Have you guys read the article ? Spotify is denying the claim of massive attack and other platforms as misinformation, they are claiming that the firm the CEO invested in is only working towards military defense of Ukraine against Russia’s invasion. I don’t know what is true and don’t have the time to check, but it looks to me like a decent response if true.
Not saying Spotify isn’t problematic, but that might be overblown misinformation.
Then again, if you want to cancel Spotify, good, I’m all for it, I don’t like the enshitification they are undergoing. But this reason might not be the one you should put on the resignation form, it might not send the right message to Spotify.
Shit. This is honestly the thing that’s going to make me cancel Spotify.
What’s the alternative? Spotify has almost all the music I want to hear. I don’t think the competitors do, and there’s no easy way to check.
Any new service I sign up for will need to have my favorite obscure band of all time: Splashdown. I don’t own a computer, so piracy is not an option. Where do I go?
You can pirate on your phone just fine, there’s libretorrent on f-droid, new pipe can stream and download stuff from youtube and youtube music, you can also download from deezer on telegram with @linemusicbot and @deezload2bot.
(Rimusic and kreator also exist but are buggy)
I’ve been using Tidal for over a year now. I’ve been digging the FLAC streams. $17 a month for my family plan. Up to 6, including yourself. And yes, Splashdown is on Tidal.
Not having a computer doesn’t mean you can’t pirate, you could easily rent a seedbox for like €5/month (eg. https://ultra.cc/) and control torrents on it from your phone eg with transdrone or other apps: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.transdroid.lite
Qobuz is what i have my eyes on.
Only reason I haven’t switched over yet is me and my friends share a lot of music together so I’ve been working on a personal discord bot to share the different links, and I’ve yet to get it working 100% yet (it failed when testing with a rick Astley album of all things)
Spotify must die
I love it. The streaming services deserve to die, for their shady practices towards artists…
Because the record labels were so much better…
We are in need of a good alternative, where the money we give the service goes to the artists based on how much we’ve listened to that artist personally, not on some amalgamated metrics. I want to be able to open my account and see I’ve given £2 this month for bandwidth and management costs, £1.20 to Taylor Swift, £1.50 to Massive Attack, £1 to Portishead, etc.
If at any point you can make money by buying accounts and playing your own tracks over and over, then the service has fucked up.
I wonder if something could be built based on fediverse technology. Artists could host their own instance of some music library software, and have granular control over how it’s monetized - pay per stream, buy a digital copy of a specific song/album, have monthly fees for different tiers of access, you could maybe even sell merch or concert tickets on it - kind of like Patreon, except the instance owner has full control over what’s offered and how it’s monetized. And then in the client for this new thing, you could have a list of all the instances and choose which ones you want to give money to, and if it spoke ActivityPub, you could integrate some sort of feed into Lemmy/Mastodon/etc clients.
Agreed. fwiw Bandcamp is currently kinda like that for their digital tracks tho it was bought out a couple years ago so will begin enshittifying any day now…
Since at least the late 80s record labels sucked, not the streaming services suck. Time to just get rid of copyright on music and audio recordings.
The worst part is every little bit gets chopped up before it ever makes it a musician.
Have to pay a label/publisher, then you have to pay a Metadata distributor, and Spotify, plus any other royalties for samples if they’re used.
Fun times.
Afaik that’s the system youtube uses for videos/streams with youtube premium (and twitch as well with turbo). You can’t see where your money went as the viewet, but supposedly (don’t have sources rn so feel free to correct mr, but I’ve heard multiple creators say this) it’s just the same revenue split as other purchases, applied to the price of your membership and distributed based on what you watch.
This is true. All of the points, and especially the transparency on who gets our money… We are in need of good alternatives, but I don’t think, that transparency is a good business model unfortunately :(
I’m waiting to see how this all will unfold.
OK but why would anyone drink a microphone?
It has lots of vitamins
I appreciate the move, bold for them and the fanbase.
Nowadays probably Dua Lipa, Bruno Mars, Drake and Taylor Swift together could make an impact if they decide to leave (spoiler: no way)Protection
evicting JOE rogan would be goodstart from spotify
The damage is done. Even if they declined to renew his contract (they wont because the fascists will threaten them) it is just too late. Unfortunately most music is owned by production companies and the individual artists do not have distribution rights to wield against Spotify.
Simple maths. How many customers does it cost us to platform assholes, conspiracy nuts and nazis, and how many customers does it get us?
Adding to that how much they pay the idiot, I feel the balance is tipping towards firing him.
I’ve been using bandcamp for years, and I feel pretty good about it. I’d spend about $10/month and get 1-2 albums, and now I have a pretty big collection. I’ve been unemployed so I haven’t bought new music, but my library is still here and ad-free.
Bandcamp might enshittify, since it’s privately owned, so make sure you download the drm-free copy of anything you buy.
We post a lot of Bandcamp links on !gothindustrial@lemmy.world because the free song streaming is great and a lot of bands are on there. Eventually they’ll enshittify and get rid of the free streaming or require a signin at which point I’ll move on to something else (dunno what?!)
Bandcamp was sold to Epic Games who then sold it on.
The outlook isn’t great for Bandcamp, but I can’t see any better alternative that supports new artists to the same degree.
I’ve been waiting for that shoe to drop, but it’s been like 2 years with no changes (knock on wood).
BTW check out the little Bandcamp instance we have here~ Post your favorite album!
Which is great and all, but Massive Attack aren’t on that either.
Bandcamp is better than Spotify - Ampwall is better than Bandcamp. It’s artist owned (developed by Chris from the non-fash Black Metal band Woe). The fees are much, much lower than Bandcamp.
Interesting. Haven’t heard of this one but from their FAQ and writing it sounds interesting.
Not sure if a subscription fee for artists will work. Bigger ones can certainly afford it.
The main problem as I see it now is what any new platform has: getting people to use it.
Bandcamp has “Bandcamp Fridays” when 100% of the sales go to the artists. The next ones are on October 3rd and December 5th.
Problem is ampwall basically has a non viable business model beyond it’s current scale. So it’s likely to never really replace other options. It’s good to have around tho.
Why is Ampwall’s business model non-viable?
In the Ampwall business model the artists pay to upload their music but listening is free.
Sounds fine for hobby musicians, but not for anyone professional.
Bonus points for purchasing on bandcamp fridays (more money goes to the artists). Two left in 2025: Oct 3 and Dec 5.
I develop kew (a terminal music player), so I’m biased, but I started kew because I rejected Spotify many years ago.
I think that kew (or other private/offline music players) together with flacs from Qobuz are actually a great alternative to Spotify. Throw in some Bandcamp albums in there for great justice. Once you have a decent collection, you will feel liberated.
I especially think that Qobuz needs more exposure.
I love Lemmy so much cause there’s people that make me feel dumb, and no one that makes me feel smart. It pretty fucking refreshing!
Also thanks so much for your hard work. I got you on a small donation.
Edit: super git ignorant, guessing code berg doesn’t have that button. You got a “buy me a coffee” type thing set up?
I love Lemmy so much cause there’s people that make me feel dumb, and no one that makes me feel smart. It pretty fucking refreshing!
Just don’t read comments on political posts
Yes I do : https://ko-fi.com/ravachol. Thank you so much!
I LOVE KEW, THANKS FOR MAKING IT! ive used it for years with my CD collection and it beats out everything in comparison.
Hey, thanks, appreciate it.
Not to be stupid (I’m new to trying to get my shit offline and go back to physical media / owning digital copies of all my media) what is a “terminal music player”? I love finding these sorts of projects in my quest to take back my time and money!
It’s a music player for POSIX terminals that you can find on Linux, macOS and FreeBSD.
It looks like this:
Oh, that’s really 'kew. Excellent naming. I’m so snagging this now :D.
Oh nice! Thank you for the screenshot!!
Oooh nice, it’s even in Debian repositories 👍 Trying it out now.
The article is behind a paywall/cookie wall. Coukd you provide an another source or an archive link?
Here you go: https://archive.ph/1XWrP
For reference, the way you do it is:
- Copy the article’s link
- Go to archive.ph and paste link in the second text field to search for an already-archived version
- If nothing comes up, paste the link in the first text field to archive the article (will take a few moments)
No one should use garbage Spotify!
Honest question, how else do I easily discover music that matches my taste if I don’t use a streaming service?
- Talk to other human beings about music.
Music is not meant to be a solitary hobby. Share what you like, they’ll share what they like.
- Like a piece of music? Look up that producer, or record label if it’s small. Look up the session musicians. Don’t just look up the artist.
Generally it’s not just the artist that makes the music top tier. There are other great professionals involved in the background and good people hire other good people to work in the background.
This is easy. Once you start doing this you end up with a queue of albums you want to get round to listening to. It’s easy enough to find too much music yourself without an algorithm. You start finding the artist radio a waste of your time.
The rabbit holes I’ve been down following a producer, guitarist, or bassist, etc. are usually very rewarding and often you pop up in another place you knew already after finding out about some lesser known great music on the way.
Honest question: I discover at maximum 1 new song that I like per week. I listen to metal and hard electronic music. As soon as the song has 20 seconds of intro I skip it. Spotify only suggests songs with long intros or songs that are just growling, which I don’t like too much, or that electronic over saturated sound where you only have bass and nothing else.
How can I discover new songs that I like there?
Spotify isn’t the only streaming service, it’s just one of the worst, like ethically.
and to answer your question there are sites like Rate Your Music that let you find albums similar to albums you like.
Which one is ethical and not shit? I left Google play music because it turned into a worse version of itself with a half baked rebrand. Didn’t care for tidal much.
The most ethical music streaming service is probably Qobuz, followed by Tidal. If those are too niche for you, the next best in artist payout would be Apple, then Deezer and YouTube Music. And the only one worse than Spotify is Amazon.
Spotify is like 3usd in my home country. Any app that does price matching?
Price matching?
What I meant is more like a competitive price, or at least a regional price. Residing in Turkey rn and the only affordable things are the ones with regional prices
I’ve made several efforts to try out Deezer, tidal and Qobuz. Their library just comes up short within 2-3 searches for some of the more niche stuff I want to listen to. Depending on what you listen to they can be great, I’m sure, I’d much prefer using Qobuz but for completeness… I assume the only ones that come close are Amazon and Apple and at that point, why even switch?
Apple is actually a much better choice than Spotify. My numbers are a few years old but iirc, Apple pays artists almost twice as much as Spotify. Only Amazon has a worse artist payout than Spotify. Of course, Tidal and Qobuz are still much better than Apple but they also have the limitations you’ve mentioned. Oh and Apple and the others don’t fill out playlists with AI generated music so they themselves can get the payout for the plays. You know, like Spotify does. Realistically, even YouTube Music is more ethical than Spotify these days and that’s saying something.
Personally I’ve been using SoundCloud for the past 10 years at least and it’s been great.
Potentially I Heart Radio to listen to various artists, then internet search to purchase their albums.
Might have to bring back mix tapes and record favourite songs over digital radio!
People in here looking for less evil alternatives to Spotify and you suggest Clear Channel, the company that killed local radio broadcasting and enshittified the airwaves long ago?
I’ve been using listenbrainz for a bit, and it’s pretty good.
Spotify used to do that very well, but the last years it enshittified. Now it’s very difficult to find new artists or new music, heck even finding a playlist that isn’t auto generated by Spotify has become a challenge. Everything is now pushed by Spotify and they select which artists you listen to, the artists that make Spotify more money.
I like mixcloud, my partner likes bandcamp. Both have pros and cons.
Sorry, nothing against you personally I guess, but I’m getting a little tired of this question.
You’re on social media right now, there are music communities.
Most posts do NOT link Spotify.
Personally I can add a few more sources/habits, but that would seem like the first and most obvious answer.
Music communities/discussion is not the same as spotify music discovery.
Communities can recommend you music that is the same genre as the music you like.
Algorithms can recommend music that you will like as much as your input taste.
Music communities/discussion is not the same as spotify music discovery.
Well they specifically asked “if I don’t use a streaming service”.
Communities can recommend you music that is the same genre as the music you like.
They can, but you can also try something else.
Algorithms can recommend music that you will like as much as your input taste.
To some degree, but there are other ways (better imho) of broadening your horizon.
original comment:
Honest question, how else do I easily discover music that matches my taste if I don’t use a streaming service?
Boycott spotify +1
Spotify: the company that continues to find ways to make YouTube play music not a horrible choice.
Like… How the fuck.
I mean yeah, I have a Revanced yt music app so I don’t have to worry about ads or anything. It works damn near identical to Spotify too.
Mine stopped working last week. Did they release new patches yet?
Not sure, I’ve been using one from a year or two ago, and it hasn’t stopped working for me yet. I do get some prompts to upgrade to premium, but I can just ignore them.
I just upgraded to .52 it seems to be workable again.
was probably just a specific patch level running on it.
I’m out of the loop. Why is there a Spotify boycott?
Likely because of that old military investment drama where a company making drones for Ukraine and EU defence did an investment round and spotify joined, which prompted every russian bot farm to attack spotify because of it. As an European, I feel like paying them even if I don’t use spotify.
The biggest band out of Bristol have told their record label to pull all their songs from music streaming app Spotify, in protest at its founder investing more than £500 million in a military AI company
The issue for me is that AI generated music has ruined my experience with Spotify. It started recommending lofi beats (easy to generate with AI) and I didn’t want to spend weeks pushing the algorithm to not have it recommend me that crap.
Other users have complained about the downturn in quality of the weekly recommendations, which is what kept me there in the first place.
SoundCloud appears to have better recommendations for the type of music I like.
https://mashable.com/article/spotify-ai-generated-songs-dead-artists-pages
Yeah, +1 for SoundCloud, depending on your tastes their reccomendarions/stations have been pretty top notch.
They’ve been changing their terms of service over the past year with some shady stuff and have continuously screwed over creators. I’m planning on yanking my music out of there too.
I’ve been a Pandora subscriber for years because it’s just a better service for music nerds imo. Their “radio” function goes way deeper into catalogs than Spotify ever did. Someone please tell me they’re not run by fascists
The parent company , XM Radio, donated to Trump and gives fascists a platform. Also their pay out to artists are among the lowest.
Which is a real shame because I’ve discovered so many good non-mainstream artists thanks to Pandora’s algorithm.
D’oh!
There’s no ethical consumption under capitalism.
This is just not true. If I buy eggs from my neighbor who raises chickens, how is that unethical?
I’m not sure if you’d call this a “boycott”, but many people have also just never used Spotify because they care more about supporting musicians than convenience.
Ohhhh that’s a band’s same
Great band.
Mezzanine is a masterpiece. It could’ve been released yesterday. The sound is timeless.
One of the best albums ever made
Literally listened to it yesterday. I never get tired of it
I only know the House M.D. intro song, but I do like it. Mezzanine, I think?
Mezzanine is the album, the song is an instrumental version of Teardrop
Teardrop.
(Mezzanine is the album)
check this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfCylD7YOEg
🫡
First discovered Massive Attack from the soundtrack of the movie Hackers, which came out 30 years ago this week.
If not for the improper title capitalization in the headline, it hella reads like a hacker or group of hackers attempting to delete every song on the service. 🤣
That’s a Banksy? Maybe…
Good on them, fuck Spotify
First band on my playlists that is actually removing their music. I’ll probably need to look at an alternate service now. Or build my own service.
Yeah, usually it’s some old hippy like Neil Young that I’ve never listened to anyway.
Bandcamp is probably the best for the artists. If you want something more similar to spotify, Deezer and Tidal both pay artists better than Spotify if I remember correctly. And neither of them have done anything like platforming Joe fucking Rogan. Though it’s possible that they have done something terrible that I missed. At least a good place to start looking.
Deezer’s largest shareholder is Access Industries, Inc which was founded by Len Blavatnik. He’s one of the ~50 individuals on whom sanctions were imposed in June 2024 by Volodymyr Zelenskyy and has been pumping money into efforts to sway public opinion in favor of Israeli genociders.
Oh FFS. Guess I’m just going back to piracy, somehow the most moral option.
Well…shit. Good to know.
Anyone know if Tidal is affiliated with genocide, Russian oligarchs, or other atrocities? Or if there are other better options?
Not that I am aware. They were built around treating artists better. They will enshitify eventually as that is to be expected now with any company, but their payouts to artists being proportionally higher and their superior sound quality to almost anything short of quboz makes them a good choice for now. Also their new music recommendation algorithm is quite good.
Yeah, I’ll probably look at Deezer (if it also has podcast integration). The Spotify app has become more buggy and shit over the years anyway.
Deezer does have podcast integration, though I haven’t used it for that yet.
Yeah, looks like it does, but it doesn’t appear to have all the podcasts I follow on Spotify.
