"Sponsored recommendations": I pay for Spotify Premium, and yet somehow I'm still the product?
I opened Spotify this morning to be greeted by a modal popup with a "sponsored recommendation".
Why am I seeing ads if I'm already paying for the premium plan!? 😑
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Spotify is garbage. You pay them to basically pirate unlimited music (they pay table scraps). They have no values or integrity, but they do have a greedy business model.
I buy albums off bandcamp instead. Or from the artist's site directly.
A bit difficult if you want to just stream random music that somehow matches your interests.
There's other streaming services. I'd recommend any over Spotify.
Which one do you prefer / recommend?
Soundcloud is one! Some artists let you download their music and others don't. Other than than Soundcloud isn't open source, I don't see what's wrong with them.
I've been enjoying apple music on Android (the audacity, I know) mainly for family plan convenience. I used to use Tidal, back when it was the only one offering higher quality audio. Now that's more common.
However I do miss a few things from Tidal. It had full credits for albums and songs like a CD would have had. And when you're on a track and go to the artist it will let you pick which one you want if there's features or a collab. Apple Music will just automatically take you to the page of the first artist listed. So that's something to consider especially if you're into hip-hop.
There's many options though and they pretty much all pay artists more than Spotify does too.
If you're going to p1r@te, you don't have to pay sp0tify to do it...
That doesn't really fix the "somehow matches your interests" part of their need. Your torrent software isn't able to track your listening habits and recommend things that other people with similar habits also liked.
Pandora is still around and does a decent job finding new music based off listening habits.
I’m not going to deal with a seed box and a ton of pain in the ass steps in between to listen to music. I’d rather pay Spotify or Amazon or Google or any of the other providers because of the convenience factor.
Also owning music isn’t something I particularly care about. Games, maybe, but music is so broad that I’ll just listen to something else.
WTF is a seedbox?
I have no trouble listening to unlimited music, it's literally everywhere.
Plus it's not just about owning the album (although I absolutely insist on listening on whichever device I choose). It's also about paying the artist.
Sp0tify pays peanuts. When I buy the album from the band's site or bandcamp they get a hell of a lot more money from me. And I want to support them.
You cannot support any artist through Spotify.
How I have to torrent cause my isp will cancel service over it.
If you’re pirating you’re not paying the artist at all. Spotify is better than pirating.
I don't pirate. I buy albums.
You’re advocating for piracy explicitly
I'm advocating using Bandcamp where the artist actually gets paid. Spotify is piracy, and I'm discouraging that.
Go to bandcamp and buy the actual album.
Yeah, that’s not happening. I can’t afford to pay thousands of dollars a month for music. I’m going to continue using Spotify because at the end of the day it’s not my responsibility to determine how much the artists get paid. There’s a bunch of problems I care about, this isn’t one of them.
Well at least you're honest about not caring about the artists.
Edit: but you could make a point of buying a couple albums per month if you listen to that much music.
I generally buy merch from the small bands I like, and the rest are multimillionaires already.
While I listen to a wide variety of music, it tends to be popular music from a wide range of times where they’ve already made a lot from it.
But also, yes, there’s a level of convenience I’m not willing to give up. When an artist pulls their music from Spotify, I tend to just not listen to them, through no fault of their own, but it’s where I listen to everything else.
I’m trying YouTube music out since it’s theoretically a bit better and I already pay for YouTube premium.
There are patches like spicetify which can do that and way more than just adblocking with a ton of customisation if that's what you're looking for
Bandcamp is DRM-free, so whatever you buy there, you truly own it. Unlike on most other platforms.
DRM-protected music stores went extinct over a decade ago, following Steve Jobs' open letter to the music industry on the topic. By 2009, iTunes music was completely DRM-free and alternative stores had to follow suit to remain competitive.
Wow, you are right! I was confused about iTunes, because it seems to require an app, but it is DRM-free and so is Amazon Music. That's great! So I guess only Spotify has DRM.
All the streaming services use DRM, it’s just download stores that are DRM-free. Which makes sense, when you buy an album, you should own it.
I see, that makes sense. But I also think that every content that you have paid to access should be DRM-free, so even in a streaming service.
It's personally a catch 22 for me.
I listen to an absolutely absurd amounts of different artists. A large portion of them simply don't have albums available for purchase and if they did... I would actually go broke buying all the stuff I listen to.
Every single day I type in a Combo of 2 random letters and numbers into spotify and listen to the first artist I don't recognize.
It really sucks that Spotify doesn't pay the artists anything reasonable but I haven't found an alternative that allows me to consume as much different music as I currently do.
This isn't even including the podcasts and audio books into the equation.
Why letters and numbers?
Some artists use numbers in their names and adding numbers will change what the search returns sometimes with odd results.
It's the same as pirating, except Spotify gets paid.
Honestly it's a shame that most good music pirating sites have gone to the shitter, literally the only way to actually pirate and own music I could find via searching vigorously was through youtube to MP3 converters.
rutracker and soulseek are good options for finding music.
Napster was so much fun back in the day.
Greedy business model seems slightly unfair tbh. Spotify struggles to remain profitable and they’ve only raised their prices by like $1 in a decade
Maybe they shouldn't've thrown so much money into the pivot to podcasts, then thrown a bunch of money at that meathead idiot.
Yeah that $100 billion they gave Joe Rogan is where your payments go.
they didn't give Joe Rogan 100 billion dollars you dunce.
I think it was 1000000 trillion bazillion dollars, you drooling braindead goon.
This comment says a lot more about you than it does about me.
Remember when you called me a dunce? And now you're self righteous? Anyway, goodbye.
This comment says a lot more about you than it does about me.
No company in their right mind would pay one person $100,000,000,000! Come on!
Just because they're incompetent doesn't mean they're not greedy.
Also, executives can still be cleaning up even as the company struggles to profit.
Executives being greedy isn't the same as a greedy business model
This makes no sense. Greedy execs are the ones who would implement a greedy business model to pursue their greed.
What part of the executive compensation package are you taking specific issue with exactly? From what I could see, they're largely paid in stock and the CEO hasn't taken a bonus since COVID.
Or are you just talking executives in general and not looking at what Spotify does specifically?
So they're incompetent on top of greedy. They're selling access to everybody's music and paying peanuts.
yeah, it's not spotify's fault that splitting $10/month between all the music you listen to doesn't pay the artists very much.
Yea, companies that pay more typically either charge more (Tidal) or have the advantage of a massive profitable company backing them (Apple Music)