So OP has posted this everywhere, even getting it flagged on Hacker News. Article is weak sauce:
I would agree with author that there are many problems with Spotify but concentrating on the artist revenue per stream and then publishing your top hits of the year as YouTube links? Really? Go and find out what the artist share per stream is on YouTube (regular YouTube video) for soundtracks. I'll wait. Hint: there's a reason that soundtracks using unauthorised copyrighted work get muted or taken down rather than revenue being redistributed.
Recommending a paid desktop MacOS music app for local content? There are hundreds of local music players but OK... but none of the criticisms of Spotify were about the client! Foobar2000 (mentioned for mobile playback) supports Spotify streaming...
Article seems to boil down to 'I got tired of Spotify recommendations and I am an aspiring musician at an early stage in my professional career so I am recommending Bandcamp and soap boxing about artist revenue share' . There's a reason that people, some with local music libraries in the TeraByte range listen to Spotify. There's also all the competing services - Apple Music; YouTube; Deezer; Tidal; Amazon; etc...
Recommendation to OP: If you are trying to persuade people on something, then decide what point you want to concentrate on, consider the pro's and cons for your position, and make your point based/reinforced on that. Don't meander around a bunch of inchoate personal gripes and affections that don't really relate to one another or any particular point.
Adding our Boys Qobuz to the list of competing services Paying in 2018 13 times more than Spotify And yu get to own the musics you buy on Qobuz and can put it on your NAS for example
You either did not read, or completely did not understand this article whatsoever.
I down voted because you added nothing to the discussion. It was just a completely empty criticism. On top of that, I read the article, and it's clear to me that this poster read the article too.
But I'm curious as to what your actual criticism is.
They collect money from subscriptions to Nazi authors, and pay those authors.
They are a Nazi publisher.
They commodify and profit from Nazis on their platform. When called out for it, their response was "We don't like Nazis either, but we won't do anything about them and we'll continue to take our cut from their presence on our platform"
That sounds an awful lot like them quietly liking it
Oh I remember hearing that quote. That was them? I had a conversation about it like a week ago. I read “substack” in the article but all tech names are pretty interchangeable to me. They all have the same groupings for the type of thing they are and substack sounded like image hosting or something to do with coding or some template bank for some kind of necessity like invoices or something. Point is, tech names are stupid and I didn’t even put the name to the site as I read it. Good to know, though.
If you're so petty about it, use archive.org or archive.is to view the page
Fellas, is it petty to refuse to support Nazis?
Viewing a website doesn't mean supporting the website. Especially if you use an adblocker.
Linking to their content and posting it here does, because it spreads that garbage around
If you have an adblocker, and you're not visiting any of those nazi sites directly, but do derail a comment section about a totally unrelated article? I say it is, yeah.
Then again, I can be pretty petty about circlejerks.
I wouldn't really call it a circlejerk to be against people who publish and profit from Nazi material.
The person who wrote the article we're supposed to be discussing in here is at least 2 degrees away from the nazis. At what point does it become circlejerk?
The Lemmy instance you're on is linking to a substack and is collecting donations, but you seem to be fine with that. So I guess the threshold is 3 degrees?
I have nothing against the author of this article. I do have something against Substack. It really is that simple. If this article is posted somewhere else I'll read it.
If this Lemmy instance had a bunch of Nazi content and the admins said they wanted to keep it up, then I'd block this instance. I wouldn't try to rationalise it by saying "oh well it's not like all the content is Nazi content..."
Again, it really is that simple.
If you're fine with supporting a platform that welcomes Nazis with open arms, fine, you do you. It's a personal choice.
If you’re fine with supporting a platform that welcomes Nazis with open arms, fine, you do you.
Now you're basically implying that I'm a Nazi-sympathiser. I find that a cheap tactic and highly offensive.
That's my issues with these kind of oversimplifications and guilty-by-association-fallacies. Before you know it, everyone is Hitler. I'm not supporting anyone here. I read an article about Spotify on a blog, nobody gained any measurable financial worth from that.
I don't think we're going to find a common ground here. Have nice day.
You sure are bending over backwards in order to defend Nazi publishers and Nazi collaborators. It’s hard to see you as anything other than a Nazi sympathizer yourself. You are the company you keep.
If Olivia Rafferty here (they only one I defended) is a nazi collaborator, then sure, by your logic, I must be too. And thanks to the 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon, you're one too.
Congratulations. At this point the term has lost all meaning, and we're all nazis.
A while back I realized my phone has 256GB of internal storage and since I don't take pictures or put anything else on it, I was running around with 256GB of free storage wherever I went.
And that's pretty much when it clicked for me that I was paying Spotify for access to music I already have from the pre-spotify days for a convenience that no longer is valid.
I dove into my box of CD's and DVDs and put the 30 something gigs of music I collected since the mid 90's on my phone and haven't used spotify since.
EDIT: and, yeah, I've re-instanced my music, movie and series downloaders and went back to sailing the high seas.
I switched to Netflix/Spotify, because of the convenience and timing of release they provided, they were also more reliable in terms of quality ("free" versions labeled ass 1080p often aren't actually 1080p, etc).
But the sheer cost of Spotify, Paramount+, Disney+, Netflix, etc, etc, etc to listen to and watch what I want, has made the convenience/cost calculation move from being acceptable to being even more than what it used to be buying CD's and DVD's.
On top of that the audio and video quality have deteriorated over the years, availability has become spotty, at best (like certain services removing movies and shows, even some removing movies and shows you paid extra for), we're also dealing with these services pushing ads on top of us already paying subscriptions and fragmenting their market to the extent everything has become entirely unaffordable.
I used to buy maybe 2-3 CD's in a year and a boxset of a show and a movie once a year.
Now simply subscribing to every service that has something I want for just 1 month costs more than what I spent per year previously.
Gabe Newels words are still right on the money.
Piracy is a service problem and the service provided these days makes Piracy the better option, again.
I don't stream either. All my music, I own. No one is taking it away.
Spotify used to be good but now they charge you the price of buying an album outright.
Might as well buy an album monthly and actually own it.
That works if you listen to just a small number of albums, but I average about 15 unique albums per month and probably 60 per year.
lol yeah I listened to over 150 new genres and thousands of artists this past year (according to Spotify wrapped), buying all those albums would be thousands of dollars if not tens of thousands.
Just to add, I do buy albums but more as a way to support the artists. Tidal is for convenience.
If I was really strict about paying for all my media (which I cannot afford now), I'd buy the albums gradually anyway, starting from ones I like most.
Also how do you discover so much?
To be honest I simply find Tidal + Plex integration to be more convenient than piracy. I'll pay my $10 per month for the ease of use and still buy an album or two per month from artists I want to support.
My discovery is a combination of Tidal and last.fm similar artists/recommendations and people on various forums. It's one of the few things I still go back to Reddit for. The other thing is that I like to listen to a band's full discography when I discover them. I recently found The Ocean and all 9 of their albums are solid. That's a lot to buy.
Good that it works. I use a free tier of a streaming service for discovery, but I cannot imagine not having my actual collection I listen to the most often depend on a streaming service. You're locked into only using their player, cannot use a dumb mp3 player at all, can lose all your collection if you're in a situation when you're unable to pay, and also the tracks you like might be gone because of copyright shenanigans. The on-disk DRM-less collection is just FAR more comfortable.
I'm not locked into their player. Tidal integrates through Plex and I manage my music library between Tidal and local files there. And again, I still buy albums but we've both acknowledged we can't buy all the music we would listen to.
Wait, you have all your collection local and DRM-less this way? Neat.
No, anything from Tidal is still DRM controlled but it integrates seemlessly with everything I have locally.
£10 = the price of every single album you listen to in a month, combined?
Yup. When I was kid and teen in the the CD era, I was buying 2 or 3 CDs a month for at least 10 to 20 bucks a pop. Or I would temporarily have my parents sign up for something like the BMG record club when there was a good promo where I could get 10 albums for cheap and then cancel. Fast forward to today and I can get unlimited access to all music for cheaper than a single album per month back in 2005. I don't know how these economics can make sense even if you factor out physical media and physical distribution.
It was 9.99 for many years and now it's 10.99, a ~10% increase. Not sure how a single, small price increase in years turns something from good to bad. Sure, there are many reasons to dislike Spotify, but pricing?
And in 2024, Spotify will stop paying out songs which get less than 1000 streams in a year. Which means for me, as an artist in the early stages of my career, I am going to get paid nothing. I could get over 1000 streams on all my songs in total, but still get paid nothing. I could get 999 streams on a song one year and 999 streams on it the next year… and still get paid nothing.
As the author states in the previous paragraph, Spotify pays 0.003c per stream. I don't think the author has done the maths. 1000 streams equals 3c. He's complaining over not getting paid 3c as if that will fund his career
It's not 0.003¢ per steam, it's $0.003. (Actually £0.003, per that article.)
So 1000 streams should pay $3.
stop paying out
Spotify refuses to pay for content it earns money from, is another way of saying this. Stealing, is another way. YouTube does the same if it decides you're not a part of the ""party"".
Give me my 3c or pay with your blood.
You (or your label who represents you) voluntarily put your music on spotify and can always pull your content if you want.
Equating this to theft makes zero sense. And your post is universally upvoted. Wtf?
Have you considered the power imbalance when you describe them as voluntarily putting it on Spotify? What are your views on "paying people in exposure" or unpaid internships?
I would be open to hearing an argument as to why Spotify should pay no matter what. I could get behind that.
However, if you voluntarily put your music on spotify, and can remove it any time you want, and you are claiming spotify is committing theft against you. . .well, that just doesn't hold any water. I mean, you hold all the power in this case: it's your music that you fully control.
What are your views on “paying people in exposure” or unpaid internships?
I can see both being beneficial, but most of the time lame. The latter is something that benefits the wealthy, so I think it should be discouraged. But if you voluntarily did either of these things and then tried to claim theft, I would meet it with the same argument.
Spotify can't tell big fish to go unpaid but they can target small creators as they're likely the ones who most need to be paid for their work. "Work for me for free and maybe I'll pay you in the future" is lame but consider the small print says "we may stop paying you in the future ifyou fall below a change in threshold in the future".
People say "internet piracy" is theft and that doesn't even deprive the person of a thing they had, merely a strongly assumed "lost sale". We know the creators had a sale because Spotify do this to make money earned by the works.
If I said I will donate money you give me to charity but I instead keep the money did you give it to me "voluntarily"? Probably not because you were deceived.
they’re likely the ones who most need to be paid for their work
IIRC, we are talking about if you don't break the 3-5 dollar threshold. If you're banking on that money you've got way bigger problems than Spotify not buying you a cup of coffee.
People say “internet piracy” is theft and that doesn’t even deprive the person of a thing they had, merely a strongly assumed “lost sale”
The question is...do you think piracy is theft? If not, then I don't see why you would even bring up this point.
If I said I will donate money you give me to charity but I instead keep the money did you give it to me “voluntarily”?
No, of course not, because you committed fraud by lying to me what the money would be used for.
If Spotify gave no warning and did it retroactively, then you have a point that it was deceptive and fraudulent, but this sounds like they have announced in advance that they are changing the policy. So this isn't them saying one thing and then doing another.
Is it safe to assume a significant portion of creators are in that threshold? 3-5 dolors from a lot of people for the biggest company in music streaming. I think Spoity nickel and diming a bunch of smaller creators is the real financial problem.
To determine where you draw the line I make small steps towards Spoity. If a Mafia gang member spells it out that you need to pay X every month or else while you live in this town, is it theft? You can just move away, do you have the power?
I believe my comment above was removed for the Oblivion guard line where if you are caught stealing you must pay a fine go to jail and if you refuse then you will be struck down. He does this even if you take something of little value. We all start earning at a low threshold for our creative works, those 3-5 dolors may be more important to them than you appear to value them. To me it's more important than taking 1000 from a big creator..
If the question is whether they should pay them, I agree they should. This is obviously an attempt to make more money.
But the question is whether this is comparable to theft. I think your reference to piracy, which you abruptly dropped, shows you agree with me. If piracy isn't theft, when that is taking their content involuntarily without compensation, and then certainly providing you voluntarily providing your content understanding you won't get compensated isn't theft. So is privacy theft?
Also, comparing it to the mob shaking you down for money makes no sense. You don't voluntarily enter into that agreement. With Spotify, you can either view the exposure as a good thing for you, and leave it and make no money from it, or you can view it as wrong to you and remove it, and make no money from it. Either way the outcome is the same for you, and it's your choice what to do. For the mob, you either have to pay them money, move, or be harassed (or worse). I can't fathom why this was brought up as an example to prove the point.
I don't consider "internet piracy" as stealing because it is copying. In an age where it is easy for anyone to copy then expectation to have a temporary monopoly on distribution as if it were physical goods is unintelligible.
The point is "voluntarily" is more nuanced than merely people agreeing to it. I consider people free to choose when Spotify would get laughed at every single time. Instead it's sometimes an offer you can't refuse, either out of desperation or because they are ignorant of how they are being exploited.
Your 3c (or $3, whatever) might not be much but they're saving that across thousands and thousands of small artists so for them it's another lucrative way of skimming the profits of the actual creators for themselves.
From what I read, it's more about stopping people using auto generated songs and uploading thousands of songs
*she
I agree with her arguments about Spotify overall, but this amused me-
To celebrate my newfound freedom, I downloaded a 13-minute long Taylor Swift megamix, and CAN YOU DO THAT ON SPOTIFY? I didn’t think so. I also then went on to Bandcamp after I got paid the other day and bought some music. It felt good.
As if Spotify somehow prevented her from doing those things anyway...
Obviously this is presented in the sense that being a Spotify user means you're not pursuing other methods of music acquisition, and to be fair that's probably the case for most people, you're paying for a service that's supposed to meet all your music listening needs after all. Personally I also use other means like vinyl, YouTube, and a large local collection but that's because I'm deep into music, also as a maker of it.
My current rules are that I'm gonna spend £10 a month on music (what I'd be paying Spotify) and try to buy directly from artists. I'll allow myself listening to stuff on Youtube so I can gauge whether or not I wanna then go ahead and buy a song or an album if I've listened to it enough times and want it in my library.
So ... it's okay to listen to it for free on YouTube and maybe buy it directly, but not to pay a Spotify subscription and listen to it there (and also maybe buy it directly)? The whole rant about "Spotify doesn't pay musicians very much" comes off as disingenuous.
Jack Stratton of Vulfpeck was interviewed on CNBN about the Spotify IPO and gets around to making a good point about it here, "stop whining... me." Artists don't have to use a label and get paid in these "pitties" from Spotify, ultimately its a bizarre consumption model and likely unsustainable.
The amazing mental gymnastics that these people go through to justify their piracy and inane behaviors.
Musician's pay is just the excuse of the day for them to feel okay about what they're doing. Honestly, if you are gonna pirate then just pirate, stop pretending that it's for a good cause or higher purpose, other than to keep your own wallets stacked.
You could've replied to 100 comments on this thread about piracy but you replied to the one that had nothing to do with it.
Fai point, but regardless it seems to have struck a nerve with the piracy crowd.
I don't have beef with piracy itself but I found it hilarious the number of pirates here standing on their soapboxes, pretending to be some kind of modern day Robin Hood and virtue signaling super hard.
Guys, you are still ripping off artists and content creators regardless of their deals with media company, just admit you want shit for free.
Probably pirated almost every artist I've subsequently bought from and go to shows average about once a month. Have professional musicians in the family and they work as studio musicians, composers for media, teaching, play in bands that do covers for corporate events, or as a backing band for a front person. That's probably the majority of musicians unless you're lucky enough to be in a band that gains any notoriety. Most bands are passion projects between musicians who have day jobs and might only play a few small gigs at local venues. So when we're talking about piracy as if it's the most significant thing impacting musicians, really it's a small facet of a very difficult industry to work in.
I don't really think piracy is the single most significant thing impacting musicians, my main point to the "Honorable" pirates is just to cut the shit and admit you rip people off because you want to, not because you are some incarnation of Captain Jack Sparrow out to serve justice while you loot and plunder.
Honestly? No, while I do still pirate, I am slowly buying all the music I can buy in form of vynils records and CDs, other than digital downloads from bandacamp.
Watching for free on YouTube is not piracy, and laughably, I'd say it is better than using Spotify that quite literally exploits artists for cents.
No, while I do still pirate, I am slowly buying all the music I can buy in form of vynils records and CDs, other than digital downloads from bandacamp.
Good on you, the act of buying is what makes the difference.
Watching for free on YouTube is not piracy, and laughably, I'd say it is better than using Spotify that quite literally exploits artists for cents.
My comment is in the wrong thread as the other commentor pointed out, it was directed at the Robin Hood wannabes who thinks somehow ripping off artists and creators is okay, because they have a shitty deal with distributors / media companies.
Hey all, I'd like to distance myself from Spotify, but I really enjoy their discovery features. I've learned about a lot of bands both new and old that I wouldn't have otherwise. Do you have any suggestions for a service that could replace this aspect of it?
I've used Spotify, Apple music, YT music and nothing beats SoundCloud stations for discovering new music based on a song.
and their "More of What you Like" playlists are just stations based on your recently most played songs and they just don't miss.
for someone like me that has songs from a lot of different genres in my regular rotation of 10-15 songs every month or so, it's perfect for discovering music.
Not that it’s any better in terms of ethics or artist pay, but YouTube Music has relatively decent auto playlist generation with settings for discovery. Plus you get ad-free YouTube without having to use piped or vanced or whatever people are using these days.
Bandcamp is pretty good. They do writeups that I think are written by real people. When you look at a band you like, it tells you about stuff other people who like them have. I've found a lot of stuff there.
It is more about buying music than renting it, however. Most albums it will ask you to buy after a certain number of plays. I think the band can configure those details
Bandcamp was bought out by Epic Games, fired half of it's staff to make the bottom line look better, and is now owned by some private corporate music licensing company that refuses to recognize it's employee union and fired even more employees that were all involved in their unionization effort. I wouldn't recommend supporting them anymore.
This all happened in September btw so any enshittification of the service has yet to come to fruition.
Search your favourite artists. Wiki them etc. and learn about them whilst simultaneously finding where they're members play in other bands or have other projects. Also, it can illuminate what they're influences were/are and you can listen to that too. I find a shit-tone of new music this way.
Deezer. Interface/UX is a little jank but it's private and discovery is good.
Radio Paradiso. Berlin based radio. Weird and wonderful.
I use Yandex Music for discovery. For some reason, I can't get Spotify to recommend the same amount of new stuff I like. You might need a proxy though because the content there is region-locked. Also I used both Yandex and Spotify for free, it's just fine on desktop with Ublock Origin.
How about FM radio waves?
So you can hear the same 5 songs on repeat interspersed with tons of commercials?
Radio fucking sucks, amigo. Literally the most homogeneous playlists ever unless you are close enough to a college radio station or a major city that can support anything other than top 40 or the same 100 classic rock songs.
I discover more ads than music that way
Ah yeah I love hearing the same 30 songs over and over again with 60% ads, great idea
This is why pirating any music found on the radio will never make me feel guilty.
Last year I've listened to more than 6k different songs. If you'd be generous for the math and say 12 songs an album, 9 euro per album it's still over 5k a year. Spotify is just cheaper for me, even the high seas would cost me too much in terms of time
Everyone who listens to the same downloaded 50 song playlist everytime they open Spotify premium is paying for you to use the service
But I use it much more similar to you than those people so I am also winning lol.
Not to mention that if everybody listened like thak guy spotify would just increase prices.
I spent >100$ on concert tickets to listen to artists I found on Spotify. Probably would not have spent this money nor discovered those artists by listening to 50 songs downloaded 10 years ago from Limewire.
Over a hundred? Must have been half a ticket then? Pre-fees of course.
I listened to 6k songs, just because spotify has them.
Do i need it? Absolutely not.
I cancelled when they increased the price and i went back to buying an album for life from the discount bin and putting it on repeat with the other 20 albums i still owned.
Back when I had an ipod I spent days downloading songs. I don't think my listening habits changed all that much, now I just don't download them via "legitimate" routes anymore
I find it most useful as a radio replacement for this reason, you can't find a service with more quantity. Personal music collection is still my main source though.
Down voted cause substack allows nazi content.
Upvoted because this article was an interesting read.
That's nice for you
I just quit Spotify too and went back to mp3s I’ve downloaded with Limewire. I got sick of playlists, messy UI, etc. I also got tired of people talking about their top music of the year. I honestly don’t care what you listened to the most.
All my mp3s are on my phone and on my Mac and work great
I also am not guilty not giving artists the $.0003 per play every time I play a son. Less guilty than the $1 per song in the 2010s or $20 per album in the 2000s…
I quit Spotify too though still in Apple Music. Hopefully later I'm able to buy non-DRM music (from something in Bandcamp to CD or even Vinyls). Actually I went to Vinyl store yesterday, it was such a refreshing experience.
Honestly I got sick of subscription. I know I'm not alone with that. I want to actually own my own music. I don't want to pirate either 'cause I still genuinely support those artists.
Try qobuz. They're a streaming service and an online music store. Obviously bandcamp>qobuz when it comes to supporting the artists, but anything you can stream, you can buy and download in flac, mp3, etc. They also have a fair amount of high-res stuff too.
Qobuz was such a great discovery for me a couple of years ago. I've bought so much more music lately because of it.
Combined with my Plex server and plexamp on my phone, I have all the streaming benefit from Spotify, with my own music collection that I've built up for more than 20 years at this point.
Just a heads up, Bandcamp has gotten a little shady in the past year or so. I honestly forgot what happened, but I think they got bought out by some shitty label that's known for treating artists like shit.
But tbh I don't remember correctly
I know what happened--they got bought by Epic (yes, Fortnite's Epic), then I think sold just last year, and now their situation is I think in limbo, not sure
You’re shitting on Spotify and use that to defend that you’re stealing from artists?
Spotify is stealing from artists too. I’m just not lining that corporations pockets. I still buy albums from band camp and go to shows and buy merch — all much more direct impactful ways of supporting the artists.
Spotify pays a fraction of a penny per play to artists. Who’s really the one stealing?
So, because Spotify doesn’t pay much to artists, it’s okay that you pay nothing?
Ugh, spotify soot again?
At least according to spotify (it would probably be illegal for them to lie anyways), Spotify pays almost 70% of revenue to rights-holders (whoever distributes the thing, e.g. record labels), which means they take about the same cut as Steam. Good luck complaining about that.
You often see people citing the $.003 per stream for rights-holders figure for Spotify. That's not exactly what Spotify decides! Spotify pays rights-holders share of the 70% of the revenue based on how much they were streamed. TL;DR: Spotify pays rights-holders slices of pie based on how much their artists help bake. So, if artists aren't getting payed enough, Spotify simply isn't getting enough revenue despite reinventing radio for its free tier!
Not to mention how certain rights-holders (fortunately not DistroKid) gobble royalties away from artists. And, the author's solution to (insert @Nougat's comment here)?
(On a side note: I hate Tidal free, because it "doesn't" have ads! Every single interruption I've encountered so far is the generic Tidal announcer telling me to subscribe to premium. Sometimes I even get a freaking video "ad" on cellular data telling me the same thing, and there are only 4 "ads" in total! There's no variety! It's just repeating! Aaaaaaaaa (dw just yelling me name
I use the “Lite” version of spotify that isn’t strictly available for download in the states. It still has real shuffle and isn’t as bogged down with bloat features. Literally the only downside is no sleep timer.
How do you deal with discovery?
That's the hard part for me, the only way I find new music is by it ending up on a continuous playlist or something similar.
I have broad tastes, which makes it difficult to not be boxed into a recommendations genre on many platforms (Spotify included).
To enlighten our android-using brothers and sisters... https://xmanager.app/ is a good way to enjoy spotify if you insist on using it.
I use Spotube, which avoids their app entirely. not super stable, tho
Last weekend I used https://github.com/linsomniac/spotify_to_ytmusic to copy my Spotify playlists over to YouTube Music, and the shuffle play is SOOO much nicer there! That was my primary gripe with Spotify, the shuffle play is idiotic
As far as I recall. YT Music pays even less than Spotify does unfortunately.
You cannot make a difference this way. Their music is a commodity they have signed agreements to sell. They probably (in the vast majority of instances) had almost no bargaining power in this and a lot of signed artists don't make a penny from their work, at all.
If you really like an artist, contact them via their official channels and ask if you can send them money directly or donate to a charity they like.
Yeah you're right. Actually I was just thinking about this streaming space and perhaps switching away from Spotify, over to Tidal but probably it wouldn't make a big difference to the respected artists I'm listening to.
I believe YouTube music premium streams actually pay more than Spotify but the cross between YouTube paying way less and YouTube music paying more causes some confusion.
According to the soundcharts link below, they pay about half of spotify's pay.
I switched to Tidal from Spotify because as secure my password is, I would always be intereupted mid-listening by my app putting on a shitty random music (often RAP) and discovered that there was an underground operation of people using pirated accounts to inflate stream numbers to get into the popular playlists.
And with Tidal I can use Tidal-DL to download flacs to my Navidrome server which is cool.
this happened to me as well and i have no idea how. fascinating
If your account is linked to your Google, Apple or Facebook account that might be the culprit (I think you can see this in yout account settings). You need to check that because the consequences could be way worse than just having access to your Spotify account. You can use HaveIBeenPwned to look for leaks matching your e-mail address or password.
Another possibility is that your browser/OS or spotify client was infected by a token stealer which can automatically steal your access tokens as you log-in after changing the password.
The weird thing is that it's linked to my Facebook account, which has MFA...
Then it may be a token stealer.
Muaicbee+poweramp with 600gb music for 15 years now. Love it. Nice to see other people wanting to follow the old ways.
I've been using Musicbrains Picard for tagging and Plex for streaming but will be switching to Jellyfin for my new build.
Actually have been using foobar2000 upnp server on my internal network more often lately. BubbleUPNP for an Android client works really nicely.
This was my setup for the longest time. Just a few years ago did I switch to musicbee+plex+plexamp.
Also last.fm ftw
I never got into Spotify. Soulseek is all I need.
Give nicotine+ a try some time.
deleted
This person really brags about paying $25 for a proprietary music player that's exclusive to Mac OSX.
I only used Spotify for podcasts when I used to be on the road all the time. For music, I've had a free Pandora account for years now. Does what I need it too. And with wireguard+pihole I don't get ads either.
I only used Spotify for podcasts
This is funny because I remember the days people HATED Spotify for adding podcast and only listen to podcast on their own separated app (I use PocketCasts)
To be fair, nowadays several podcasts stopped issuing their feeds and can only be listened to on spotify because they bought exclusivity, it sucks.
I like being able to queue an episode of something to listen to, and then going back to listening to music again. If it wasn't for that, it's kind of a crappy podcast player, yeah.
I can see that. Though it's been a few years since I've used it.
Edit: The podcast id listen to were very long format/critical role episodes.
Since Spotify serves lossy audio files still...I don't care about them.
So OP has posted this everywhere, even getting it flagged on Hacker News. Article is weak sauce:
I would agree with author that there are many problems with Spotify but concentrating on the artist revenue per stream and then publishing your top hits of the year as YouTube links? Really? Go and find out what the artist share per stream is on YouTube (regular YouTube video) for soundtracks. I'll wait. Hint: there's a reason that soundtracks using unauthorised copyrighted work get muted or taken down rather than revenue being redistributed.
Recommending a paid desktop MacOS music app for local content? There are hundreds of local music players but OK... but none of the criticisms of Spotify were about the client! Foobar2000 (mentioned for mobile playback) supports Spotify streaming...
Article seems to boil down to 'I got tired of Spotify recommendations and I am an aspiring musician at an early stage in my professional career so I am recommending Bandcamp and soap boxing about artist revenue share' . There's a reason that people, some with local music libraries in the TeraByte range listen to Spotify. There's also all the competing services - Apple Music; YouTube; Deezer; Tidal; Amazon; etc...
Recommendation to OP: If you are trying to persuade people on something, then decide what point you want to concentrate on, consider the pro's and cons for your position, and make your point based/reinforced on that. Don't meander around a bunch of inchoate personal gripes and affections that don't really relate to one another or any particular point.
Adding our Boys Qobuz to the list of competing services Paying in 2018 13 times more than Spotify And yu get to own the musics you buy on Qobuz and can put it on your NAS for example
You either did not read, or completely did not understand this article whatsoever.
I down voted because you added nothing to the discussion. It was just a completely empty criticism. On top of that, I read the article, and it's clear to me that this poster read the article too.
But I'm curious as to what your actual criticism is.
Not going to give substack any views, so I'll pass on this one
What's wrong with it? (I never heard about it, just asking)
They outright won't ban Nazi content from their website. https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/21/24011232/substack-nazi-moderation-demonetization-hamish-mckenzie
It's not just "won't ban".
They collect money from subscriptions to Nazi authors, and pay those authors.
They are a Nazi publisher.
They commodify and profit from Nazis on their platform. When called out for it, their response was "We don't like Nazis either, but we won't do anything about them and we'll continue to take our cut from their presence on our platform"
That sounds an awful lot like them quietly liking it
Oh I remember hearing that quote. That was them? I had a conversation about it like a week ago. I read “substack” in the article but all tech names are pretty interchangeable to me. They all have the same groupings for the type of thing they are and substack sounded like image hosting or something to do with coding or some template bank for some kind of necessity like invoices or something. Point is, tech names are stupid and I didn’t even put the name to the site as I read it. Good to know, though.
If you're so petty about it, use archive.org or archive.is to view the page
Fellas, is it petty to refuse to support Nazis?
Viewing a website doesn't mean supporting the website. Especially if you use an adblocker.
Linking to their content and posting it here does, because it spreads that garbage around
If you have an adblocker, and you're not visiting any of those nazi sites directly, but do derail a comment section about a totally unrelated article? I say it is, yeah.
Then again, I can be pretty petty about circlejerks.
I wouldn't really call it a circlejerk to be against people who publish and profit from Nazi material.
The person who wrote the article we're supposed to be discussing in here is at least 2 degrees away from the nazis. At what point does it become circlejerk?
The Lemmy instance you're on is linking to a substack and is collecting donations, but you seem to be fine with that. So I guess the threshold is 3 degrees?
I have nothing against the author of this article. I do have something against Substack. It really is that simple. If this article is posted somewhere else I'll read it.
If this Lemmy instance had a bunch of Nazi content and the admins said they wanted to keep it up, then I'd block this instance. I wouldn't try to rationalise it by saying "oh well it's not like all the content is Nazi content..."
Again, it really is that simple.
If you're fine with supporting a platform that welcomes Nazis with open arms, fine, you do you. It's a personal choice.
Now you're basically implying that I'm a Nazi-sympathiser. I find that a cheap tactic and highly offensive.
That's my issues with these kind of oversimplifications and guilty-by-association-fallacies. Before you know it, everyone is Hitler. I'm not supporting anyone here. I read an article about Spotify on a blog, nobody gained any measurable financial worth from that.
I don't think we're going to find a common ground here. Have nice day.
You sure are bending over backwards in order to defend Nazi publishers and Nazi collaborators. It’s hard to see you as anything other than a Nazi sympathizer yourself. You are the company you keep.
If Olivia Rafferty here (they only one I defended) is a nazi collaborator, then sure, by your logic, I must be too. And thanks to the 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon, you're one too.
Congratulations. At this point the term has lost all meaning, and we're all nazis.
A while back I realized my phone has 256GB of internal storage and since I don't take pictures or put anything else on it, I was running around with 256GB of free storage wherever I went.
And that's pretty much when it clicked for me that I was paying Spotify for access to music I already have from the pre-spotify days for a convenience that no longer is valid.
I dove into my box of CD's and DVDs and put the 30 something gigs of music I collected since the mid 90's on my phone and haven't used spotify since.
EDIT: and, yeah, I've re-instanced my music, movie and series downloaders and went back to sailing the high seas.
I switched to Netflix/Spotify, because of the convenience and timing of release they provided, they were also more reliable in terms of quality ("free" versions labeled ass 1080p often aren't actually 1080p, etc).
But the sheer cost of Spotify, Paramount+, Disney+, Netflix, etc, etc, etc to listen to and watch what I want, has made the convenience/cost calculation move from being acceptable to being even more than what it used to be buying CD's and DVD's.
On top of that the audio and video quality have deteriorated over the years, availability has become spotty, at best (like certain services removing movies and shows, even some removing movies and shows you paid extra for), we're also dealing with these services pushing ads on top of us already paying subscriptions and fragmenting their market to the extent everything has become entirely unaffordable.
I used to buy maybe 2-3 CD's in a year and a boxset of a show and a movie once a year.
Now simply subscribing to every service that has something I want for just 1 month costs more than what I spent per year previously.
Gabe Newels words are still right on the money.
Piracy is a service problem and the service provided these days makes Piracy the better option, again.
I don't stream either. All my music, I own. No one is taking it away.
Spotify used to be good but now they charge you the price of buying an album outright.
Might as well buy an album monthly and actually own it.
That works if you listen to just a small number of albums, but I average about 15 unique albums per month and probably 60 per year.
lol yeah I listened to over 150 new genres and thousands of artists this past year (according to Spotify wrapped), buying all those albums would be thousands of dollars if not tens of thousands.
Just to add, I do buy albums but more as a way to support the artists. Tidal is for convenience.
If I was really strict about paying for all my media (which I cannot afford now), I'd buy the albums gradually anyway, starting from ones I like most.
Also how do you discover so much?
To be honest I simply find Tidal + Plex integration to be more convenient than piracy. I'll pay my $10 per month for the ease of use and still buy an album or two per month from artists I want to support.
My discovery is a combination of Tidal and last.fm similar artists/recommendations and people on various forums. It's one of the few things I still go back to Reddit for. The other thing is that I like to listen to a band's full discography when I discover them. I recently found The Ocean and all 9 of their albums are solid. That's a lot to buy.
Good that it works. I use a free tier of a streaming service for discovery, but I cannot imagine not having my actual collection I listen to the most often depend on a streaming service. You're locked into only using their player, cannot use a dumb mp3 player at all, can lose all your collection if you're in a situation when you're unable to pay, and also the tracks you like might be gone because of copyright shenanigans. The on-disk DRM-less collection is just FAR more comfortable.
I'm not locked into their player. Tidal integrates through Plex and I manage my music library between Tidal and local files there. And again, I still buy albums but we've both acknowledged we can't buy all the music we would listen to.
Wait, you have all your collection local and DRM-less this way? Neat.
No, anything from Tidal is still DRM controlled but it integrates seemlessly with everything I have locally.
£10 = the price of every single album you listen to in a month, combined?
Yup. When I was kid and teen in the the CD era, I was buying 2 or 3 CDs a month for at least 10 to 20 bucks a pop. Or I would temporarily have my parents sign up for something like the BMG record club when there was a good promo where I could get 10 albums for cheap and then cancel. Fast forward to today and I can get unlimited access to all music for cheaper than a single album per month back in 2005. I don't know how these economics can make sense even if you factor out physical media and physical distribution.
It was 9.99 for many years and now it's 10.99, a ~10% increase. Not sure how a single, small price increase in years turns something from good to bad. Sure, there are many reasons to dislike Spotify, but pricing?
As the author states in the previous paragraph, Spotify pays 0.003c per stream. I don't think the author has done the maths. 1000 streams equals 3c. He's complaining over not getting paid 3c as if that will fund his career
It's not 0.003¢ per steam, it's $0.003. (Actually £0.003, per that article.)
So 1000 streams should pay $3.
Spotify refuses to pay for content it earns money from, is another way of saying this. Stealing, is another way. YouTube does the same if it decides you're not a part of the ""party"".
Give me my 3c or pay with your blood.
You (or your label who represents you) voluntarily put your music on spotify and can always pull your content if you want.
Equating this to theft makes zero sense. And your post is universally upvoted. Wtf?
Have you considered the power imbalance when you describe them as voluntarily putting it on Spotify? What are your views on "paying people in exposure" or unpaid internships?
I would be open to hearing an argument as to why Spotify should pay no matter what. I could get behind that.
However, if you voluntarily put your music on spotify, and can remove it any time you want, and you are claiming spotify is committing theft against you. . .well, that just doesn't hold any water. I mean, you hold all the power in this case: it's your music that you fully control.
I can see both being beneficial, but most of the time lame. The latter is something that benefits the wealthy, so I think it should be discouraged. But if you voluntarily did either of these things and then tried to claim theft, I would meet it with the same argument.
Spotify can't tell big fish to go unpaid but they can target small creators as they're likely the ones who most need to be paid for their work. "Work for me for free and maybe I'll pay you in the future" is lame but consider the small print says "we may stop paying you in the future if you fall below a change in threshold in the future".
People say "internet piracy" is theft and that doesn't even deprive the person of a thing they had, merely a strongly assumed "lost sale". We know the creators had a sale because Spotify do this to make money earned by the works.
If I said I will donate money you give me to charity but I instead keep the money did you give it to me "voluntarily"? Probably not because you were deceived.
IIRC, we are talking about if you don't break the 3-5 dollar threshold. If you're banking on that money you've got way bigger problems than Spotify not buying you a cup of coffee.
The question is...do you think piracy is theft? If not, then I don't see why you would even bring up this point.
No, of course not, because you committed fraud by lying to me what the money would be used for.
If Spotify gave no warning and did it retroactively, then you have a point that it was deceptive and fraudulent, but this sounds like they have announced in advance that they are changing the policy. So this isn't them saying one thing and then doing another.
Is it safe to assume a significant portion of creators are in that threshold? 3-5 dolors from a lot of people for the biggest company in music streaming. I think Spoity nickel and diming a bunch of smaller creators is the real financial problem.
To determine where you draw the line I make small steps towards Spoity. If a Mafia gang member spells it out that you need to pay X every month or else while you live in this town, is it theft? You can just move away, do you have the power?
I believe my comment above was removed for the Oblivion guard line where if you are caught stealing you must pay a fine go to jail and if you refuse then you will be struck down. He does this even if you take something of little value. We all start earning at a low threshold for our creative works, those 3-5 dolors may be more important to them than you appear to value them. To me it's more important than taking 1000 from a big creator..
If the question is whether they should pay them, I agree they should. This is obviously an attempt to make more money.
But the question is whether this is comparable to theft. I think your reference to piracy, which you abruptly dropped, shows you agree with me. If piracy isn't theft, when that is taking their content involuntarily without compensation, and then certainly providing you voluntarily providing your content understanding you won't get compensated isn't theft. So is privacy theft?
Also, comparing it to the mob shaking you down for money makes no sense. You don't voluntarily enter into that agreement. With Spotify, you can either view the exposure as a good thing for you, and leave it and make no money from it, or you can view it as wrong to you and remove it, and make no money from it. Either way the outcome is the same for you, and it's your choice what to do. For the mob, you either have to pay them money, move, or be harassed (or worse). I can't fathom why this was brought up as an example to prove the point.
I don't consider "internet piracy" as stealing because it is copying. In an age where it is easy for anyone to copy then expectation to have a temporary monopoly on distribution as if it were physical goods is unintelligible.
The point is "voluntarily" is more nuanced than merely people agreeing to it. I consider people free to choose when Spotify would get laughed at every single time. Instead it's sometimes an offer you can't refuse, either out of desperation or because they are ignorant of how they are being exploited.
Your 3c (or $3, whatever) might not be much but they're saving that across thousands and thousands of small artists so for them it's another lucrative way of skimming the profits of the actual creators for themselves.
From what I read, it's more about stopping people using auto generated songs and uploading thousands of songs
*she
I agree with her arguments about Spotify overall, but this amused me-
As if Spotify somehow prevented her from doing those things anyway...
Obviously this is presented in the sense that being a Spotify user means you're not pursuing other methods of music acquisition, and to be fair that's probably the case for most people, you're paying for a service that's supposed to meet all your music listening needs after all. Personally I also use other means like vinyl, YouTube, and a large local collection but that's because I'm deep into music, also as a maker of it.
So ... it's okay to listen to it for free on YouTube and maybe buy it directly, but not to pay a Spotify subscription and listen to it there (and also maybe buy it directly)? The whole rant about "Spotify doesn't pay musicians very much" comes off as disingenuous.
Jack Stratton of Vulfpeck was interviewed on CNBN about the Spotify IPO and gets around to making a good point about it here, "stop whining... me." Artists don't have to use a label and get paid in these "pitties" from Spotify, ultimately its a bizarre consumption model and likely unsustainable.
The amazing mental gymnastics that these people go through to justify their piracy and inane behaviors.
Musician's pay is just the excuse of the day for them to feel okay about what they're doing. Honestly, if you are gonna pirate then just pirate, stop pretending that it's for a good cause or higher purpose, other than to keep your own wallets stacked.
You could've replied to 100 comments on this thread about piracy but you replied to the one that had nothing to do with it.
Fai point, but regardless it seems to have struck a nerve with the piracy crowd.
I don't have beef with piracy itself but I found it hilarious the number of pirates here standing on their soapboxes, pretending to be some kind of modern day Robin Hood and virtue signaling super hard.
Guys, you are still ripping off artists and content creators regardless of their deals with media company, just admit you want shit for free.
Probably pirated almost every artist I've subsequently bought from and go to shows average about once a month. Have professional musicians in the family and they work as studio musicians, composers for media, teaching, play in bands that do covers for corporate events, or as a backing band for a front person. That's probably the majority of musicians unless you're lucky enough to be in a band that gains any notoriety. Most bands are passion projects between musicians who have day jobs and might only play a few small gigs at local venues. So when we're talking about piracy as if it's the most significant thing impacting musicians, really it's a small facet of a very difficult industry to work in.
I don't really think piracy is the single most significant thing impacting musicians, my main point to the "Honorable" pirates is just to cut the shit and admit you rip people off because you want to, not because you are some incarnation of Captain Jack Sparrow out to serve justice while you loot and plunder.
Honestly? No, while I do still pirate, I am slowly buying all the music I can buy in form of vynils records and CDs, other than digital downloads from bandacamp.
Watching for free on YouTube is not piracy, and laughably, I'd say it is better than using Spotify that quite literally exploits artists for cents.
Good on you, the act of buying is what makes the difference.
My comment is in the wrong thread as the other commentor pointed out, it was directed at the Robin Hood wannabes who thinks somehow ripping off artists and creators is okay, because they have a shitty deal with distributors / media companies.
Hey all, I'd like to distance myself from Spotify, but I really enjoy their discovery features. I've learned about a lot of bands both new and old that I wouldn't have otherwise. Do you have any suggestions for a service that could replace this aspect of it?
I've used Spotify, Apple music, YT music and nothing beats SoundCloud stations for discovering new music based on a song.
and their "More of What you Like" playlists are just stations based on your recently most played songs and they just don't miss.
for someone like me that has songs from a lot of different genres in my regular rotation of 10-15 songs every month or so, it's perfect for discovering music.
Not that it’s any better in terms of ethics or artist pay, but YouTube Music has relatively decent auto playlist generation with settings for discovery. Plus you get ad-free YouTube without having to use piped or vanced or whatever people are using these days.
Bandcamp is pretty good. They do writeups that I think are written by real people. When you look at a band you like, it tells you about stuff other people who like them have. I've found a lot of stuff there.
It is more about buying music than renting it, however. Most albums it will ask you to buy after a certain number of plays. I think the band can configure those details
Bandcamp was bought out by Epic Games, fired half of it's staff to make the bottom line look better, and is now owned by some private corporate music licensing company that refuses to recognize it's employee union and fired even more employees that were all involved in their unionization effort. I wouldn't recommend supporting them anymore.
This all happened in September btw so any enshittification of the service has yet to come to fruition.
Search your favourite artists. Wiki them etc. and learn about them whilst simultaneously finding where they're members play in other bands or have other projects. Also, it can illuminate what they're influences were/are and you can listen to that too. I find a shit-tone of new music this way.
Deezer. Interface/UX is a little jank but it's private and discovery is good.
Radio Paradiso. Berlin based radio. Weird and wonderful.
I use Yandex Music for discovery. For some reason, I can't get Spotify to recommend the same amount of new stuff I like. You might need a proxy though because the content there is region-locked. Also I used both Yandex and Spotify for free, it's just fine on desktop with Ublock Origin.
How about FM radio waves?
So you can hear the same 5 songs on repeat interspersed with tons of commercials?
Radio fucking sucks, amigo. Literally the most homogeneous playlists ever unless you are close enough to a college radio station or a major city that can support anything other than top 40 or the same 100 classic rock songs.
I discover more ads than music that way
Ah yeah I love hearing the same 30 songs over and over again with 60% ads, great idea
This is why pirating any music found on the radio will never make me feel guilty.
Last year I've listened to more than 6k different songs. If you'd be generous for the math and say 12 songs an album, 9 euro per album it's still over 5k a year. Spotify is just cheaper for me, even the high seas would cost me too much in terms of time
Everyone who listens to the same downloaded 50 song playlist everytime they open Spotify premium is paying for you to use the service
But I use it much more similar to you than those people so I am also winning lol.
Not to mention that if everybody listened like thak guy spotify would just increase prices.
I spent >100$ on concert tickets to listen to artists I found on Spotify. Probably would not have spent this money nor discovered those artists by listening to 50 songs downloaded 10 years ago from Limewire.
Over a hundred? Must have been half a ticket then? Pre-fees of course.
I listened to 6k songs, just because spotify has them.
Do i need it? Absolutely not.
I cancelled when they increased the price and i went back to buying an album for life from the discount bin and putting it on repeat with the other 20 albums i still owned.
Back when I had an ipod I spent days downloading songs. I don't think my listening habits changed all that much, now I just don't download them via "legitimate" routes anymore
I find it most useful as a radio replacement for this reason, you can't find a service with more quantity. Personal music collection is still my main source though.
Down voted cause substack allows nazi content.
Upvoted because this article was an interesting read.
That's nice for you
I just quit Spotify too and went back to mp3s I’ve downloaded with Limewire. I got sick of playlists, messy UI, etc. I also got tired of people talking about their top music of the year. I honestly don’t care what you listened to the most.
All my mp3s are on my phone and on my Mac and work great
I also am not guilty not giving artists the $.0003 per play every time I play a son. Less guilty than the $1 per song in the 2010s or $20 per album in the 2000s…
I quit Spotify too though still in Apple Music. Hopefully later I'm able to buy non-DRM music (from something in Bandcamp to CD or even Vinyls). Actually I went to Vinyl store yesterday, it was such a refreshing experience.
Honestly I got sick of subscription. I know I'm not alone with that. I want to actually own my own music. I don't want to pirate either 'cause I still genuinely support those artists.
Try qobuz. They're a streaming service and an online music store. Obviously bandcamp>qobuz when it comes to supporting the artists, but anything you can stream, you can buy and download in flac, mp3, etc. They also have a fair amount of high-res stuff too.
Qobuz was such a great discovery for me a couple of years ago. I've bought so much more music lately because of it.
Combined with my Plex server and plexamp on my phone, I have all the streaming benefit from Spotify, with my own music collection that I've built up for more than 20 years at this point.
Just a heads up, Bandcamp has gotten a little shady in the past year or so. I honestly forgot what happened, but I think they got bought out by some shitty label that's known for treating artists like shit.
But tbh I don't remember correctly
I know what happened--they got bought by Epic (yes, Fortnite's Epic), then I think sold just last year, and now their situation is I think in limbo, not sure
You’re shitting on Spotify and use that to defend that you’re stealing from artists?
Spotify is stealing from artists too. I’m just not lining that corporations pockets. I still buy albums from band camp and go to shows and buy merch — all much more direct impactful ways of supporting the artists.
Spotify pays a fraction of a penny per play to artists. Who’s really the one stealing?
So, because Spotify doesn’t pay much to artists, it’s okay that you pay nothing?
Ugh, spotify soot again?
At least according to spotify (it would probably be illegal for them to lie anyways), Spotify pays almost 70% of revenue to rights-holders (whoever distributes the thing, e.g. record labels), which means they take about the same cut as Steam. Good luck complaining about that.
You often see people citing the $.003 per stream for rights-holders figure for Spotify. That's not exactly what Spotify decides! Spotify pays rights-holders share of the 70% of the revenue based on how much they were streamed. TL;DR: Spotify pays rights-holders slices of pie based on how much their artists help bake. So, if artists aren't getting payed enough, Spotify simply isn't getting enough revenue despite reinventing radio for its free tier!
Not to mention how certain rights-holders (fortunately not DistroKid) gobble royalties away from artists. And, the author's solution to (insert @Nougat's comment here)?
(On a side note: I hate Tidal free, because it "doesn't" have ads! Every single interruption I've encountered so far is the generic Tidal announcer telling me to subscribe to premium. Sometimes I even get a freaking video "ad" on cellular data telling me the same thing, and there are only 4 "ads" in total! There's no variety! It's just repeating! Aaaaaaaaa (dw just yelling me name
I use the “Lite” version of spotify that isn’t strictly available for download in the states. It still has real shuffle and isn’t as bogged down with bloat features. Literally the only downside is no sleep timer.
How do you deal with discovery?
That's the hard part for me, the only way I find new music is by it ending up on a continuous playlist or something similar.
I have broad tastes, which makes it difficult to not be boxed into a recommendations genre on many platforms (Spotify included).
To enlighten our android-using brothers and sisters... https://xmanager.app/ is a good way to enjoy spotify if you insist on using it.
I use Spotube, which avoids their app entirely. not super stable, tho
Last weekend I used https://github.com/linsomniac/spotify_to_ytmusic to copy my Spotify playlists over to YouTube Music, and the shuffle play is SOOO much nicer there! That was my primary gripe with Spotify, the shuffle play is idiotic
As far as I recall. YT Music pays even less than Spotify does unfortunately.
You cannot make a difference this way. Their music is a commodity they have signed agreements to sell. They probably (in the vast majority of instances) had almost no bargaining power in this and a lot of signed artists don't make a penny from their work, at all.
If you really like an artist, contact them via their official channels and ask if you can send them money directly or donate to a charity they like.
Yeah you're right. Actually I was just thinking about this streaming space and perhaps switching away from Spotify, over to Tidal but probably it wouldn't make a big difference to the respected artists I'm listening to.
From https://soundcharts.com/blog/music-streaming-rates-payouts#streaming-payouts-on-spotify-apple-music-google-play-and-deezer which is admittedly a bit old.
I believe YouTube music premium streams actually pay more than Spotify but the cross between YouTube paying way less and YouTube music paying more causes some confusion.
According to the soundcharts link below, they pay about half of spotify's pay.
I switched to Tidal from Spotify because as secure my password is, I would always be intereupted mid-listening by my app putting on a shitty random music (often RAP) and discovered that there was an underground operation of people using pirated accounts to inflate stream numbers to get into the popular playlists. And with Tidal I can use Tidal-DL to download flacs to my Navidrome server which is cool.
this happened to me as well and i have no idea how. fascinating
If your account is linked to your Google, Apple or Facebook account that might be the culprit (I think you can see this in yout account settings). You need to check that because the consequences could be way worse than just having access to your Spotify account. You can use HaveIBeenPwned to look for leaks matching your e-mail address or password.
Another possibility is that your browser/OS or spotify client was infected by a token stealer which can automatically steal your access tokens as you log-in after changing the password.
The weird thing is that it's linked to my Facebook account, which has MFA...
Then it may be a token stealer.
Muaicbee+poweramp with 600gb music for 15 years now. Love it. Nice to see other people wanting to follow the old ways.
I've been using Musicbrains Picard for tagging and Plex for streaming but will be switching to Jellyfin for my new build.
Actually have been using foobar2000 upnp server on my internal network more often lately. BubbleUPNP for an Android client works really nicely.
This was my setup for the longest time. Just a few years ago did I switch to musicbee+plex+plexamp. Also last.fm ftw
I never got into Spotify. Soulseek is all I need.
Give nicotine+ a try some time.
deleted
This person really brags about paying $25 for a proprietary music player that's exclusive to Mac OSX.
I only used Spotify for podcasts when I used to be on the road all the time. For music, I've had a free Pandora account for years now. Does what I need it too. And with wireguard+pihole I don't get ads either.
This is funny because I remember the days people HATED Spotify for adding podcast and only listen to podcast on their own separated app (I use PocketCasts)
To be fair, nowadays several podcasts stopped issuing their feeds and can only be listened to on spotify because they bought exclusivity, it sucks.
I like being able to queue an episode of something to listen to, and then going back to listening to music again. If it wasn't for that, it's kind of a crappy podcast player, yeah.
I can see that. Though it's been a few years since I've used it.
Edit: The podcast id listen to were very long format/critical role episodes.
Since Spotify serves lossy audio files still...I don't care about them.