Spotify plans to raise prices this year and introduce new plans
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Last year's price hike worked out very well for the company, so why not do it again? Spotify is preparing a revamp of its plans and prices, according to a...

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/

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

Marud
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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 😅

Marud
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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.

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

TehPers
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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.

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

I got off Spotify like a year ago it’s been nice

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.

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

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

Romanmir
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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.

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

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.

I’m familiar. I have some tracks on there. I do metal though, and I have no clue when they actually play it.

Nice, what is your artist name? Maybe I’ve heard you on it!

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.

PenguinCoder
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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.

PenguinCoder
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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.

Bandcamp Fridays.

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.

GadgeteerZA
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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.

@sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al
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Apparently you can opt out and forego the charge.

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

sunbunman
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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.

How do you even buy music anymore?

sunbunman
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There’s quite a few ways actually:

  • Bandcamp (preferred)
  • just google it
  • Artist’s official website
  • contact artist via social media

If none of the above has worked, this is no longer an issue about whether you want to pay for the product or not, it’s a supplier problem.

Flit
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Also, when it comes to specific platforms, Apple Music is quite good, though they make it rather painful to buy music if you use Linux

2xsaiko
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It is to be noted that while iTunes is DRM-free at this point (which is very nice and surprised me when I found out) it is unfortunately still lossy compressed audio which the perfectionist in me really doesn’t like :P

Come on Apple, sell me your funny ALAC, you have it for Apple Music anyway

Flit
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Oh, I wasn’t aware of that. It doesn’t bother me that much, since I personally can’t tell the difference in audio quality, but that’s still unfortunate to know

2xsaiko
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I mean same, but I’d still like to have lossless audio regardless :P

It is now? That’s cool Would have been nice to not have lost my entire childhood library because it was locked behind iTunes.

Can I play devil’s advocate a little bit here, because I was really unaware that this ever worked for anything except indie artists on Bandcamp. So Bandcamp works for them or for discovering new music obviously.

I didn’t know artists ever sold digital music on their websites, but that does make sense, so I checked - if I google Taylor Swift and go to her website, there it is, digital music purchase. Great.

I went to U2’s website, and the only music I can buy there is vinyl. I don’t want vinyl, I want digital. You can buy merch, but I’m after music, not merch. Looking further, there’s all sorts of galleries and information about each album and song, but you still can’t buy the music.

Other mainstream artists I googled didn’t even go that far. Googling them brought up a wikipedia link, social media links, tours. All stuff I don’t want. Now your list has “contact artist via social media” - setting aside the fact that it’s unlikely a popular mainstream artist will even reply to anyone at all about anything, this is a real point of friction. I don’t want to have to contact an artist to find out some alternative way to get their music. If I’m buying something online, there needs to be some way to buy it online and ready to go. If we have to wait a couple of days or weeks for a reply that may or may not come - the process failed.

If I had to guess, they would probably say something like “it’s on spotify”.

So yes it probably is a supplier problem, but it seems to me that this is happening for the majority of popular artists if a majority of music people like is mainstream. I assume if you like the majority of indie music then that’s probably not the case.

I suspect that big artists are making so much from streaming that they’re not concerned with direct to consumer. And that’s fine because they are the easiest to torrent.

Bandcamp or whatever downloads website for small and torrent for big.

sunbunman
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No worries, I’ll take your U2 example and try it from my end (I don’t listen to them so I can’t decide on what album(s) specifically you are looking for). I’m going to be frank, it was a pain, but I did find zdigital (7digital outside of Australia) selling their albums without physical media. But getting there, I had to see that the U2 website/publisher website did not even advertise it. It was like the 5th option on duckduckgo after searching for

u2 digital download

I’m sure you would have better luck if you slide in the specific album that you were looking for.

Important to note is that you aren’t googling for that artist or album, you’re googling

artist album digital download

I do agree with you that mainstream artists and publishers are going down this route probably due to some deals with streaming services, but unfortunately that is the reality we live in now. Additional work will be required by the consumer to get what they want. If the publishers start completely stopping this at some point all I can say is that I have the disposable income to buy the products I want and I am going to get it. Whether the publishers sell it to me or not is their decision to make.

I’ve never seen an artist on Bandcamp that I actually recognize.

Telling anyone to “just Google it” is proof that you have no interest in a good faith discussion.

spoiler

asdfasdfsadfasfasdf

You don’t know what you’re talking about.

@Kissaki@beehaw.org
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Please elaborate. Because they’re right, and you are wrong. And they reasoned in what way.

Just Google it.

sunbunman
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Bandcamp is good for indie artists and if you want to discover new artists. I’ve found quite a few diamonds in the rough on there. A surprising amount of metal / punk artists sell via Bandcamp if you’re into that.

How is 'just Google it" not a valid option? This is literally how you can find 99% of all problems about the internet especially for finding where to legally buy digital products within the first few websites. You know what is good for business when you’re trying to sell a product? Making sure its one of the first few, if not the first choice the customer gets when looking at the default search engine.

Moving on from that I’m guessing getting in contact with the artist is not an option? Y’know the other 2 points?

Are you sure you responded to the correct comment? 🤔

@datavoid@lemmy.ml
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I feel like piracy and moral superiority don’t really belong together

FippleStone
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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

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

A popular myth, but a myth nonetheless.

sunbunman
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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.

@datavoid@lemmy.ml
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But damn, the Japanese really don’t like doing business with foreigners.

Truer words have never been spoken

T (they/she)
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When I was a teenager I would save my lunch money to order CDs from CD Japan

T (they/she)
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What kind of japanese stuff do you listen to? I might be able to recommend a place

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.

@datavoid@lemmy.ml
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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?

T (they/she)
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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).

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

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

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 think Gonic is much more complicated for new users. It doesn’t even have a web client. Navidrome is fairly easy to deploy using Docker.

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

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

@sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al
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I’m all in on Navidrome

T (they/she)
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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)

Fuckin titjob mate.

HeartyBeast
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You’re right - Apple Music is cool

I’ve had an excellent experience with Apple Music as well. Plus, lossless!

I’ve been quite enjoying AM too

@Zworf@beehaw.org
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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).

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