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.
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…
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
They commodity and profit from Nazis on their platform. When called out for it, they’re 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”
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.
That sounds an awful lot like them quietly liking it
Turning a blind eye for profit is complicity.
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)
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.
To enlighten our android-using brothers and sisters… https://xmanager.app/ is a good way to enjoy spotify if you insist on using it.
Removed by mod
I use Spotube, which avoids their app entirely. not super stable, tho
I never got into Spotify. Soulseek is all I need.
Give nicotine+ a try some time.
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?
How about FM radio waves?
Ah yeah I love hearing the same 30 songs over and over again with 60% ads, great idea
This seems to be the standard music streaming experience
I discover more ads than music that way
So you can hear the same 5 songs on repeat interspersed with tons of commercials?
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. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 today! There’s no variety! It’s just repeating! Aaaaaaaaa (dw just yelling me name
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
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.
It’s not 0.003¢ per steam, it’s $0.003. (Actually £0.003, per that article.)
So 1000 streams should pay $3.
This person really brags about paying $25 for a proprietary music player that’s exclusive to Mac OSX.
Since Spotify serves lossy audio files still…I don’t care about them.
Down voted cause substack allows nazi content.
That’s nice for you