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...So I Finally Quit Spotify (oliviarafferty.substack.com)
submitted 11 months ago by ooli@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[-] SquiffSquiff@lemmy.world 101 points 11 months ago

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.

[-] Kyoyeou@slrpnk.net 16 points 11 months ago

Adding our Boys Qobuz to the list of competing services Paying in 2018 13 times more than Spotify And yu get to own the musics you buy on Qobuz and can put it on your NAS for example

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[-] ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 93 points 11 months ago

Not going to give substack any views, so I'll pass on this one

[-] tubbadu@lemmy.kde.social 39 points 11 months ago

What's wrong with it? (I never heard about it, just asking)

[-] Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 131 points 11 months ago
[-] fubo@lemmy.world 120 points 11 months ago

It's not just "won't ban".

They collect money from subscriptions to Nazi authors, and pay those authors.

They are a Nazi publisher.

[-] ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 84 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

They commodify 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"

[-] Untitled4774@sh.itjust.works 11 points 11 months ago

That sounds an awful lot like them quietly liking it

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[-] Endorkend@kbin.social 73 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

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.

EDIT: and, yeah, I've re-instanced my music, movie and series downloaders and went back to sailing the high seas.

I switched to Netflix/Spotify, because of the convenience and timing of release they provided, they were also more reliable in terms of quality ("free" versions labeled ass 1080p often aren't actually 1080p, etc).

But the sheer cost of Spotify, Paramount+, Disney+, Netflix, etc, etc, etc to listen to and watch what I want, has made the convenience/cost calculation move from being acceptable to being even more than what it used to be buying CD's and DVD's.

On top of that the audio and video quality have deteriorated over the years, availability has become spotty, at best (like certain services removing movies and shows, even some removing movies and shows you paid extra for), we're also dealing with these services pushing ads on top of us already paying subscriptions and fragmenting their market to the extent everything has become entirely unaffordable.

I used to buy maybe 2-3 CD's in a year and a boxset of a show and a movie once a year.

Now simply subscribing to every service that has something I want for just 1 month costs more than what I spent per year previously.

Gabe Newels words are still right on the money.

Piracy is a service problem and the service provided these days makes Piracy the better option, again.

[-] Ejh3k@lemmy.world 8 points 11 months ago

I don't stream either. All my music, I own. No one is taking it away.

[-] camelbeard@lemmy.world 46 points 11 months ago

Unlike Disney, Netflix, etc, Spotify is the only streaming service where I never think oh this is missing let's find a torrent.

Music streaming (at least for the consumer) is so much better than video. Where it's super scattered over multiple services all wanting money.

[-] yamanii@lemmy.world 8 points 11 months ago

Maybe you don't listen to many international songs, I always find grey songs on the playlists I like.

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[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 40 points 11 months ago

I agree with her arguments about Spotify overall, but this amused me-

To celebrate my newfound freedom, I downloaded a 13-minute long Taylor Swift megamix, and CAN YOU DO THAT ON SPOTIFY? I didn’t think so. I also then went on to Bandcamp after I got paid the other day and bought some music. It felt good.

As if Spotify somehow prevented her from doing those things anyway...

[-] Smoogs@lemmy.world 25 points 11 months ago

Don’t ya know if you have prime and Netflix you can no longer legally purchase a blue ray ever

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[-] geophysicist@discuss.tchncs.de 32 points 11 months ago

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

[-] clgoh@lemmy.ca 49 points 11 months ago

It's not 0.003¢ per steam, it's $0.003. (Actually £0.003, per that article.)

So 1000 streams should pay $3.

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[-] Fake4000@lemmy.world 31 points 11 months ago

Spotify used to be good but now they charge you the price of buying an album outright.

Might as well buy an album monthly and actually own it.

[-] raptir@lemdro.id 32 points 11 months ago

That works if you listen to just a small number of albums, but I average about 15 unique albums per month and probably 60 per year.

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[-] Aatube@kbin.social 9 points 11 months ago

£10 = the price of every single album you listen to in a month, combined?

[-] Copernican@lemmy.world 13 points 11 months ago

Yup. When I was kid and teen in the the CD era, I was buying 2 or 3 CDs a month for at least 10 to 20 bucks a pop. Or I would temporarily have my parents sign up for something like the BMG record club when there was a good promo where I could get 10 albums for cheap and then cancel. Fast forward to today and I can get unlimited access to all music for cheaper than a single album per month back in 2005. I don't know how these economics can make sense even if you factor out physical media and physical distribution.

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[-] moonburster@lemmy.world 27 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Last year I've listened to more than 6k different songs. If you'd be generous for the math and say 12 songs an album, 9 euro per album it's still over 5k a year. Spotify is just cheaper for me, even the high seas would cost me too much in terms of time

[-] hangonasecond@lemmy.world 23 points 11 months ago

Everyone who listens to the same downloaded 50 song playlist everytime they open Spotify premium is paying for you to use the service

But I use it much more similar to you than those people so I am also winning lol.

[-] DontAskAboutUpdog@lemmy.world 8 points 11 months ago

Not to mention that if everybody listened like thak guy spotify would just increase prices.

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[-] alienanimals@lemmy.world 23 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Spotify has always been a pain in the ass. For the longest time you couldn't listen to a single song someone shared because they forced you to create an account.

Companies that force you to create an account to do the simplest action are assholes.

[-] Squizzy@lemmy.world 8 points 11 months ago

I don't know why I feel like this is okay for Spotify to do but not YouTube.

My thinking is clearly flawed

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[-] Nougat@kbin.social 22 points 11 months ago

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.

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[-] Daxtron2@startrek.website 22 points 11 months ago

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?

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[-] snail_hatan@lemmy.ml 21 points 11 months ago

Down voted cause substack allows nazi content.

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[-] Aatube@kbin.social 16 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

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 total! There's no variety! It's just repeating! Aaaaaaaaa (dw just yelling me name

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[-] zanyllama52@infosec.pub 15 points 11 months ago

To enlighten our android-using brothers and sisters... https://xmanager.app/ is a good way to enjoy spotify if you insist on using it.

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[-] scripthook@lemmy.world 14 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I just quit Spotify too and went back to mp3s I’ve downloaded with Limewire. I got sick of playlists, messy UI, etc. I also got tired of people talking about their top music of the year. I honestly don’t care what you listened to the most.

All my mp3s are on my phone and on my Mac and work great

I also am not guilty not giving artists the $.0003 per play every time I play a son. Less guilty than the $1 per song in the 2010s or $20 per album in the 2000s…

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[-] yuriy@lemmy.world 10 points 11 months ago

I use the “Lite” version of spotify that isn’t strictly available for download in the states. It still has real shuffle and isn’t as bogged down with bloat features. Literally the only downside is no sleep timer.

[-] kawa@reddeet.com 9 points 11 months ago

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.

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[-] jafo@lemmy.world 9 points 11 months ago

Last weekend I used https://github.com/linsomniac/spotify_to_ytmusic to copy my Spotify playlists over to YouTube Music, and the shuffle play is SOOO much nicer there! That was my primary gripe with Spotify, the shuffle play is idiotic

[-] PrivateNoob@sopuli.xyz 9 points 11 months ago

As far as I recall. YT Music pays even less than Spotify does unfortunately.

[-] grabyourmotherskeys@lemmy.world 13 points 11 months ago

You cannot make a difference this way. Their music is a commodity they have signed agreements to sell. They probably (in the vast majority of instances) had almost no bargaining power in this and a lot of signed artists don't make a penny from their work, at all.

If you really like an artist, contact them via their official channels and ask if you can send them money directly or donate to a charity they like.

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[-] douglasg14b@lemmy.world 9 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

How do you deal with discovery?

That's the hard part for me, the only way I find new music is by it ending up on a continuous playlist or something similar.

I have broad tastes, which makes it difficult to not be boxed into a recommendations genre on many platforms (Spotify included).

[-] Hammerheart@programming.dev 8 points 11 months ago

I never got into Spotify. Soulseek is all I need.

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this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2023
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