Just trying to say spotify premium is pretty convenient at a cheap price
I'm saying if you find it worth it to pay fir premium go ahead, I don't.
There's cracked apks out there for Spotify if you're completely against paying
Unlike movie and tv streaming music streaming convenience is no contest for piracy if you're an enthusiastic.
And this is coming from someone would download albums and discogrpahies, using programs to meticulously tag and organize them. I wish I had the time and patience now, and for the highlights of my collection I will, but with my music craving a music stream subscription is well worth it.
Mp3s from YT are garbage quality, it's double transcoding from YT's already low quality input.
Yeah. If you’re gonna be downloading music from youtube, might as well just torrent flac or at least 320kbps quality instead.
Torrents mostly have pop music ime.
(Popular music trendy, ie Brittany Spears, Eminem, etc.)
This is the most 2001 comment I've read this week.
😂 torrents and Usenet have everything.
Any good spots for oz music? Hiphop...
I’m not sure, don’t listen to it sorry. Pirate bay?
Um, you need a hookup?
You can download audio from YouTube as 160kbps opus files, which aren't lossless sure but it's the highest quality you can get from YouTube if alternate means aren't an option.
And that's trusting that whoever uploaded the track had a good quality source. And it's still double encoded.
Well if you save the opus or aac it's only single lossy compression, not double unless the uploader used a lossy file as their input. But if that was the case, ripping mp3 would be triple lossy compression...
Any official uploads from recent years are going to be just fine. And if not then maybe their spotify upload is broken too
Hq is equivalent to 320kbps, noticably better than YT quality
160kbps is garbage tier.
For mp3 sure, but for opus standards 160kbps is great. I read that 128kbps is generally considered the most you need but 160kbps smooths over any artifacts, assuming the source file doesn't have them.
I haven't noticed any quality issues and I only listen to mp3s from youtube
You can download relatively good sounding audio from YouTube but you need to be using the right format in YouTube-DL, which not all downloaders do
What about NewPipe?
Then you probably don't know any better because the vast majority of YT uploads are terrible quality. If you have anywhere near decent headphones/earbuds you can hear the difference immediately.
Well I've used spotify with and without headphones on popular phones, I can't tell the difference from youtube. I usually download the music directly from the original uploader.
I was big into downloading before streaming services were a thing. Music streaming is one of the few services that's totally worth my money: no hassle and I rarely have to resort to other platforms to find what I want (very different from video streaming, which totally sucks when it comes to that).
100% this. Paying $12 a month for basically all music I’ll ever want to listen to, is just an amazing deal. It’s so convenient. Felt the same when Netflix came about. But now when I need like 6 services, and there’s still lots not on them. Piracy is just so much more convenient.
Yep, that's the step they forgot: be more convenient than the pirates.
Can I use any of those at the same time I am playing a game on ps3/ps4/ps5 they way they have integrated spotify? I use spotify because it is available on the devices I use. I would use bandcamp on them if it were an option as I love my collection there but, it is not available on many of the devices I use.
personally I don't find that convinience worth it for the money/ads and other inconveniences, but that varies from person to person
That is what I do, however it is very tedious when you want to listen to full albums, and add info to the file such as the album art and artist. Services like Spotify also sync your Library and playlist automatically across devices.
Fwiw, some youtube to mp3 converters will let you convert full playlists (don't remember which, but there are a few).
4k Video Downloader is one example, but I believe you need to pay for playlist downloading?
I've never had to pay, so worth looking around
I made myself a python script to automatically tag and download entire albums from youtube at a time. I use syncthing to automatically sync it all. Quality isn't the best but I can't tell anyway so
Momentum is the driving force behind all enshitification.
Because it’s fantastic? Because it has almost all the music out there? Because it has an app on every device under the sun? Because it has amazing artist discovery? Because it lets you know of upcoming shows in your area?
Why wouldn’t you use Spotify if you’re a music fan? I’ve got 200gb+ of music on my NAS that I use Plexamp to listen to but I still subscribe to and use Spotify more.
I'm saying use one of the many streaming alternatives.
Do people use "Spotify" as a generic term for steaming?
No, they use it to mean streaming from Spotify.....?
You asked why people use spotify still, and I answered with many reasons why people specifically use spotify. Not every streaming service is the same, and spotify is widely regarded as the best.
See the line in my edit above:
their CEO heavily invests in military AI
And they pay artists less than tidal and apple music does.
That's got nothing to do with why people use spotify though.
I don't care if their CEO invests heavily in Military AI, neither do I care about them paying slightly less peanuts than Apple and Tidal. Bands make money from shows, not from CD sales or streaming. Execs make money from streaming and cd sales.
Hey, if those aren't caveats for you, or just just prefer an interface too much to care, by all means, do you.
I will.
Maybe ask the question you actually mean next time rather than the exact opposite one to what you want answered.
xManager
What's that?
I dont know
thx
You nailed it. People’ve been using it for so long they don’t want to use any number of paid or free services to automatically move all their playlists and whatnot over to a different service.
Maybe people are happy with Spotify?
What would you suggest as an alternative?
I love their algorithm
The random algorithm needs to be polished though.
Random usually sucks for everything that I've used.
They should have two... True random and one that 'radioifies' your library.
Basically exclusively because of Spotify Connect and the network effect. A lot of the music I listen to isn't even available on Spotify.
I prefer Deezer's recommendation algorithm. I don't have experience wity other streaming services.
If you have an eclectic music taste and don't spend your life next to a computer, there's practically no other option
Tidal, Deezer, Qobuz, Funkwhale, Apple Music, Youtube Music, just to name a few. Spotify has no shortage of competition.
My point is there’s little actual difference between them. Identical services provided by greedy corporations with shitty track records
You said there's no other option, I just listed some options. Also Funkwhale is decentralised, there's no corporation backing it. Ofc, you can also just download the music you like.
😂 practically no other option, my friend. Haven't heard of Funkwhale though, sounds interesting. And no, as I mentioned in my first comment, downloading isn't feasible for people with eclectic tastes cuz I just can't keep up with my spontaneous "need" to listen to that one album that hasn't even crossed my mind in 20 years
Apple music, Tidal, etc.
Spotify is funding military AI tech. That's enough for me. I'm on android but I'd still rather use Apple Music, plus they pay artists slightly more, and tidal pays more than them.
I hate to tell you but everyone is funding scary military tech, even if you’re not an American tax payer. If you’ve flown on a Boeing plane, used Microsoft software, worn Oakley sunglasses… all that revenue goes to companies who do or support that research
I wouldn't pay a recurring fee to any of them either.
I mean I just named some of them, my point is you can’t avoid funding the military unless you live under a rock. Such is the military industrial complex