cough get third party spotify app from fdroid cough
Which one? Cough cough
cough type spotify in search bar and use the one you like cough
I don’t know why anyone pays for Spotify anymore when there are others that are less and are lossless and include shit they are now taking away.
There just isnt though. Spotify had the best UX of any music streaming service for the longest time and only recently have they started shooting themselves in the foot.
Lossless is pointless and not a selling point compared to interface and usability across hardware. Tidal is probably it’s closest competitor, but it still doesnt have the integration Spotify does.Lossless is pointless
I wouldn’t say its pointless, but it really doesn’t help much considering the quality of your average headset/earpieces.
Even in blind tests with high end gear, people often mistake 320kbps MP3s as the lossless track. Compression is incredible these days and isn’t inherently a bad thing like it used to be, it saves a lot of space and bandwidth with minimal to no perceivable difference in quality.
And as you point out, not even worth considering with average equipment.
Even as an Audiophile, I agree, FLAC is a waste of bandwidth and disk space unless you’re remixing tracks (which most people don’t do!)
I don’t know, I have a couple of tracks that I love, but could never get them in FLAC. I listen to them on a very high volume and always feel like there are bits that would feel smoother if they were lossless. I am unable to confirm or deny that.
You basically need professional headphones and speakers to notice any difference, my guess is that 99% of Spotify customers have headphones that didn’t cost more than $100, so why would they care? I mean, I have nice headphones and speakers and after some blind tests I couldn’t notice any difference.
Or if there is a noticeable difference, you have to really listen for it. Which if you wanna do that, then fine, but the vast majority of the time usually have music on while they are doing something else and don’t sit listening for every subtle difference, if one exists.
Spotify had the best UX of any music streaming service for the longest time
Not if you actually like have controls and managing music. They’ve been actively fucking their UX’s usability for years. Options just disappearing or being moved to hidden places, garbage shoved in front you constantly, etc.
I’ve discovered recently that if you block artists you won’t be able to see a list of who you blocked later anywhere in the UI be it mobile or desktop or web.
Only way is to request an account data download and then parse the zip file they give you lmfao
So, you’re saying, if I borrow my friend’s Spotify, and block most of their favourite artists, they won’t know what I’ve done or how to undo it?
Living up to your username I see lmao
Yea, the only way to unblock an artist as of now is if you manually navigate to each individual artist page and THEN it’ll have an “Unblock Artist” button (And iirc it only shows up on one version of the app, either desktop or mobile I forgot which). There’s no other indication anywhere else of blocked artists lol
Spotify Connect usually works really well, I can use it on Linux, it’s relatively cheap.
I don’t see any reason to switch tbh.
The main argument i hear is the recommendation algorithm but it’s really subjective
I like the algo. The “discover weekly” playlist continues to recommend new music that I like and didn’t know existed, at least every week or two. And “song radio” is such a good way to keep a vibe going.
Such as?
Last I checked there’s still no alternative that doesn’t require some sacrifices.
Integrations (or the lack there of) have me day dreaming about returning to Spotify once in a while. I moved to Tidal and while the catalog is great (except for a weird dearth in Jonathan Coulton songs), I gradually discovered some things I miss. Tidals Alexa app, for example, still can’t play playlists. The Roku app buggy and There’s no desktop app for Linux, swapping music playing from one device to another is not inbult, and things like that.
Also because there are fewer of us Tidal users, FOSS integrations are lacking. The options open to me in home assistant for building things on top of spotify are are vastly greater than anything I can do with Tidal.
Which do you recommend?
I used to recommend Deezer, mostly for the fact it was the closest to what Google Play used to be in terms of layout and function. But recently they decided to do a downright gross redesign and then actively insulted paying customers that didn’t like it.
So I tried Apple Music (from an iPad I barely ever use), then Tidal, and I’ve tried Tidal and Apple Music, too, and honestly? They’re all doing the same things. Some are in different states of enshitification, but it’s all going the same direction. What Spotify gets away with, all the others eventually attempt. The problem is simply the industry.
I would suggest Tidal, it seems the least far along the path, but it’ll get there too.
I’m genuinely getting ready to start curating my own collection again with Lidarr
Tidal has recently eliminated its most expensive plan and bundled everything it offered into the cheaper tier. So it’s actually the opposite of enshittification. I love it
I have 8 playlist I’ve been cultivating for like 6 years now, and it’s kind of hard to walk away from that. And I’ll fuck the dirt before I go back and re-make them lol.
There are services that will migrate playlists. They’re not perfect, but I’ve seen them work before. I can’t remember the one I used.
I’ve used SongShift. It told me which items were missing after the transfer.
That sounds familiar. I think I used it too. Thanks!
Use something like Soundizz to transfer your playlists. Simple and takes like 5 minutes. I transferred everything (playlists, favorite songs, followed artists) from Spotify to Tidal without issue.
Tidal? Really? That’s the alternative? No thanks
I tried others, stayed with Tidal for a while, but unfortunately had to come back to Spotify. The playlists are just much better and you have access to tons of good user-created playlists.
en
shitti
fication
Enpoopification
Congrats on actually using the word appropriately.
It didn’t originally have lyrics so free users are not really losing anything.
When was “originally”? Lyric availability is the main reason I chose spotify over YouTube music. If it’s not included in the free plan then you can’t compare that and won’t pick spotify.
When you say choose you mean you use it for free or pay for it?
Pay for it after trying the free version. Both spotify and YouTube music are terrible on the free version.
People can try Spotify premium for 3 months free, but I understand what you’re saying. Some people won’t want to sign up for something that they have to remember to cancel, but if they’re truly in the market for a paid service it shouldn’t matter.
Originally Spotify started with no users. So they’re not really losing anything if people migrate to another service lmao
Sure but they’re not leaving… They have the largest user base by over 100M. Is that why u added the “lmao”? Sarcasm?
I left over the past year 🤷♂️ I imagine more and more will do so as the service continues to slide further to shit
What is shit about it though? Just pay for it. It’s worth it.
I’ve paid for Spotify for years and it is, without a doubt, getting shittier. They removed the integrated google maps car mode without a real replacement. They push podcasts, which most users do not care about, heavily now, despite having poor support for them UX-wise. They keep moving UI elements around without purpose. I’ve read they also have an exploitative revenue model for musicians on the service, but haven’t confirmed that bit myself.
never knew about the Google maps mode. works for me: https://support.spotify.com/us/article/google-maps/
Me too, and Lemmy inspired me to unsub! 😉
TikTok has a huge user base and they’re leaving.
Spotify has a huge user base but most people pay nothing. They’ll be leaving if they never learn how to leech more money from artists and listeners. Thus, these kind of desperate moves like hiding lyrics.
The TikTok thing is likely influenced by the possible ban in US.
As their users keep growing they can charge more in ads, but to your point, they will have to find a way to get more people to pay for the service. Maybe they need tiered pricing. One price for no ads and another price for additional features like lyrics.
Apple has many more subscribers than in the USA, but I know Europe uses Spotify more. Being the biggest means they are more top heavy in the market.
But the funny thing is that even with a larger user base, Spotify has NEVER posted a profit (which gets significantly more negative each year). They also have been loosing a substantial percentage of their revenue per user each year as they further enshittify their platform.
They should be VERY concerned about losing users, and taking away features will end up doing just that.
So confused. A bunch of people using a platform for free criticizing them for never making a profit, then complaining when they try to make a profit by charging for a feature that doesn’t interfere with listening to music?
Do y’all feel the same way about YouTube?
Yes I feel the same way about YouTube, and I’m confident many others do as well.
You can pretend that users who trade their time listening to and viewing ads don’t deserve the to be upset with enshittification, but I wholeheartedly disagree. That line of thinking tracks very well with Musk’s approach to X, another service that was the “biggest” but not profitable. Look how they have done moving features behind paywalls and upending the expectations of their user base.
Okay, well YouTube isn’t going anywhere.
Twitter was hardly ever profitable. I understand what you’re saying, that they need to keep growing their free user base to become profitable with ads, but they can’t do it with ads alone and I’m sure they’re time crunched. I could see them selling to a larger corporation at some point you think you dislike Spotify now. Just wait.
Twitter was hardly profitable, but Spotify has never posted a profit. In fact, they are more negative in regard to profit every year. Twitter and Spotify are very similar in that their main success is volume, but not profitability.
I have no doubt Spotify could or would sell and get even worse. Just like Twitter.
People use it BECAUSE it was free and feature rich. When they start taking away the latter to bolster the former, you’ll see a migration to the next best free, feature rich service. I quit Spotify 4 months ago, and I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything.
Do you really believe this will make them more money?
not this alone, but as one person commented, the lyrics were a deciding factor of Spotify over YouTube Music. this among other features could draw more paid users. do other platforms offer lyrics that follow the music for free?
Some features makes sense to be behind paywalls like the ai dj feature but basic features that was previously free is ridiculous
correct me if I’m wrong, but all other major streaming services have lyrics behind paywall (Apple, Amazon, Tidal). with Spotify having the largest user base, it makes sense to try to get some users to switch rather than keep a feature free that their competitors require subscription for.
I have an issue with free features becoming behind a paywall no matter which company do it. I have no issue with new pro features to be added
fair. in your opinion, it should have never been free to begin with.
Google users didn’t originally have gmail, so if Google paywalls it nobody is losing anything?
Apples to oranges
That seems like egg plant to aubergine to me
If you search ‘xmanager github’ you will make a Spotify shareholder cry so please please don’t.
I’m not really getting what this does… Is it a patcher?
Yeah I’ve gotta say they have one awful website/github page. “Lets say nothing about what we do other than magically ad free music appears and hope people want to install this on their device!”
What do you want them to do, shout it from the rooftops so Spotify catches on? Some tools are better left quiet, so only people “in the know” use them.
Because Spotify is just going to magically not notice? I’m sure they’re already well aware.
probably because they don’t want to draw Spotify’s attention by loudly announcing “HEY GUYS WE GIVE YOU SPOTIFY PREMIUM FEATURES FOR FREE”.
Spotify modified to not have ads
Edit: but also it’s an improved app from spotify’s official app. It has amoled dark theme for example. I like it more
For iOS, there’s spotc++ but you’d need to know how to sideload
Friendly reminder that Tidal costs the same, has a bigger catalog, does not pester you with podcasts, has lossless quality audio and it includes lyrics
*Has bigger catalog if you were fans of mostly Western and European music.
Too bad (for me) it doesnt have most of my library.
And the Tidal app has an amoled dark mode, which I don’t think Spotify has. Sometimes the little quality of life things make a big difference.
It is just a shame that none of the alternative services have a solution for Spotify connect or I would have moved long ago.
Cool. Where can I read up on the catalog of Tidal?
Can I upload my own music like I could with Google music?
I’ve spent the last 3 days deleting old google play music uploads from YouTube music, one song at a time. Would not recommend uploading anything to their interface even if it is possible.
YouTube Music allows you to do this fyi
Yeah but I hate yt music for different reasons haha
No, Tidal never had that. Deezer might still allow it, they’re the last I know that did.
Technically you can still do it with iTunes, but I don’t think those files will play on the Apple Music app.
for anyone curious, YouTube Music definitely has this, I’ve recently used it. looks like a holdover from the Play Music days.
Yes they do play in the Apple Music app, but if you upload in bulk only 50% will actually be uploaded
All the songs I have copied to iTunes get uploaded, but if you have the lossless versions they get converted to normal quality on other devices, or if you remove the local original copy.
Music doesn’t support flac, though, you have to convert them to alac first.
I also use a Mac, I don’t know if it’s different on windows
I do this on Windows, it works fine. Never had an issue with mass uploads / initial library sync. I have a large library of 30k tracks, mostly lossless ALAC.
I switched to Plex / PlexAmp though, it’s better and I don’t have to pay a subscription.
Also works with Rekordbox
Isn’t Tidal owned by Kanye West though?
According to Wikipedia he left in 2017. Majority owner is a Jack Dorsey company called Block, Inc.
Daniel Ek, Kanye West, Jack Dorsey, Epic Games… What a great list. We need to start from scratch yall.
Friendly reminder that Bandcamp puts money directly in the pockets of artists, and on the first Friday of every month (which for May is today), they waive their fees and 100% goes to the artist.
Bandcamp has been great but I fear the enshittification coming. Half the staff was fired by Epic Games last year and then it was sold to a music conglomerate.
Epic Games bought Bandcamp in March 2022 for $273 million
[Bandcamp co-founder Ethan] Diamond was not aware of Epic’s plan to sell Bandcamp to Songtradr until as soon as the night before the deal was announced.
During the weeks that followed, Bandcamp’s union, which represented about half of the company at the time, called on Songtradr to voluntarily recognize the union while it also negotiated with Epic over how the layoffs to union members would be handled. For example, the game publisher said that no employee who received an offer from Songtradr would remain eligible for Epic’s severance package.
The two companies agreed to an “asset sale” of Bandcamp rather than a “stock sale.” This meant that Songtradr was only acquiring the technology and platform, rather than the company as a whole, including its staff.
“Of those laid off, 40 were in the union bargaining unit out of a total 67 members,” it wrote. “None of the eight (8) democratically elected bargaining team members received a job offer…"
They have a bigger catalog? I kinda assumed that Spotify had the biggest catalog by far because they’re the most popular one.
YouTube Music has the biggest music catalogue since you can mix and match official and unofficial releases in your playlists.
It also depends. I am listening to a very specific niche that will post on spotify but not youtube (Freeform trance) The biggest catalog for that style is Soundcloud go. But definetly not tidal
Some people think this is a desireable feature
I personally hate having 96kbps “live” recordings from someone’s cell phone suddenly injectef into my stream. But i havent used youtube music since shortly after they became youtube music
RIP google play music
Well ideally nothing gets injected and you control your playlists yourself so you can choose high quality releases
Indeed, rip GPM
Is there a Tidal linux player? Or a Tidal for Roku? Those are the two things I couldn’t find that made me choose Spotify.
Edit: just checked again and it’s 3 times more expensive than Spotify in my region.
Re: tidal on Linux, if you use Arch there are a couple of options in the AUR. I don’t know about other distros.
linux as a non supported web browser
I’m confused about this one, lol. I did not know that Linux was a browser rofl
I’m just as confused as you are. No idea why they decided to list Linux specifically on the list of web browsers and only to mention it is not supported (in an otherwise list of supported things).
On Linux: it’s only a third party electron wrapper. No different than Spotify but at least Spotify officially provides support to their app. Everything else is janky or hacky third party CLI utilities.
Is it https://github.com/Mastermindzh/tidal-hifi? That gives you get lossless audio on Linux through electron if you support widevine, among other features
That app is pretty pointless IMO. I’ve been a budget audiophile for a little while now, and one of the features a music player needs is to be able to output the music at the correct bit/format @ the correct sample rate. Ex: 24 bit @ 96000, which is the highest quality a song can be from Tidal.
Pipewire has the ability to adjust and match the sample rate on the fly, so that no resampling happens and you get “bit perfect” playback.
Since that tidal-hifi uses chromium for its DRM to allow the max quality, it is permanently set at 48000. Basically no music on Tidal is 48k, basically every song is at least HiFi quality at 16@44100, and then a lot of recent music is HiRez capable of “up to 24@96000.”
So you’re basically resampling every single song somewhere along the audio pipeline, before it reaches your external music hardware, like a DAC/AMP stack.
Good to know, thanks for explaining
Good god
“Support” is a strong word for Spotify … They support extends to other clients offering help and assisting each other in forums
The only time I seemingly got to a Spotify support person was just because I was cancelling and they wanted to convince me otherwise
God I hate spotify, I have just been with them for so long as a family too but it gets worse and worse. Injust wanted to disable clean versions of albums, everytime I drive and voice search a song I get a clean album.
neither the folks at Tidal, ot seems
Shit services like Spotify is a reminder to vote with you wallet and do your research. It’s ok to switch up your subs.
Being a subscriber since day 1 does nothing for the consumer.
I wish the “vote with your wallet” were real… It’s as effective a “recycle your plastics”
It’s only effective in deflecting responsibility to a party that is truly powerless to address the issues
Well think about if everybody did do that at the same time. Canceled Netflix, stopped going to Starbucks, stop shopping a certain places.
Maybe just for one week. What if everybody had enough gas in the world they could skip a day or two of getting gas.
Well think about if everybody did do that at the same time. Canceled Netflix, stopped going to Starbucks, stop shopping a certain places.
It’s impossible to organize… More importantly, the government would bail them out because they are too big to fall
Maybe just for one week. What if everybody had enough gas in the world they could skip a day or two of getting gas.
Again, impossible to organize and completely useless… By the end of the week the oil companies would be whole anyway. What do they care if they have a revenue dip for 3 days followed by a revenue bump as everybody ran out of gas and had to fill up again ?
Spotify also includes lyrics. It’s just not in free tier anymore.
The app also doesn’t let you add your own music, though… Very annoying, cause some songs aren’t on streaming services
For now… Do you really think they’re immune to enshitification if they become more popular?
I’ll bash them if and when they’ll start to do shitty stuff. For now they are great
Exactly. I mean come on ‘I can’t consider using another service other than my current shitty service. That other might become shit!’
I believe someone debunked the claim of lossless audio. But otherwise I think that’s all accurate.
What has been debunked was the whole story regarding MQA audio, which now they have abandoned. Now it is truly lossless
Small sidenote, tidal lossless is double the price
Nope. They have changed that. Lossless is now part of the basic plan
Oh wait what! I own a few headphones which actually benefit from it (ever so slightly, I know). Might be worth the switch
Yeah, on my good headphones the difference is quite noticeable
Even their middle tier quality CD level HiFi 16bits@44100Hz sounds sooo much better than max quality Spotify. Which is also included in their now 1 single price plan. Spotify maxes as 320 kbps, and an average lossless CD quality is around 1000 kbps.
I can definitely tell the difference.
Tidal does not always have lossless quality audio, I personally recommend deezer
I did also get some suspicious audio from Deezer. It depends on what the publisher provides.
Tidal also goes above CD quality, if you’re into that. Some songs go up to 192kHz at 24 bits.
True, though I will say that deezer is a lot more consistent with it, downloading from deemix a lot of the the audio bitrate is atleast 900 kbps vbr up to 1411.
Of course, the best for that is going to be quboz, but quboz also has a very limited selection of music
For a moment I thought they’re doing this on the paid tier. Who am I kidding, it’s probably just a matter of time till they pull this number.
Just listen to classical music. Problem solved.
Or techno.
Laughs in Deezer
(Serious) question: How do you stand not being able to select individual tracks? I honestly would rather listen to my music in any of the free frontend apps rather than being limited to that extent…
Deezer Free randomly became unavailable a few weeks ago in the Netherlands.
I don’t bother with streaming services anymore. I set up Navidrome on my home server for my music library and love it.
Also, I may be in the minority here, but I decided to start paying artists directly for their music. Whether it be buying a CD at a show or buying off of Bandcamp. I didn’t want most of my money going to Apple/Spotify, I want my favorite artists to at least get something for their hard work …
Yes, it’s more expensive if you expect to have the entire Spotify catalog at a moment’s notice, but I may be old fashioned in that I like listening to albums front to back, and tend to listen to a single album on loop for a long time. After I’ve worn out that album, then I’ll move onto another one. Buying about an album a month has worked out for me, which is about the cost of these subscription services (I know I’m definitely in the minority here in the way I listen to my library, but figured I’d share anyway).
What do you do with CDs? Genuinely curious about how they can be used in 2024 and surprised artists still have any printed.
You’d be surprised, quite a lot of artists still put out CDs! A lot of artists I like sell them when you go to their shows, it’s a great way for them to make money, along with selling other merch. I also really like collecting them. I also check out a lot of CDs from the library (more useful for older music, I listen to a lot of jazz and classical). I rip the CDs and throw them into my library, assuming there isn’t a digital version already available.
Then how do you learn about new music?
I thought about (and still want to) keep a self-hosted music library, but one of the things i look forward to is the New Music playlist that updates every Friday on YTM. I’ve found so many good songs and artists that way.
Just use YouTube for new music and try it out there. Then download what you really want.
I scrobble my listens using Last.fm and ListenBrainz, which has given me some decent recommendations. It’s worked well enough for me. Maybe I’m “missing out” on more recommendations by not being on Spotify or other streaming service, but I still manage to find so much to listen to organically anyway. Also like @HouseOfJazz@lemmy.world, YouTube recommendations work too.
Music scrobbling solves that issue for me. Navidrome integrates well with for example last.fm. Despite having my music listening history there one can find recommendations based on their music taste
Any other places you buy from? I essentially want a thing like lidarr that goes and finds everything in lossless format and presents me an option of buying it. Bandcamp is good but doesn’t have all the artists I’d like to buy from
And enshittification continues…
How? This doesn’t affect the subscription nor the price.
Honestly, what does this change? For paid users nothing, and the free version was always unusable with you not being able to individually select songs.
Ensharttification?
Not compete shit but enough to warrant concern.
As a long time Pandora user… I never want to select individual songs. I want stations, vibes, playlists, etc.
Spotify has all that. Not “stations” so much.
Type in “sleep mood” and you get playlists with days worth of various calming music.
Workout? What kind do you want? Hard rock, deep bass rap, whatever.
Sounds like I’m cheerleading for Spotify but it really is pretty good these days.
Tons of podcasts, mood collections, etc. I haven’t looked up a song or artist they didn’t have.
I am a paid user.
(Their point was that Spotify’s free version is sufficient because they only want the things mentioned)
I tried Apple Music recently, and while I wasn’t impressed by the platform, one thing I was legitimately taken back by was how much effort they put into the lyrics. The little animations as the lyrics follow the song, where the words move in different ways based on the song in question, it’s really aesthetically pleasing.
Some of the animations definitely feel programmed by people who were genuine fans. The little ways the words animations move along with certain infections in the singer’s delivery, or react to minor shifts in tone. There’s some care being taken with them, song by song. I was legitimately impressed, and I seldom ever have anything nice to say about Apple.
It wasn’t enough to keep me paying for it but I genuinely enjoyed it quite a bit.
Enshittification
Spotify promotes and forces you to use DRM. Even if you pay, the content is not ours and you are forces to use malware
Damn this is slick!
https://f-droid.org/packages/com.shabinder.spotiflyer/ one more for good fun
People being so cheap and refusing to pay 5-15$/mo for unlimited music streaming. What a weird reality we’re living in 🙄
Some may not have the money for such expenses.
Some may have ethical issues regarding how the CEO invests his profits into military companies. And Spotify makes less money with ads than with the subscription fee.
Some don’t want to pay for ad-free Spotify, since the subscription fee is much higher than what they make with ads. They don’t see the price as justified.
Some prefer other ways to listen to music, since they have an issue how a plethora of artists don’t really benefit from Spotify and are rather exploited. (Okay, those listeners are probably not meant here anyway as they are not affected.)
Some have a problem with such subscription services, especially if you do not own a copy of the music and there is a risk of the music, they like to listen to, being removed from Spotify’s library.
Some especially don’t want to pay for Spotify if they removed a feature, miss a feature or moved a feature behind the subscription, if that feature was previously available or should be available, because there are some things which are taken for granted or are usually expected and they protest against a business model of “creating value by taking something away”.
Some may be cheap, yes.
But surely not all of them. There can be many reasons and it’s usually a good idea not to shove all people of group X into a single drawer and judge them in such an inconsiderate way.
Not buying the argument that people don’t have 5 usd to spare. People are just being cheap. Either pirate or pay for a service, asking for a free service is plain silly.
If you have ethical concerns then don’t use Spotify at all.
people are just being cheap
pirate
???
No, people are upset about the lyrics being removed. And why pay 5 or more bucks a month for lyrics when you can have a page on your favorite browser displaying the lyrics for free?
I prefer that anyways, and this is coming from someone who does the premium family plan.
Spotify has patents on underestimating your emotional state based on the music you listen to. One can guess they sell such data. A hard pass for me.
Self-hosting Jellifyn/Navidrome has been really fun (but I’m aware it is not something everybody wants/can do).
I pay for a Spotify family plan and my mom, sister, cousin, and I all use it daily. It’s worth it imo.
