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en
shitti
fication
Enpoopification
Congrats on actually using the word appropriately.
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
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.
Edit 2nd: they list Linux as a non supported web browser. They don’t support Max quality on Firefox or Safari. But have a dedicated free 90 day plan with the Humane AI pin. Lol, tf is this company?
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 god
Good to know, thanks for explaining
“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.
Fucking shit, that sucks
neither the folks at Tidal, ot seems
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…"
Small sidenote, tidal lossless is double the price
They have recently 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
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.
Yeah, on my good headphones the difference is quite noticeable
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.
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
The only way I can conceive this is useful is for OSTs and such.
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
True. Either wah I personally download all my music in flac/mp3s so I can have exactly what I want regardless of which service its on or not.
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!’
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?
The app also doesn’t let you add your own music, though… Very annoying, cause some songs aren’t on streaming services
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 ?
Can I upload my own music like I could with Google music?
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 on a desktop, but I don’t think those files will play on the Apple Music app.
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.
I wonder if you can get around that by altering the metadata on the local files to make it a slightly different version of the same song. The deluxe album version vs the regular, etc.
Oh interesting. I was actually about to verify that myself, opened the app to find apparently Apple has started blocking Apple Music on rooted Androids.
Just in case that’s a consideration for anyone else.
for anyone curious, YouTube Music definitely has this, I’ve recently used it. looks like a holdover from the Play Music days.
YouTube Music allows you to do this fyi
Yeah but I hate yt music for different reasons haha
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.
*Has bigger catalog if you were fans of mostly Western and European music.
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
Too bad (for me) it doesnt have most of my library.
Spotify also includes lyrics. It’s just not in free tier anymore.
If you actually looked at the article this post is about, it says that it’s still there just with a monthly limit.
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.
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.
Also works with Rekordbox
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
Red book is perfectly fine for all listening applications as it already exceeds human listening ability. Higher bit depths are useful to the people actually making the music while higher sample rates are just useless data.
Really who cares? The free tier is shit and has always been shit. That’s the point of the free tier, to get you to pay.
Previously they didn’t even have a free tier, now they do and it’s free. Of course not every feature exists and especially not a feature like lyrics which isn’t essential and Spotify has to pay extra for.
The backlash is generally against all enshitification.
You get a useful free plan. Make it useless over time to convince people to pay for a plan. Make THAT plan useless over time to make people pay for the more expensive plan… repeat until capitalism ends.
That’s why people care. Eg: see all subscription services ever
The backlash is generally against all enshitification.
Or, as we call it, the principle of the thing.
If people are thinking “I don’t care, I got mine”, they need to learn why that elitism is wrong.
Yeha, but they can make their free tier as shitty as they want, it is their product…
If you don’t want to pay, just use one of the thousands tools to pirate music. If you don’t want to pay but still think you deserve a product with all the features you like, then you’re delusional.
Yeha, but they can make their free tier as shitty as they want
Who suggested they couldn’t? Having the right to do something doesn’t mean no one else can voice their displeasure.
If you don’t want to pay but still think you deserve a product with all the features you like, then you’re delusional.
It has nothing to do with “deserve”. Shitty businesses practices are worth calling out. Especially because this has nothing to do with supporting Spotify and everything to do with enriching stockholders. It’s a sign of desperation: they can’t make their product better to entice new customers, so they’re making their free product worse. It’s trashy and greedy.
But please, go on expending your energy defending a corporation from valid criticism.
I agree, but this isn’t one of those cases. Netflix, Disney, and Amazon adding ads to their paid products is worth calling out. Microsoft adding ads to their paid OS is worth calling out. Roku changing the rules and forcing people to agree to arbitration after purchase of a TV is worth calling out.
But Spotify putting lyrics behind their paid service isn’t like that at all. You can easily get lyrics with an Internet search, it’s a non-issue. Either pay or look it up yourself.
So I agree with the person you’re responding to, it’s not worthwhile criticism. I have no problem with corporations making money, I have a problem with corporations abusing their position to screw over customers, and Spotify has been remarkably well-behaved.
Right, I used their free tier for so long that I even started enjoying the lack of control I had. Like, music would just play for me. I bought the subscription because I really wanted to give them the money. I recall their ads even being only about Spotify premium, so I wouldn’t get random shit like YouTube ads.
LTT mentioned some time ago on the Wanshow about how gaking away is destroying more goodwill than adding new stuff only to the premium tier.
This is probably why most are so worked up about the issue.they want, it is
Yes, but, like comma splices, we get to judge them.
If you don’t want to pay, then don’t use it. Regardless of everything, music producers still need to live and pirating is a shit move to help them.
If I won’t pay, pirating isn’t going to take money away from them. Yeha, I know it is stealing, I won’t pretend it isn’t like many do, but hey, if they are giving me a shit service, they left me no choice.
I pay for most of what I consume but when I have no choice, I pirate. I do pay for Spotify premium, I don’t even mind the free tier, I just wanted to give them the money because their app is great.
Kudos for paying Spotify (as I do). I disagree on “if they give me shit service” part. If that happens, you have an option to either switch service or don’t use any of them. IMO pirating is not an option. Also when pirating though P2P, you also distribute the content.
I think there are plenty legit reasons to pirate, but I do agree that it isn’t ethical. The thing is, I’m not a 100% ethical individual and I’m OK with that, it’s not like I’m supporting a drug cartel by buying illegal drugs or killing someone, I have a threshold I consider acceptable for myself. At least I’m not the type of pirate who thinks they are saving the world by pirating content.
Some people think their acceptable threshold is drink and driving. My personal threshold is downloading a movie that the 3 streaming services I’m already paying for don’t offer. Pretty vanilla if you ask me.
but it’s a free plan and if you can’t afford 5-15$/mo for unlimited music and can afford to spend time complaining about this then you have some much bigger problems in your life.
It’s free 🤷
Also the free tier was worse when it launched. And the free tier has always been useless for me.
When did they not have a free tier? I remember the free version being around at least 10 years ago.
I do remember the free tier being introduced at some point. But it was a really long time ago. Probably 10+ years. I was still on XP back then.
I searched and I may have misremembered, the free version seems to have been around since the start except that the free version was initially invite and desktop only. Eventually everyone could use it but still only on desktop. The free version was even more limited back then it seems with a limit on how many hours you could listen to each month.
I could personally never use it. Because it was so incredibly limited. Not being allowed to skip tracks makes it unusable and I’m genuinely surprised anyone used it apart from trying the service.
I have a faint memory of it being announced that Spotify first got a free tier but I may be completely wrong, I was very young back then. I’m also from Sweden so we had Spotify very early compared to most countries and it got popular very quickly here.
I used it in college, I didn’t have money. Honestly I didn’t mind. You were allowed to skip five or six times in an hour, and I would just make custom playlists and it ended up being like a nicer radio. Fewer ads than radio, music I like, a few skips.
Honestly at that time, I don’t remember anyone who paid for it. I remember the first time I heard someone say they had premium was a friend who worked at Starbucks in like … 2017? Because Spotify premium was a job perk. At the time it was like, oh she only has premium because of Starbucks. And then somewhere along the way everyone got premium.
Why are they even charging you for lyrics to begin with? It’s not like they write them. It costs nothing to give you that feature for free.
Kind of like the YouTube app requiring a subscription for background playing. It’s a basic function that does not cost them anything, yet they break it to sell it back to you.
Stripping extremely basic features away and locking them behind paywalls is shitty and should be called out as such, full stop.
Because they need to pay their supplier of synced (and non-synced) lyrics, Musixmatch.
And they obviously want to make money and free users don’t make them much if any profit.
It costs nothing
I highly doubt that. Lyrics are copyrighted like anything else, so record labels are going to charge for it.
like the YouTube app requiring a subscription for background playing
That’s an artificial limitation, as evidenced by NewPipe, Grayjay, and multiple others offering the same exact thing without a premium tier.
And enshittification continues…
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)
How? This doesn’t affect the subscription nor the price.
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?
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
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”.
For iOS, there’s spotc++ but you’d need to know how to sideload
I thought this meant on top of Premium and I was about to be pissed.
But honestly, Spotify is one of the only companies where I don’t feel like my experience has gotten noticeably worse over my time using it.
In general, I feel like the music streaming market is in much better shape than TV streaming. Price increases have been modest, there’s no fighting for exclusive streaming rights (that I’m aware of). I pirate all of my movies and shows, but Spotify’s alright, for me it’s worth paying. And even if it turned to shit tomorrow, Tidal and Apple music are pretty good too.
My experience got noticably worse that time they tried to make their UI look like tictok. I cancelled and deleted my account and have been on tidal ever since.
I switched from Spotify when they cut my family off of my plan because some of them don’t always live with me. I like Tidal a lot, but wish it was easier for me to share a song with friends who don’t use it. Ironically, I don’t think any family members but my dad actually use my Tidal plan, so basically I just switched out of spite.
My Spotify “family” is all over the place. They just all put in my address when they join and don’t have any problems. Just fyi for yourself or anyone else experiencing the same problem.
Use https://combine.fm paste in a tidal link and share the resulting page, people can click on the service they have to listen to the same song.
Use https://combine.fm paste in a tidal link and share the resulting page, people can click on the service they have to listen to the same song.
Always people that come along and say this.
To them I say: imagine if you had a calculator app that you only ever used for basic addition. Then the calculator app removed the subtraction, multiplication, and division functions. It may would not seem like a big deal to you, but that doesn’t mean the app hasn’t gotten less useful.
It’s true that they shouldn’t be baiting in with an unsustainable free version, but this is essentially paywalling the subtraction function, not removing it
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).
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.
Music scrobbling solves that issue for me. Navidrome integrates well with for example last.fm. In addition to having my music listening history there one can find recommendations based on their music taste
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 @[email protected], YouTube recommendations work too.
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
I bought on qobuz before! But I’m with you, it’s really hard to find a legal way to purchase certain albums. If a tool like that existed it’d be so convenient. It’d save me a lot of time searching for how to purchase.
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.
It’s even funnier because the lyrics are provided by MusixMatch
And Spotify pays them…?
I’m still holding onto Bandcamp and hoping they don’t enshittify. It’s even Bandcamp Friday today where they give their share to the musicians.
I like it because I build a library of music I keep, so some months I don’t pay anything at all. But depending on what you listen to it might not be the best. I still like it more than renting music.
If their streaming enshittifies, set up your own jellyfin homeserver
Yep, download perfect quality FLACs from Bandcamp and self-host them.
I tried Apple Music recently, and while I wasn’t impressed by the platform, one thing I was legitimately taken aback 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 employees who are genuine fans of the artist; it doesn’t feel generic or auto generated. The little ways the animations move along with certain inflections 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.
Spotify promotes and forces you to use DRM. Even if you pay, the content is not yours and you are forces to use malware
Damn this is slick!
https://f-droid.org/packages/com.shabinder.spotiflyer/ one more for good fun
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
Yes, I made this point in my comment, the last few years Spotify has been going through the same UX disaster the rest of the web is, changing things for the sake of it.
I used free Spotify in hopes of finding new music, and the experience was very subpar. It wants you to enable DRM, the web interface is the laggiest I have seen, and the button to “not recommend this song anymore” doesn’t exist. Also recommendation, the whole reason I tried the service, are just meh.
I also cannot imagine having your main music collection on streaming and not locally.
Which do you recommend?
I used to recommend Deezer, mostly for the fact it was the closest to what Google Play Music used to be in terms of layout and functions. But recently they decided to do a downright gross redesign and then actively insulted paying customers that didn’t like it. So they’re out.
YouTube Music is trash and I’m not paying Google for anything anyway, after they killed Play Music.
So I tried Apple Music (from an iPad I barely ever use), then Tidal, and honestly? They’re all doing the same things. Some are in different states of enshitification, but they’re all on the same road. What Spotify gets away with, all the others eventually attempt or copy. The problem is simply the industry and customers that allow the abuse.
But if you must use one, I would suggest Tidal. It seems the least far along the path, but it’ll get there too.
And remember, there are services like Soundiiz and TuneMyMusic that will help you transfer and sync across all these services. They’re not perfect, but they’re better than nothing.
I’m getting ready to start curating my own collection again with Lidarr and Jellyfin but that might be a bit involved for most people.
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’m a big fan of Qobuz. Extensive catalog, hi-res tracks, good suggestions that are genuinely new to me, and doesn’t drown me in Drake/Post Malone new releases.
I enjoyed Deezer for a time, would still be there otherwise. Never saw the appeal of Spotify, used YTM/Google Play for years.
Such as?
Last I checked there’s still no alternative that doesn’t require some sacrifices.
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.
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, 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.
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.
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
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!
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.
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.
I pay for it. My car actually has a built in client so I can use it directly there without having to use BT or data off my phone. And I don’t see any ads or have these issues because i pay for it. Also there’s quite a bit of international content on Spotify I have access to.
Which service would you recommend?
My biggest problem is the censure. I’m in my car, “hey google play teenage dirt bag on spotify”. Sounds great until the “her boyfriends a dick he brings a [silence]. And he’d simply kick my ass…”
Or Jay-Z story of OJ : “rich jigga, poor jigga, house jigga, field jigga”
What? Seriously loses all context and meaning.
Spotify redefining the message of whatever was happening… Some cracker ass Swedish company censuiring the n-word when used by an artform that is legitimate and on purpose.
That’s why I collect vinyl. Can’t change that shit up on my listening it. It’s the way it is. If Jay Z wanted to use the N word then I want to hear it like it is. Not some bullshit “jigga” shit wtf is that? Isn’t it denying his message?
Nonsense.
I had mine set up like that. But it’ll default to the clean version if you ask voice to play a song.
But Jay Z made that version too, knowing fully that the distributer can choose which pegi-level they want to use - rather than blocking the song altogether, or worse bleeping the bad language.
You can choose which pegi-level you use in the software, maybe your system is set up to defaults?
I think it’s weird to blame this on Spotify…
Granted I haven’t used Spotify for anything but an alarm clock ever since I canceled my premium a year ago, but what censorship are you talking about? 80% of my listening time before I quit was rap and I can assure you, there was a lot of bad language. Most albums and singles that have clean versions have a dirty version as well. Back in the day, clean and dirty were listed as separate albums, but they changed it so that it’s one listing and you have to somehow pick which version you want to look at/listen to/add to playlists. But maybe they changed that again I don’t know. I also vaguely remember there being a user setting for showing explicit content, but I’m not sure.
When you request a song through voice (like in your car), it’ll default to clean versions of songs. Even if your settings are allowing explicit lyrics.
Ok. That definitely sucks, but I wouldn’t say that’s Spotify censoring anything. It’s just trash UX.
Wtf? Just could not believe, had to check it out for myself. What’s wrong with people.
Censure is me yelling at you for using the wrong word.
It’s because of this disgusting American cultural puritanism, I don’t know why but Americans especially the boomer cunts lose their shit at the first sight of a slur
Remember Carlin’s famous bit?
The shitshow will only get worse. Own your music instead!
Install the Musixmatch app, get the lyrics for free from the original service instead of Spotify’s embedded player.
I pay for premium, personally, but that shit is just scummy.
I also pay for premium and during the time that I was testing out the free spotify to judge if I’m gonna subscribe… I also used musixmatch for the lyrics.
My opinion is opposite yours. I find the lyrics being a paid service as justifiable. Since spotify is also paying for the service of having these lyrics available. And also they may use it to entice those who are in the fence.
