"Sponsored recommendations": I pay for Spotify Premium, and yet somehow I'm still the product?

ojmcelderry@lemmy.one to Mildly Infuriating@lemmy.world – 1415 points –

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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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

If you're going to p1r@te, you don't have to pay sp0tify to do it...

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