Spotify plans to raise prices this year and introduce new plans - GSMArena.com news

sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al to Technology@beehaw.org – 115 points – Spotify plans to raise prices this year and introduce new plans
gsmarena.com

As apparently, this move is made to target audiobook listeners and podcast listeners, can I recommend https://audiobookshelf.org

And also https://f-droid.org/packages/de.danoeh.antennapod/

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Spotify has plans to raise prices and still no plan to pay normally the artists the platform lives on.

They recently just changed to stiff the artists even further.

https://www.nme.com/news/music/spotify-confirm-songs-now-need-at-least-1000-streams-to-earn-royalties-3546548

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Viewed in portrait mode, that looks like a man giving a toast holding a Champaign flute. Also ironically appropriate.

rofl I had to check it on mobile and I totally agree with What you saw

On mobile as well, and it looks like a complete mess. Image captions seem even more important when it comes to ASCII art, hopefully those become a bit more normalized at some point.

btw I've set up my own audiobookshelf server a few months ago for my audiobooks and podcasts. Being able to start something on my phone and keep tracking of my listening then switch on my computer to continue is pure gold. It's what I was looking for for ages.

I tried setting up Audiobookshelf in Podman on my ancient Mac mini recently (now running Fedora x KDE), and turns out I don't know the first thing about running "dockered" servers/apps and absolutely couldn't get it to work 😅

If you want some help in any kind to set this up don't hesitate to ask

Thank you! I may just take you up on that, but think I need to read some how-to's first 😁

I'll see if I can't figure it out, think it's mostly a question of lacking available time to get into it properly 👌

It's called capitalism. They need a near enslaved class to rise the capital.

Just a heads up to everyone, quitting Spotify and buying / "procuring" your own music and playing it via a music player makes reading this quite cathartic. Do it for the moral superiority and self esteem boost for no effort you come to the internet for anyways.

I feel like piracy and moral superiority don't really belong together

You are clearly not aware of the windfall profits corporations are making, and that they are then passing exactly none of it on to the workers generating that profit

Yeah the moral thing to do is pay a third party company $130 per year who then pays an artist $0.20 per billion streams of their work.

I mean the moral thing is just to not buy the product if you have an issue with it.

I have no problem with piracy, but pretending you're some sort of hero for doing it is ridiculous

How is that the moral avenue? You want these artists to fade into obscurity because nobody can ever hear their music while also not earning any money?

Not saying Bandcamp are the good guys but at least you have an option. And today is Bandcamp Friday, when artists keep 100% of the sales!

We run our Navidrome server at home and listen to our music using clients such as Feishin and Tempo (Android).

It is a moral imperative to pirate EA, Ubisoft and Nintendo.

A popular myth, but a myth nonetheless.

I always try to buy my music first, digital only though. I don't have space for CDs or the like. If the option is not available (not common), the tricorn goes on. And normally I would go through any loophole I can find to get it legally. But damn, the Japanese really don't like doing business with foreigners.

What kind of japanese stuff do you listen to? I might be able to recommend a place

But damn, the Japanese really don't like doing business with foreigners.

Truer words have never been spoken

When I was a teenager I would save my lunch money to order CDs from CD Japan

21 more...

I'd take a lower-priced plan with limited listening time. They're getting too expensive for the few hours a month I use it. If they bump it up more I will quit for sure.

The only reason I still use them is the qt-spotify third party client. None of the other services work on my OS (they all need DRM on the browser or other nastiness I don't have).

Spotify is making bank on musicians who get jack squat in return. Don't use Spotify.

Should probably suggest an alternative.

Why? Streaming has become a scam and everyone seems okay with it. Like everything online. Everything is an expensive subscription to rent entertainment. My suggestion? Buy CDs. Buy directly from the artists. Or pirate it, at least Spotify won't make any money from it.

at least Spotify won’t make any money from it.

And the artists still won't. So given in either case, the artist don't make squat; using Spotify is easier. So, use spotify.

So you care more about yourself and Spotify than the artists who give you hours and hours of entertainment. Cool.

When the suggestion is to pirate it, so spotify doesn't get any money I don't see how your follow-up comment matters. In either case of piracy, OR using spotify, the artist still doesn't make money. Problem is that piracy comes with a lot more hoops and headaches.

Of course, buying the artist CD or songs directly is much preferable to either.

How is Spotify a scam? I can probably at most buy one CD per month for the same price as Spotify. Yet Spotify gives unlimited access to good quality versions of almost every song out there. Even with raised prices it's still a way better deal for most consumers than buying music directly.

Personally I tend to also buy a few albums a year, because I like owning them and I like supporting the artists. But the convenience of having every track at your fingertips is hard to beat

It's a scam for artists. They make a pittance. Meanwhile, Spotify is raking it in. It may be an amazing deal for you, but musicians are making nothing from it.

that is why spotify is a scam. it may be a good deal for you, the consumer, but it has made it even harder for artists to make money off their work.

Especially if you are a musician. Musicians need to boycott it. 99.9999% of musicians wouldn't even notice if they weren't on it but it would destroy Spotify.

It's not even worth indie and small artists time to put it on there. Spotify has now officially demonetised all songs with less than 1,000 streams: https://www.nme.com/news/music/spotify-has-now-officially-demonetised-all-songs-with-less-than-1000-streams-3614010

I remember hearing about this. And I bet you the reason they ended up with so many songs with less than 1000 plays is because of their own algorithm. Apart from creating money problems for most musicians, they have been actively narrowing our artistic culture by effectively inbreeding modern music. Its really bad. We need musicians (and all other artists) to express and reflect who we are and what we're about. They empower us. I feel like contemporary music has become narrowed down to nothing but hedonism, vanity and self-loathing; largely thanks to the likes of spotify.

BTW if you're interested in something which is good, check out https://radiofreefedi.net/ It's music from artists on the fediverse. I've had some great sessions listening to their comfy channel and discovered some awesome new artists that I wouldn't have otherwise.

Y'all keeping paying, they keep raising prices... there is a solution but nobody can figure out what tit is!

I'm all in on Navidrome

Same here! I just started to contribute stuff to MusicBrainz.

We buy a bunch of things on bandcamp friday if the bands are there, otherwise get it through other means (specially if we already have the LP)

Stream your own music at whatever quality you have it in!

server https://github.com/sentriz/gonic

client https://f-droid.org/packages/org.moire.ultrasonic/

I think Navidrome is much better, it also supports the Subsonic API

Navidrome + Feishin (Web) - Tempo (Android) - Jellyfin (Android TV) here! I wish there was a solution for casting though, sometimes Jellyfin doesn't work properly

I can't recommend Navidrome to people who aren't necessarily big on self-hosting, it's simply far too big of a project. Gonic is very narrow in scope and it's a drop-in binary; just works.

I call on all small artists to boycott Spotify.

You will make no money on it but they depend on you for their business.

Do not perpetuate or support the continued impoverishment and humiliation of musicians and the degradation of artistic culture.

How will small artists get to make themselves known, though? Not everyone has the option to play live.

I’ll probably bin it. Every playlist goes into the same few songs recently.

Noticed the same since last December... Switched to YouTube Music for a change

Cool, I already use AntennaPod and it's great!

I'll believe it when I see it- Spotify lossless was announced years ago. I don't believe them.

Doesn't seem so bad, if you don't want the price hike just change your plan to not include audiobooks. A little scummy that you need to opt out but not the worst.

Can someone recommend kid/family friendly alternative? Is Tidal easy to use/navigate?

If the raise prices too much I'm going to finalise my plan to move to YouTube Music family plan. Additional bonus will be no more adds on YouTube.

Don't fall for this self hosting stuff. It's well meant and great for single tech enthusiasts, but with family, you won't have enough time to do the required upkeep and the whinning you will here from dependents when stuff goes wrong isn't worth it.

You can try NewPipe, which is free. IIRC I downloaded it from F-Droid. Maybe someone else can reply and confirm that's the best place to get it.

You can also get the APK from their GH. Great app, doesn't solve the family support problem though, and I'm not sure that it works on Apple devices.

You can use the Newpipe app to listen to SoundCloud as well.

They're all pretty straight forward and Tidal has a better record of crediting and paying artists than Spotify. But ultimately, I would suggest self hosting.

How is self hosting better than paying artists?

I often buy albums on Bandcamp and supposedly artists get a good cut of that. They have an app too, so you can stream content from there (or self host the files you get when you buy)

The revenue from streaming services always pales in comparison to buying the music directly from an artist. The streaming model has been hijacked by record labels who take the majority share, such are the deals they force artists to sign.

A decent number of artists offer digital downloads of their music directly either for a flat fee or in a pay what you wish system.

It is nowhere near as convenient unfortunately. Benn Jordan mentions some options in several of their videos about their experience with Spotify, but i’m admittedly not certain I just linked the right one.

If you're Apple users Music isn't too shabby

Works fine on Android as well (which is weird considering how bad Apple software can be on non-Apple devices). Just need to create an Apple ID and you're set.

Testing out the trial right now and it's pretty great so far.

UI is way better than Spotify as well (IMO), plus lossless for the same price as current Spotify Premium. (And it also has a max cache size limit option, so even playing a shit ton of lossless isn't going to eat up more space than what you select.)

Getting my fucking Spotify library and playlists I've built over the years on here is going to be a long nightmare, though.

The Music client for Mac is still an excellent music manager and player and beats Spotify by a mile despite how visibly much they've let it bitrot* since it was iTunes. It's a shame neither the mobile app nor the web client has anywhere near the capabilities.

* for example, what the fuck is that stupid unresizable header that takes up half the window with mostly empty space and doesn't scroll off the screen anymore if you set a playlist view to "as Songs"

I buy sometimes buy downloads on Qobuz but they also have a streaming subscription. I've been able to find most non-obscure music on their site.

Hmm, I use Spotify to stream a wake up mix (approved by my SO,) to an Amazon Echo via Home Assistant. Currently, I know of no way to stream arbitrary music files to an Echo. And I know of no consumer grade device that can accept the command to "Shut your cake hole" when we're tired of listening to stuff while being compatible with HA. This is ... inconvenient.

i already pay for youtube premium, I will just start using music and say fuck it.

Hope I don't have to pay for audiobooks I don't listen to because that's a waste. Spotify should just stick to what they do OK which is music. I'll stick to music only.