Just to clarify definitions that probably wouldn't be considered deafness, it would be an audio processing disorder. Ability to hear music but inability to process the words.
Deafness is "binary" in that it just means ones ability to hear sound or not. If you can hear sound even slightly then you just have a hearing impairment and are not deaf.
Deafness is commonly understood to include both total and partial hearing loss. Every major dictionary defines it this way. It might have a more precise meaning in some spheres (medical, etc), but in common English it is not binary the way you're suggesting.
Similar to blindness which also isn't an absolute yes or no. People can be blind and still see colors and shapes, but not enough to be able to tell what they are.
No it really isn’t. The hard of hearing are considered deaf. There’s complete deafness, much like there’s complete blindness, but the fact that you’re calling it hearing impairment instead of hard of hearing indicates you aren’t as well versed in Deafness (not to be confused with deafness) as you think
So I'm not deaf, not in the slightest, but I struggle to understand lyrics in music. I love music, I live and breathe it and I'm gonna dedicate my life to it, but I've always struggled with understanding lyrics in music. To me, the vocalist is just another instrument in the mix. Having lyrics to read helps me appreciate my favorite tunes more!
For me it is certain singers that apparently everyone else understands but I cannot without knowing the words ahead of time. Not just mumbling, some voices just don't register clearly for me if I don't know what they are saying.
It can depend on the mixing, too. Not just in regards to volume, but also in how the vocals are edited. My recent obsession has been Dusk at Cubist Castle, shit's absolutely amazing. The way a lot of the vocals are mixed and processed are super cool, like layering the same lines over themselves five times over with subtle delays and panning, it sounds real cool! But it makes it sound a lot more distant to me as a result.
Yeah, thst is true. But I'm talking about some popular artists like Pearl Jam and Mase who everyone around me apparently could hear clear as day but I just heard mumble mush at first and could only hear the words clearly with printed lyrics in front of me.
You might have a smidge of Speech Auditory* Processing Disorder. I do and that's what it's like for me. Common comorbidity with ADHD and ASD, and possibly other neurotypes.
Oh almost certainly. I have ADHD, prolly autistic, and I've had many times where my mind stopped processing what people are saying. Which is bad when you work tourism xD
Yyuup. It's bad in basically any job you have to listen to people during, and I always have to establish with friends that it is an honest mistake when I can't understand them and/or spaced out.
I'm ADHD and on the spectrum more than likely, and my therapist says that the cutting edge research pertaining to this is leaning towards combining ADHD and ASD into one conglomerate of symptoms because they overlap more often than not.
So imagine you’re listening to rap. But you’re hard of hearing. The beats still slap, but the words aren’t intelligible. Hell the beats are even better because you got a subwoofer that shakes the floor. But you know it’s poetry, it’s about the words as much as the beats. So of course you’d want to read along
If it were a paid account yeah, it'd be extremely shitty. But seeing as it's a free account, it's their prerogative to try and get people to pay for the service. Besides, I don't get this entitlement that spotify has to provide music for free. They're a (admittedly greedy) middle-man that wants to get paid. If one wants free music and everything, well, time to self-host.
Due to the uniquely fucked up way music licensing works, it's likely they license the lyrics through a separate company than the music and probably don't even directly license it themselves (Tidal for example uses Musicmatch's lyric library and api). There's a cost associated with this that is likely outside their control. It's shitty, but it is plalusibly reasonable they implemented this as a cost savings measure.
You keep claiming this “undue burden”, can you provide a source to the exemption in the legislation that states this is possible? Multiple people have asked and you keep just screaming at them.
Prove your point or kindly fuck off and stop making the most obvious fucking lies.
But for some folks, the elevator is completely essential. This dynamic resulted in making pay-to-ride elevators illegal in most places, today.
So this is absolutely fucking hilarious and shows your surface level knowledge (or just googling something and having zero knowledge…) they are only illegal if they are the only means of transportation, every single one of the buildings with one these will also have regular elevators, so they meet the code.
All the law did was prevent single elevator buildings from being able to discriminate. If a non-abled body person has another conveyance method, they can charge whatever they want. This is how amusement rides are able to charge AND have non ada accessible rides. And incase you didn’t know, elevator codes do cover amusement rides in most jurisdictions as well…
Much like many disabilities, deafness isn't a hard binary between hearing Vs deaf, but a spectrum dependent on many factors. For example, someone may have hearing loss in a particular frequency range, which may affect their ability to hear lyrics. I would also expect that someone's relationship to music may be impacted by whether they were born deaf or acquired deafness later in life.
The point that other are making about this as an accessibility problem is that a lot of disability or anti-discrimination has provisions for rules or policies that are, in and of themselves, neutral, but affect disabled people (or other groups protected under equality legislation) to a greater degree than people without that trait. In the UK, for example, it might be considered "indirect discrimination".
You might not need lyrics to listen to music, but someone who is deaf or hard of hearing is likely going to experience and enjoy music differently to you, so it may well be necessary for them.
I don’t even know the lyrics to some of my favorite songs. I think the whole complaining about unlimited, free lyrics is ridiculous. Spotify isn’t a charity and just because someone can’t enjoy music as much due to not reading lyrics isn’t an accessibility thing.
Guess Spotify should just get rid of the free tier and then this wouldn’t even be an issue.
Okay, well get back to me when you have some lived experience of deafness and maybe we can have a productive discussion then, seeing as my point seems to have gone completely over your head.
Listen, I don't want to be in a pointless internet argument; I could answer your question by referencing some of the things that go into deciding what reasonable adjustments should be put in place, legally speaking (in particular, your question is getting at the "how much is reasonable" aspect of the problem"), but I only want to engage in this conversation if you're actually interested to learn.
(On that front, I apologise for the sharp tone of my previous comment, because that certainly wasn't conducive to conversation.)
I'm just agreeing that Spotify isn't a charity. They have no obligation to be good or useful, and they will continue to destroy their service, and things will continue to get worse, and there's no point in fighting any of this, and there never will be, and so it is, and so it shall be, until you die.
It's just, I'm learning in real time now how best to treat life, you know? It's good stuff.
I think they were more saying you don't need to understand the lyrics to enjoy music, which would be more like if the elevator still worked for the person in the wheelchair but the mirrors inside are hung so you can only see yourself if standing.
Yeah. I understand what they're saying, but they're wrong, based on past court cases.
Defining "full equal service" in a way that carves out big portions (like knowing what the lyrics are) in ways that fully able bodied people take for granted - has gone badly for companies that let it go to court.
Just because a building can afford a glass elevator so you can see the view doesn’t mean the building next door is denying full service to people who can see because they don’t have one.
You’re a fucking moron and need to shut up, every point you’ve made is easily disproved, it’s like you’ve googled a term and read 2 lines and run with it.
Think for more than 2 seconds with your lies and maybe you could see how each and everyone is just fucking retarded as shit dude….
Give your head a shake, you have zero knowledge on this subject.
hiding accessibility features behind a pay wall is disgusting, because only people with disabilities have to pay for it. *edit if you're downvoting, just let me know so I can block all of the ableists running around this community. **edit 2 - c'mon guys, why are you afraid to name yourselves?
if you really, really want, you can go in and edit the lyrics just like subtitles for television shows to say unintelligible dialogue. I'm arguing for an identical experience here, not extra perks that happen to cost the company nothing
I curse when I talk. I was assuming we were all adults here. did somebody block you and hurt your feelings?
Did you forget where you asked people who downvoted you to identify themselves so you could block them?
And despite the lyrics being unintelligible to me, they do exist, and when I went and looked them up (on the occasions Spotify didn't have them), I said oh yeah, there you go.
nobody's talking about the bare minimum of federal law dude. this is a discussion about how humans are supposed to treat each other. if the way you walk around life is "well, it's legal to be an asshole in this situation so I'll do it" then there's no point in having this conversation because do not have the time to make you a better person
also your example absolutely wild. the purpose of an elevator is to get you from here to there. the purpose of Spotify is to help you listen to music. people with hearing issues are required to pay extra or do extra work to get the same experience as a perfectly abled person.
nobody's talking about the bare minimum of federal law dude. this is a discussion about how humans are supposed to treat each other. if the way you walk around life is "well, it's legal to be an asshole in this situation so I'll do it" then there's no point in having this conversation because do not have the time to make you a better person
Just because someone has more money and can provide a better service doesn’t make them an asshole. The differently abled person could pay to use the other elevator, just like you and me, they just wouldn’t get to use the view, which is what the charge is for. How does this make the persons “experience” different if the only point is to move them? Anything else is an added bonus as you said.
also your example absolutely wild. the purpose of an elevator is to get you from here to there. the purpose of Spotify is to help you listen to music. people with hearing issues are required to pay extra or do extra work to get the sameexperience as a perfectly abled person.
You mean… exactly like how an elevator is to move people up and down and the added view is extra and not needed so both still have the same experience…?
Do you even know what point you’re trying to make here? Because as you’ve agreed, Spotify and elevators both are for one use, and the view, lyrics are an added bonus sometimes. But this doesn’t make someone an asshole for not spending the money on a better elevator. Fucking yeeesh…..
lol, just because someone has money they “need” to be a better “person”? No, everyone should be held to the same standards.
It’s you who needs the education if you think segregating “people”to different standards due to their wealth is an even remotely smart idea….
And neither of us should be “teaching” each other, you’re a narcissist if you think that’s what you “need” to be doing in a conversation. Lmfao, this a new one.
But seeing as it’s a free account, it’s their prerogative
Oh, so not charging money magically exempts companies from meeting ADA accessibility requirements for their public accommodations?
Edit: what I'm taking issue with is the notion that being on the free tier of service changes anything. Maybe Spotifiy has an obligation or maybe it doesn't, but either way, it's the same regardless of how much or little the customer pays. Being a second-class customer does not make you a second-class citizen who doesn't get equal protection under the law!
I never said it was. I said that the requirement is the same whether it's a free account or a paid one. It's either always required or it's never required, but it sure as Hell is not "their prerogative" based on how much they get paid.
Think about it for a second: what the parent commenter is suggesting is that it's somehow okay for a company to use compliance with legal requirements as an upselling opportunity! You do see the problem with that line of thinking, right?!
What's relevant is that the commenter I replied to suggested that it's Spotify's "prerogative" whether to comply with the law or not. It isn't.
This issue here is people spouting dangerous late-stage-capitalist nonsense, not the content of the ADA rule. Your demand is actually just a derailment tactic.
The person agreeing with you has literally said they can claim they don’t make enough and not need to comply with ADA laws…. Apparantly…. So yeah they can just choose to not comply. This is from someone working directly with them, so we have to accept this is true I guess.
Providing a substantially inferior outcome to someone with an ADA need absolutely violates ADA rules.
When stuff like this has gone to court it hasn't been pretty for the offending organization.
There's a bigger question about how much of what Spotify currently provides falls under ADA. Web services used to get a free pass. They largely don't anymore.
Source: some of this stuff is my problem, professionally. And no, I'm not going to look up a primary source for anyone. That's Spotify's lawyers job.
The factpossibility that they're unable to provide lyrics gives radio stations a free pass on this, under ADA (and most similar laws).
Edit: Correction, per correction below - options for providing radio captions do exist.
Edit 2: For anyone reading along to learn - a radio station without captioning technology is unlikely to be required to add captioning under any accessibility law I'm aware of. But a station that provides captioning is unlikely to be able to charge extra for that captioning under current accessibility laws.
Businesses are typically accountable to provide equitable accommodations at no additional charge.
A comparison that may help: a storefront with no dedicated parking whatsoever is typically not required to provide the usual required percentage of reserved accessible parking. Or rather, their zero reserved spaces meets the required percentage automatically, at it's whatever percentage of zero total spaces.
You are technically correct - the best kind of correct! (Futurama quote, meaning I appreciate your correction.)
It's probably not an issue for a station that simply doesn't have that level of captioning, yet.
But I take your point - it would likely be a violation if they had that captioning and tried to monetize it. (In my far more informed opinion than that of a couple of asshats who were replying to me in this thread.)
So why does that apply to OTA, but not their website or other delivery methods…?
Your “laws” seem to have lots of exceptions when you need them to. But also, not surprisingly, very easy to find the flaws since they don’t exist and you’re not smart enough to think of these yourself apparently….
Once an organization can no longer claim an accessibility accomodation is an undue burden, then various laws kick in (can no longer be evaded during a court case or an audit) dictating how that accessibility accomodation must be managed.
As was pointed out, many radio stations do provide captions, and in doing so, fall under (no longer receive any exemption under) the same laws about how they managed those captions.
Spotify is also a big enough organization that any claim of "undo burden" would probably not hold up in court, anyway.
While a small local radio station might well be protected, and is a good example of why such exceptions exist.
Once an organization can no longer claim an accessibility accomodation is an undue burden, then various laws kick in dictating how that accessibility accomodation must be managed.
What…? The laws applies to everyone, you can’t just claim I can’t afford it. Got a source please?
As was pointed out, many radio stations do provide captions, and in doing so, fall under the same laws about how they managed those captions.
Where was this pointed out? Most don’t, and the few that do just link to other places, something Spotify could do to with what you’re claiming. Why do they need to provide the actual words when radios don’t? Another source on this would be great. You’re already saying the laws apply differently, but are the same? You’ve contradicted yourself multiple times already….
Spotify is also a big enough organization that any claim of "undue burden" would probably not hold up in court, anyway.
Source that’s a thing.
While a small local radio station might well be protected, and is a good example of why such exceptions exist.
So I can just claim I don’t make enough and not need to follow any ADA laws? That doesn’t sound right, even non-profits get riddled with ads claims, so again, source please!
We all know you’re talking out of your ass, so yeah I don’t expect any actual response, so enjoy your weekend troll!
Some do. It’s pretty rare, but stations that are more talk-show or interview style shows might have transcripts on their site afterwards. (The Final Straw Radio, my beloved)
Music stations? Probably not. At least I’m not aware of any that do. But I also don’t like hearing the disk jockey chat between music so I don’t listen to that type of radio ever.
I mean, technically a lot of them are, you can't see subtitles for most movies without paying to see the movie, same with any TV show you can't watch with just an antenna.
If they were guaranteed to be the correct subtitles for the show I might not be as mad about it (as I would be if they moved the current system behind a paywall)
Being deaf is a spectrum. There are plenty of people who still have some hearing, and are “hard of hearing”. There’s deaf people who can enjoy music through the use of hearing aids as well. There’s also totally deaf people who can enjoy music because of the vibrations. There’s people whose hearing is just bad enough that they don’t understand what anyone is saying without subtitles/lyrics. Deaf in only one ear, etc.
I might get a bit of hate for this considering the community name, but Spotify is the one subscription I pay for and don’t feel like I’m getting ripped off. Basically every song I want is on there, they very rarely remove content, and the algorithm actually comes up with decent recommendations. I even like some of the other random features like Spotify wrapped.
But the main difference I see vs other subscriptions is that I don’t feel locked in, since there are no Spotify originals etc if they ever make the service too shit (which admittedly they might since they keep raising the price and trying to shove podcasts down everyone’s throat) I could easily switch to a different streaming service or even go back to just buying music outright
I have Tidal. It costs the same as Spotify but pays artists more and actively promotes up and coming musicians. Also they aren't part of the military industrial complex, so that's cool.
I used to like Spotify. Right now YT music feels just way better. No fluff yet, just music. Plus all of the unofficial covers which are on YT are on YT music
That’s definitely the nice thing about YT music for me. Whatever random niche songs my son wants about games or characters, or ordinary popular music any of us listen to, are always on there. Plus we use regular YT all the time on several devices, so it is literally the only streaming service I pay for.
I like Spotify, and when I want to support and artist I buy their merch, or I go see them live (the amount of money they get from ticket sales depends on if it's a live nation event or not).
I just started using Spotify for the first time last year, mainly because I got tired of trying to figure out what this meat paste wanted to listen to
YT is great when you know what you want to hear, but it's garbage at (music) recommendations (I haven't tried YT music)
Spoofie isn't the best, but for right now, it's worth the price just so I can actually get back to work, and not fiddle with YT for 3 hours looking for music this meat paste wants right now
Although, I'm open to alternatives, if they're viable
I don’t feel locked in, since there are no Spotify originals etc
I don't use Spotify so correct me if I'm wrong. But I think Spotify has podcasts that are only available there.
I told my wife about other open source apps that have music without ads, and even though it had the music, there were some podcasts that were not available without Spotify premium outside of Spotify.
If you ever get tired of paying for it, use ReVanced + Spotify (Android), or EeveeSpotify (iPhone)
I just hate the fact that free Spotify sounds so dogshit compared to Free YT Music, which is what I used for years until I got an android again and used ReVanced.
I'm not saying it's an excuse for hiding accessibility features behind a paywall, but for that you're going to want to search YouTube for "(song title) karaoke".
fuck off, it's not that simple. Spotify you can't just play whatever and also you can skip like 5 songs per hour or whatever the fuck. Charging for lyrics is fucking ridiculous and you saying just google it isn't any better.
Spotify you can't just play whatever and also you can skip like 5 songs per hour or whatever the fuck.
Okay? That has literally nothing to do with getting lyrics for free...
Charging for lyrics is fucking ridiculous and you saying just google it isn't any better.
The people are entitled to their free music and free lyrics right in the same spot. Having to do a single Google search to get those lyrics is inconceivable!
Yeah it's a whole spectrum. I hear normally out of my right ear but left is at best 50% volume. Just genetics my cousins have similar hearing profiles. If I listen to music with just the right ear I feel like I'm missing out even though I can barely tell what goes on in left ear outside of bass and drums.
This one is actually out of their hands. Lyrics aren't free sadly and they have to pay for API calls. It's fucking stupid but the labels are the ones at fault here.
Deafness covers a broad spectrum of hearing difficulty, not just completely deaf. Most people that identify as deaf still have some hearing. I always forget that and had the same question as you until I read a comment further down.
It's likely that the person isn't fully deaf and so can still hear some music, but deaf enough that they can't understand the lyrics. Having the ability to view the lyrics in real time is handy rather than having to search them up all the time. Spotify also shows what lyric is currently being sung in real time, whereas you can't get that with a Google search.
They don't have everything. I have plenty of tracks on my drive at home that aren't available. ALSO, sometimes you'll find a track you like and save it locally in Spotify, then Spotify decides they don't like that track anymore and you no longer have access to it. It still shows up in your library but it's grayed out.
Also their shuffle button is hot garbage, at least on Android. It's been garbage for years and it recently got even worse.
It doesn't seem very random to me. What user "vodka" said might be true. Whatever, I can deal with that. What really grinds my gears is that Spotify frequenty turns on shuffle when I want it off, and it frequently switches to "smart shuffle" when I want regular shuffle. "Smart shuffle" will mix in songs that it thinks you might want to hear. I can't tell you how many times I've turned off shuffle without having turned it on. I assume they have some competent people working at Spotify so I can't imagine how they could have let it get to this state.
I heard they've fixed it, but it used to be limited to 100 songs, and it was a simple re-order and not actually random.
It'd always put tracks in the same order (unless you've changed something in the first 100 tracks since last time)
You'd have a 300 song playlist, hit shuffle, and it'd "shuffle" the same 100 songs in the same order, but start at a different point every time.
Algorithms for randomness on things like spotify cant actually be true random because true random will sometimes do weird shit that makes users think its broken. Like if you put 10 songs from 10 artists on a 100 song playlist and hit random there is a not 0% chance that it will put all 10 songs from 1 artist in a row.
BlockTheSpot + Spicetify esentially gives you spotify premium for free. No lyrics, and no downloads, but otherwise most premium features are completely free.
That said, I'm considering switching to Deezer, but they do have some missing songs, which is unfortunate.
Yep, same. And it's a good service, and pretty cheap all things considered. Have found a ton of new artists, have played their songs, bought merch from their bandcamps or merch buckets, or whatever, and all because spotify's stupid algorithm does get it right some time.
But fuck them, I guess, for not giving enough away in their free to use tier.
Pretty good audio quality too, I have Sennheiser hd600 (300$) and have tuned the heck out of them. They sound amazing and I still cannot tell the difference between flac (uncompressed) and high bitrate mp3 (what Spotify uses).
Yeah, the only time I've ever heard the difference in audio quality between flac and 320mp3 is when I've been trying to sample parts of songs in Ableton, adjusting the bpm and doing some warping, and you get artifacts. When I listen to music, I have a nice system at home, and I cannot tell the difference. And maybe it's me, but beyond 20khz basically doesn't exist.
I agree with you completely but I am also one of those weirdos who just never stopped using Pandora so I have no room to talk, but 90% of my music listening is via my own music collection. IMO it's such a better experience than anything else.
it's incredibly simple. you use the revanced manager, check the boxes you want, and it does it for you. I don't know how to write a patch, they've all been written for me. here's their website, and here's their GitHub. only works on Android. I personally used it to crack YouTube music instead, but you can do Spotify
Yeah, there's a farmers market nearby with the same fucking problem. If you don't pay, suddenly they don't give you the fruits of their labor! Bastards...
Well, I'm not advising that you do this, but I've read that there are tools on the Internet for converting Youtube links into MP3 files, and even better, I've read that the quality is a jump up from what Spotify streams to your device.
Music Haptics is a new way for users who are deaf or hard of hearing to experience music on iPhone. With this accessibility feature turned on, the Taptic Engine in iPhone plays taps, textures and refined vibrations to the audio of the music. Music Haptics works across millions of songs in the Apple Music catalogue, and will be available as an API for developers to make music more accessible in their apps.
There's plenty of sites to buy mp3 and download them onto your devices, owning them forever. Pirate if you want to pirate, but don't blame others for your behavior.
I killed my Spotify account when they started shoveling millions of dollars at Joe Rogan, and everything they've done since then only confirms I made the right call.
The lyrics on Spotify play along/highlight as the song plays so you can read along in time with the song.
This is actually a vital accommodation for the hard of hearing and partially Deaf because we can often hear/feel the beat and sometimes the melody, but we don't know exactly where in the song were up to because the tune of all the versus sounds the same, or vocal breaks of "ooooooh, lalala" can be mistaken for the start of a new line of lyrics.
So if you're just reading along with a static page of lyrics, it takes a lot of mental energy to figure out what's happening with the song, especially if it's a new song you're discovering.
We've had static lyric sheets for decades, you'd unfold the sleeve in your record and try to read along as you listened, never 100% sure you were doing it right unless a fully hearing friend was there to point at the words and be your version of the bouncing ball.
So to have this technology that almost completely solves this problem for a vulnerable community... Then to put it behind a pay wall despite the fact that Deaf people are more likely to be underemployed and socially disadvantaged than the general hearing populous is just callous.
Our experience of music is fundamentally different to hearing people, and yet Spotify will charge us the same rate for a sub par experience.
As a non-deaf person, I came in here looking exactly for your comment. Reading the post, I was confused as to how deaf people even enjoy music. You told me exactly the things I wanted to understand in a very good, and even relatable way. Thank you!
I didn't even know they did that, Glad I don't have an account with them. I'm partially deaf, most music I can't understand what someone singing. Those fun things people do of like "most common misheard lyrics" is basically my life. On the plus side I enjoy music from around the world because unintelligible music is unintelligible no matter where it's from. They're very few artists I feel like I can understand, and realistically I'm probably wrong.
In real life, I read lips to help augment my terrible hearing. Fun fact during the mask man dates during COVID, was probably the worst time for me. A lot of people I could hear talking as I could hear noise but I could not make out what it was. Leading to a lot of awkward conversations.
Anyhoo, that's all to say that for music that I do like I do have to see the lyrics. It's what converts the noise into words.
So, fuck you Spotify, My life's difficult enough already, I'm not paying your shitty service so you can charge me for my impairment.
I would say, it because the lyrics aren't something Spotify made. No one's picking up Spotify because only Spotify has lyrics. Spotify isn't writing the songs. Regardless of what someone might think of Spotify or Spotify free, it's withholding something that they have that they didn't make from people that perhaps need it. It'd be like if broadcast TV or any on demand video service (YouTube, Disney, Netflix, etc.), said hey you didn't pay no more closed captions for you (where a free version is applicable, of course).
If Spotify wants to put stuff behind a paywall it can be features of the platform.
My personal opinion is Spotify sucks, full stop. The CEO is a real piece of work. This just goes on the pile of reason Spotify sucks.
but why does a disability entitle you to a service that’s paid?
why would you limit the ability to use lyrics though? It's the same shit that every big article tabloid is doing "pay us five dollar a month and we will show you our articles, that we think are good" after showing you like three, in four months for free.
Either give people access to the service, or don't, don't play the bullshit of "well actually, here's a free sample"
yeah but that still begs the question of why even give limited access. Just put it behind the paywall, it's not like people don't understand what spotify is, and it gives them a better excuse for selling a service anyway.
I agree, but unfortunately, there's probably not a good self hosted solution to this specific problem.
I use musicbrainz for music tagging, which is an excellent source for all metadata except lyrics. For better or worse, the only decent sources of lyrics seems to be genius and musixmatch, and neither integrate well with tagging tools like musicbrainz Picard.
If anyone else has found an easier way to do this, I would love to hear it.
I'm not sure if the application is safe. It may be malicious. Proceed at your own risk.
I saw a GitHub project called 163MusicLyrics that's sources the information from Chinese sources (NetEase and QQ).
The entire software is in Chinese, but the results looked really accurate from the sandbox I ran. It's even actively developed with v6.2 releasing least week. But again, I don't know if it's safe.
I'm not good at code but it looks like it's OSS, so you could verify the code yourself or reverse engineer something with the API calls they use?
Let me know if you come across something though. I'm also looking for a way to get LRC files easily.
EDIT: Also for self hosting, I use Jellyfin with Symfonium, and Tailscale. It works great for me and has been relatively low maintenance.
When listening locally on my computer I use foobar2000 and the OpenLyrics component - but yeah, it falls short sometimes unfortunately. I've written myself some scrapers that crawl some sites, but that still requires a bit of manual intervention. I'm still looking for a self-hosted app that can help with tags though, and more in a manual manner; I don't really like a script assuming that this album is this specific release when it might not be.
Besides, some files have the lyrics already in the tags - often the case when buying/downloading for free from Bandcamp.
The 1 or 2 kB of lyrics are a few orders of magnitude smaller than the song being streamed.
The album art probably takes up more space than the lyrics.
So, album art should also be a paid feature?
Because it improves the experience, but isn't vital to it. If you want the free tier to be accessible to everyone, limiting things like lyrics that people like OP use as a disability accommodation isn't the way to do it.
I left Spotify for Tidal. But why would anyone feel obliged for free music from a commercial host? Just self host if you dont want to pay. Piracy is always morally right. It's preservation of cultural heritage.
I choose to pay for Tidal because of convenience. I refuse to pay for more than 2 streaming services. It's fairly easy for any adult to make choices like that.
This is an imagined problem and a fairly new one to.
Left handed people having to use tools and appliances designed for right handed people is an actual bigger issue.
Coming from the age of ipods and piracy, Spotify was a great alternative to that and reasonably priced for the usage you could get out of it. These days is harder to justify
Meh 6 people, almost every song we could want for less than 20 bucks is ideal.
That said I am gearing up to change streamer just because they annoy me with UI changes, forcing originals, pushing gigs despite disabling that function...and the longest running gripe of all: let me disable censored songs you cunts. I never want the clean version.
Talking about lyrics specifically?; they probably didn't. That's no reason to not make things more accessible to people with disabilities though. It's about quality of life and making sure people with disabilities have equitable access.
If having the lyrics available is an essential part of being able to enjoy the music, it should be as equally accessible as the music is.
Definitely. But if this specific feature, that isn't even primarily intended as an accessibility feature, has apparently not been available before in this form, does it make sense to call out Spotify for making that feature available "only" limited on the free version?
But yes, I'm aware of the community I'm on right now :D
I've used Pandora for years. Granted, they don't have all of the features of Spotify. But, I think their algorithm is better and my price has never changed.
You are not explaining how hearing works. You are manipulating. You are manipulating by equating one's ability to hear with a Spotify feature. These are not the same thing, and comparing them is not correct.
But the feature works exactly the same for deaf and not deaf people, we've established that already. Well, at least you agreed that you were lying and manipulating. I will take the win.
That argument style is main thing that props up all sorts of discrimination. The truth is that applying the same rule to everyone often does not effect everyone the same way. You can argue about the rule being the same, but it's generally more useful to focus on the effects.
You say "more money," but this person is on free tier. They are paying nothing and they expect more. Is that not entitlement? I'm not some raving capitalist, but isn't it okay to charge money for certain services?
When a company offers free services and then starts charging after people start using them(or in the case of OP, become dependent on them) then it's complete bullshit. Now you can't trust free services because a company can just decide it's not free whenever they want.
they would have a livable wage if they weren't so fucking bad at business.
They literally outsource the one part of the music industry that makes money publishing
The ONLY source of revenue they have is from subscriptions, and literally all it does is pay the publishers that use spotifys platform. And also VC but that doesn't count since it's VC.
While I agree that this is stupid, why would a deaf person be using Spotify in the first place?
Deafness isn't binary, they could be capable of hearing the music but not making out the lyrics.
And even people who cannot hear anything at all still feel the bass and stuff.
Relevant funny story from Deaf actor Daniel Durant: https://youtube.com/shorts/eYQKtwkoZOI
hissss!!!
Excuse me while I kiss this guy!
(mumbles in yellow led better)
Oh the feelin/ On a voice of betters yeah/ And i said/ I wanna be dead again
I don't know what your problem is. Yellow Ledbetter is totally understandable
On a wheel, on a wizard, on a whale, Anna no, Anna no I don’t wanna be dead again.
Wrapped up like a douche, another runner in the night
While little Early Burly gave my anus curly whirly
Bunny's too tight to mention
as someone who seems to simultaneously be sensitive to sound & hard of hearing + sharp-eyed & near-sighted, i'd like to thank you for this response.
e : visual snow is a binch, also.
make your website accessible to people with visual snow!
(perhaps this would entail increasing contrast on text?)
Makes sense!
Wait, are you supposed to be able to make out the lyrics?
Just to clarify definitions that probably wouldn't be considered deafness, it would be an audio processing disorder. Ability to hear music but inability to process the words.
Deafness is "binary" in that it just means ones ability to hear sound or not. If you can hear sound even slightly then you just have a hearing impairment and are not deaf.
Deafness is commonly understood to include both total and partial hearing loss. Every major dictionary defines it this way. It might have a more precise meaning in some spheres (medical, etc), but in common English it is not binary the way you're suggesting.
Merriam Webster: deaf
Dictionary.com: deaf
Cambridge English dictionary: deaf
Similar to blindness which also isn't an absolute yes or no. People can be blind and still see colors and shapes, but not enough to be able to tell what they are.
No it really isn’t. The hard of hearing are considered deaf. There’s complete deafness, much like there’s complete blindness, but the fact that you’re calling it hearing impairment instead of hard of hearing indicates you aren’t as well versed in Deafness (not to be confused with deafness) as you think
yes officer take me downtown
So I'm not deaf, not in the slightest, but I struggle to understand lyrics in music. I love music, I live and breathe it and I'm gonna dedicate my life to it, but I've always struggled with understanding lyrics in music. To me, the vocalist is just another instrument in the mix. Having lyrics to read helps me appreciate my favorite tunes more!
For me it is certain singers that apparently everyone else understands but I cannot without knowing the words ahead of time. Not just mumbling, some voices just don't register clearly for me if I don't know what they are saying.
It can depend on the mixing, too. Not just in regards to volume, but also in how the vocals are edited. My recent obsession has been Dusk at Cubist Castle, shit's absolutely amazing. The way a lot of the vocals are mixed and processed are super cool, like layering the same lines over themselves five times over with subtle delays and panning, it sounds real cool! But it makes it sound a lot more distant to me as a result.
Yeah, thst is true. But I'm talking about some popular artists like Pearl Jam and Mase who everyone around me apparently could hear clear as day but I just heard mumble mush at first and could only hear the words clearly with printed lyrics in front of me.
You might have a smidge of
SpeechAuditory* Processing Disorder. I do and that's what it's like for me. Common comorbidity with ADHD and ASD, and possibly other neurotypes.Oh almost certainly. I have ADHD, prolly autistic, and I've had many times where my mind stopped processing what people are saying. Which is bad when you work tourism xD
Yyuup. It's bad in basically any job you have to listen to people during, and I always have to establish with friends that it is an honest mistake when I can't understand them and/or spaced out.
I'm ADHD and on the spectrum more than likely, and my therapist says that the cutting edge research pertaining to this is leaning towards combining ADHD and ASD into one conglomerate of symptoms because they overlap more often than not.
Seems like they could just Google the lyrics and read that.
But I guess Spotify lyrics do give an idea on the pace of the song.
Only if they've been synched, a lot of lyrics on there aren't.
Leave spotify when they could just let you stay!
Or pay for the service like they suggested
ew
I've heard some deaf people like the vibration of certain kinds of music.
Long shot guess: deaf person can "listen" to vibrations of music with their hands on a speaker but this is not possible with lyrics?
So imagine you’re listening to rap. But you’re hard of hearing. The beats still slap, but the words aren’t intelligible. Hell the beats are even better because you got a subwoofer that shakes the floor. But you know it’s poetry, it’s about the words as much as the beats. So of course you’d want to read along
Is that you, Helen?
If it were a paid account yeah, it'd be extremely shitty. But seeing as it's a free account, it's their prerogative to try and get people to pay for the service. Besides, I don't get this entitlement that spotify has to provide music for free. They're a (admittedly greedy) middle-man that wants to get paid. If one wants free music and everything, well, time to self-host.
Except that this attempt could easily be shown to largely land on folks with accessibility needs. That's a big no-no under many laws.
An interesting comparison is pay-to-ride elevators. For most folks an elevator is a nice convenience they would not mind occasionally paying for.
But for some folks, the elevator is completely essential. This dynamic resulted in making pay-to-ride elevators illegal in most places, today.
Due to the uniquely fucked up way music licensing works, it's likely they license the lyrics through a separate company than the music and probably don't even directly license it themselves (Tidal for example uses Musicmatch's lyric library and api). There's a cost associated with this that is likely outside their control. It's shitty, but it is plalusibly reasonable they implemented this as a cost savings measure.
That's a good point. That might actually make the case for "undue burden".
A court case about it could be a way for Spotify to pass the problem to their licensors, in theory.
You keep claiming this “undue burden”, can you provide a source to the exemption in the legislation that states this is possible? Multiple people have asked and you keep just screaming at them.
Prove your point or kindly fuck off and stop making the most obvious fucking lies.
https://know-the-ada.com/understanding-ada-title-i-undue-hardship/
Is Spotify an employer to their customers…?
Radio to the general public?
An elevator in a building…?
Did you do what they did and google something and read the first two lines only….?
You asked simply what they were referring to, ya fucking dick. I gave you an answer.
So this is absolutely fucking hilarious and shows your surface level knowledge (or just googling something and having zero knowledge…) they are only illegal if they are the only means of transportation, every single one of the buildings with one these will also have regular elevators, so they meet the code.
All the law did was prevent single elevator buildings from being able to discriminate. If a non-abled body person has another conveyance method, they can charge whatever they want. This is how amusement rides are able to charge AND have non ada accessible rides. And incase you didn’t know, elevator codes do cover amusement rides in most jurisdictions as well…
You don’t need lyrics to listen to music however. If she’s deaf and can’t hear the music then I don’t know why she needs Spotify.
Much like many disabilities, deafness isn't a hard binary between hearing Vs deaf, but a spectrum dependent on many factors. For example, someone may have hearing loss in a particular frequency range, which may affect their ability to hear lyrics. I would also expect that someone's relationship to music may be impacted by whether they were born deaf or acquired deafness later in life.
The point that other are making about this as an accessibility problem is that a lot of disability or anti-discrimination has provisions for rules or policies that are, in and of themselves, neutral, but affect disabled people (or other groups protected under equality legislation) to a greater degree than people without that trait. In the UK, for example, it might be considered "indirect discrimination".
You might not need lyrics to listen to music, but someone who is deaf or hard of hearing is likely going to experience and enjoy music differently to you, so it may well be necessary for them.
I don’t even know the lyrics to some of my favorite songs. I think the whole complaining about unlimited, free lyrics is ridiculous. Spotify isn’t a charity and just because someone can’t enjoy music as much due to not reading lyrics isn’t an accessibility thing.
Guess Spotify should just get rid of the free tier and then this wouldn’t even be an issue.
Okay, well get back to me when you have some lived experience of deafness and maybe we can have a productive discussion then, seeing as my point seems to have gone completely over your head.
Should my free local newspaper also include everything in braille?
Listen, I don't want to be in a pointless internet argument; I could answer your question by referencing some of the things that go into deciding what reasonable adjustments should be put in place, legally speaking (in particular, your question is getting at the "how much is reasonable" aspect of the problem"), but I only want to engage in this conversation if you're actually interested to learn.
(On that front, I apologise for the sharp tone of my previous comment, because that certainly wasn't conducive to conversation.)
If this were doable...
.
.
Shouldn't they, though?
Like, here's your 5 stacks of normal newspapers, here's your 1 stack of braille newspapers. Take your pick.
Ohh, they're trying to be a shit-hole. Now I understand.
You guys, there's a reason we don't clean toilets. Toilets are supposed to be dirty.
I have no idea what you’re talking about, like at all.
I don’t even use Spotify.
I'm just agreeing that Spotify isn't a charity. They have no obligation to be good or useful, and they will continue to destroy their service, and things will continue to get worse, and there's no point in fighting any of this, and there never will be, and so it is, and so it shall be, until you die.
It's just, I'm learning in real time now how best to treat life, you know? It's good stuff.
I also don't need an elevator to move between floors of a building that has stairs, while some people do.
I think they were more saying you don't need to understand the lyrics to enjoy music, which would be more like if the elevator still worked for the person in the wheelchair but the mirrors inside are hung so you can only see yourself if standing.
Yeah. I understand what they're saying, but they're wrong, based on past court cases.
Defining "full equal service" in a way that carves out big portions (like knowing what the lyrics are) in ways that fully able bodied people take for granted - has gone badly for companies that let it go to court.
That you refuse to share with the class 🤔
But they're totally real. For real.
Just because a building can afford a glass elevator so you can see the view doesn’t mean the building next door is denying full service to people who can see because they don’t have one.
You’re a fucking moron and need to shut up, every point you’ve made is easily disproved, it’s like you’ve googled a term and read 2 lines and run with it.
Think for more than 2 seconds with your lies and maybe you could see how each and everyone is just fucking retarded as shit dude….
Give your head a shake, you have zero knowledge on this subject.
Provide sources, or fuck off.
You’re comparing something that actually affects someone’s ability to move around with someone not enjoying free music as much without lyrics
More both get elevators, but yours has the blinds closed to the view outside, while the other gets to see the most breathtaking view ever.
Yeah, that could still play in court. (Serious reply. Not sarcasm.)
On what grounds?
Ah, so you don't understand disabilities then. Got it.
Or borrow CDs from friends or the library. Or turn on the fucking radio. There's plenty of music for free out there.
hiding accessibility features behind a pay wall is disgusting, because only people with disabilities have to pay for it. *edit if you're downvoting, just let me know so I can block all of the ableists running around this community. **edit 2 - c'mon guys, why are you afraid to name yourselves?
They can get Spotify but can't Google lyrics?
so you're cool with people with disabilities having to do more labor than you to get the same thing? go fuck yourself
I listen to music and I have no idea what the lyricist is saying. I have no disability. Am I entitled to lyrics?
I downvoted one of your other comments so feel free to block instead of replying and cursing me out of something.
if you really, really want, you can go in and edit the lyrics just like subtitles for television shows to say unintelligible dialogue. I'm arguing for an identical experience here, not extra perks that happen to cost the company nothing
I curse when I talk. I was assuming we were all adults here. did somebody block you and hurt your feelings?
Did you forget where you asked people who downvoted you to identify themselves so you could block them?
And despite the lyrics being unintelligible to me, they do exist, and when I went and looked them up (on the occasions Spotify didn't have them), I said oh yeah, there you go.
I curse too though, all the time.
I can see where the wording was confusing. I wanted down voters to identify themselves, so I could then identify the ableists.
I'm not sure what your point is with the first part. that doesn't seem to counter anything that we've talked about
If I want to get free lyrics for free Spotify, I would have to do the same labor...
Also I downvoted you, so go ahead and plug your ears and block me, like a child.
Oh yes, if you want them.
Sure is nice having working ears, huh.
Sure is nice having free things, huh?
Oh, I see. I didn't know providing a service you make money from, er, "for free," means you get to do whatever you want.
they prolly won't be the only one lmao
Are Google lyrics timed??
No, so what? Neither are all Spotify lyrics. They don't even have lyrics for some songs.
Spotify lyrics are synced. You also click any text in the lyrics and it'll jump to that part of the song.
Like I just said, they are not all synced, and they do not have lyrics for all songs.
Spotify lyrics aren't synced? Then why the fuck are they charging for them?
Just because a building has a glass elevator with a view doesn’t mean all the other elevators are making an ADA violation……….
Some places have better features, unless ADA mandates something, they’re just doing something better, fuck them eh…?
nobody's talking about the bare minimum of federal law dude. this is a discussion about how humans are supposed to treat each other. if the way you walk around life is "well, it's legal to be an asshole in this situation so I'll do it" then there's no point in having this conversation because do not have the time to make you a better person
also your example absolutely wild. the purpose of an elevator is to get you from here to there. the purpose of Spotify is to help you listen to music. people with hearing issues are required to pay extra or do extra work to get the same experience as a perfectly abled person.
Just because someone has more money and can provide a better service doesn’t make them an asshole. The differently abled person could pay to use the other elevator, just like you and me, they just wouldn’t get to use the view, which is what the charge is for. How does this make the persons “experience” different if the only point is to move them? Anything else is an added bonus as you said.
You mean… exactly like how an elevator is to move people up and down and the added view is extra and not needed so both still have the same experience…?
Do you even know what point you’re trying to make here? Because as you’ve agreed, Spotify and elevators both are for one use, and the view, lyrics are an added bonus sometimes. But this doesn’t make someone an asshole for not spending the money on a better elevator. Fucking yeeesh…..
as I said, I don't have the time and energy to teach you how to be a better person. continuing capitalism or whatever it is
lol, just because someone has money they “need” to be a better “person”? No, everyone should be held to the same standards.
It’s you who needs the education if you think segregating “people”to different standards due to their wealth is an even remotely smart idea….
And neither of us should be “teaching” each other, you’re a narcissist if you think that’s what you “need” to be doing in a conversation. Lmfao, this a new one.
Holy shit. Do you own a Texaco or something? How much do you pay in taxes, dude?
Oh, so not charging money magically exempts companies from meeting ADA accessibility requirements for their public accommodations?
Edit: what I'm taking issue with is the notion that being on the free tier of service changes anything. Maybe Spotifiy has an obligation or maybe it doesn't, but either way, it's the same regardless of how much or little the customer pays. Being a second-class customer does not make you a second-class citizen who doesn't get equal protection under the law!
Source that providing lyrics to songs is a requirement?
I never said it was. I said that the requirement is the same whether it's a free account or a paid one. It's either always required or it's never required, but it sure as Hell is not "their prerogative" based on how much they get paid.
Think about it for a second: what the parent commenter is suggesting is that it's somehow okay for a company to use compliance with legal requirements as an upselling opportunity! You do see the problem with that line of thinking, right?!
Which is completely irrelevant if its not actually a requirement. So I'm asking you to prove that it is.
What's relevant is that the commenter I replied to suggested that it's Spotify's "prerogative" whether to comply with the law or not. It isn't.
This issue here is people spouting dangerous late-stage-capitalist nonsense, not the content of the ADA rule. Your demand is actually just a derailment tactic.
The person agreeing with you has literally said they can claim they don’t make enough and not need to comply with ADA laws…. Apparantly…. So yeah they can just choose to not comply. This is from someone working directly with them, so we have to accept this is true I guess.
No they did not. You brought up the law.
Providing a substantially inferior outcome to someone with an ADA need absolutely violates ADA rules.
When stuff like this has gone to court it hasn't been pretty for the offending organization.
There's a bigger question about how much of what Spotify currently provides falls under ADA. Web services used to get a free pass. They largely don't anymore.
Source: some of this stuff is my problem, professionally. And no, I'm not going to look up a primary source for anyone. That's Spotify's lawyers job.
So no, just talking out of your ass then.
You can Google the lyrics to songs on any device you can view them on Spotify.
If you could google the subtitles to any film or tv show, should that absolve Netflix of the responsibility to provide them?
Do lyrics fall under the same regulation as subtitles? If Netflix were free, would it still be subject to those requirements?
Perhaps they should. Let's join hands, friend. I believe we can change things for the better.
Help me do what, exactly?
Do radio stations provide lyrics?
The
factpossibility that they're unable to provide lyrics gives radio stations a free pass on this, under ADA (and most similar laws).Edit: Correction, per correction below - options for providing radio captions do exist.
Edit 2: For anyone reading along to learn - a radio station without captioning technology is unlikely to be required to add captioning under any accessibility law I'm aware of. But a station that provides captioning is unlikely to be able to charge extra for that captioning under current accessibility laws.
Businesses are typically accountable to provide equitable accommodations at no additional charge.
A comparison that may help: a storefront with no dedicated parking whatsoever is typically not required to provide the usual required percentage of reserved accessible parking. Or rather, their zero reserved spaces meets the required percentage automatically, at it's whatever percentage of zero total spaces.
You are technically correct - the best kind of correct! (Futurama quote, meaning I appreciate your correction.)
It's probably not an issue for a station that simply doesn't have that level of captioning, yet.
But I take your point - it would likely be a violation if they had that captioning and tried to monetize it. (In my far more informed opinion than that of a couple of asshats who were replying to me in this thread.)
So why does that apply to OTA, but not their website or other delivery methods…?
Your “laws” seem to have lots of exceptions when you need them to. But also, not surprisingly, very easy to find the flaws since they don’t exist and you’re not smart enough to think of these yourself apparently….
Let it be known that I am a generous and benevolent ruler.
They can provide lyrics, most have websites, they can print a pamphlet, that’s just excuses to justify crying out against one and not the other.
What makes them unable to, but Spotify able to?
Once an organization can no longer claim an accessibility accomodation is an undue burden, then various laws kick in (can no longer be evaded during a court case or an audit) dictating how that accessibility accomodation must be managed.
As was pointed out, many radio stations do provide captions, and in doing so, fall under (no longer receive any exemption under) the same laws about how they managed those captions.
Spotify is also a big enough organization that any claim of "undo burden" would probably not hold up in court, anyway.
While a small local radio station might well be protected, and is a good example of why such exceptions exist.
What…? The laws applies to everyone, you can’t just claim I can’t afford it. Got a source please?
Where was this pointed out? Most don’t, and the few that do just link to other places, something Spotify could do to with what you’re claiming. Why do they need to provide the actual words when radios don’t? Another source on this would be great. You’re already saying the laws apply differently, but are the same? You’ve contradicted yourself multiple times already….
Source that’s a thing.
So I can just claim I don’t make enough and not need to follow any ADA laws? That doesn’t sound right, even non-profits get riddled with ads claims, so again, source please!
We all know you’re talking out of your ass, so yeah I don’t expect any actual response, so enjoy your weekend troll!
Of course they don't.
But they're going to pretend that its on you to disprove the claim.
Edit: Oh look, they did exactly what I said they would.
Some do. It’s pretty rare, but stations that are more talk-show or interview style shows might have transcripts on their site afterwards. (The Final Straw Radio, my beloved)
Music stations? Probably not. At least I’m not aware of any that do. But I also don’t like hearing the disk jockey chat between music so I don’t listen to that type of radio ever.
Most just provide links to other places actually if they do, the point is, it’s nothing to do with ADA and if it was, radio would be required to too.
Wow, that's hot trash. Imagine subtitles on movies and TV being stuck behind a paywall.
Prime Video - 'hold my hat'
"Let's run ads to announce it!"
shhh don't give them ideas jesus what are you doing
I mean, technically a lot of them are, you can't see subtitles for most movies without paying to see the movie, same with any TV show you can't watch with just an antenna.
Look, they don't need your help in implementing bad ideas. Please stop assisting them... For all our mental health.
If they were guaranteed to be the correct subtitles for the show I might not be as mad about it (as I would be if they moved the current system behind a paywall)
I'm so sorry but this is the absolute funniest shit I have ever read. 😂
Being deaf is a spectrum. There are plenty of people who still have some hearing, and are “hard of hearing”. There’s deaf people who can enjoy music through the use of hearing aids as well. There’s also totally deaf people who can enjoy music because of the vibrations. There’s people whose hearing is just bad enough that they don’t understand what anyone is saying without subtitles/lyrics. Deaf in only one ear, etc.
I might get a bit of hate for this considering the community name, but Spotify is the one subscription I pay for and don’t feel like I’m getting ripped off. Basically every song I want is on there, they very rarely remove content, and the algorithm actually comes up with decent recommendations. I even like some of the other random features like Spotify wrapped.
But the main difference I see vs other subscriptions is that I don’t feel locked in, since there are no Spotify originals etc if they ever make the service too shit (which admittedly they might since they keep raising the price and trying to shove podcasts down everyone’s throat) I could easily switch to a different streaming service or even go back to just buying music outright
I'm with you on that one. Yeah they are not great. But there are far worse companys.
I have Tidal. It costs the same as Spotify but pays artists more and actively promotes up and coming musicians. Also they aren't part of the military industrial complex, so that's cool.
Same, Tidal also has better sound quality and a shuffle that actually works
I used to like Spotify. Right now YT music feels just way better. No fluff yet, just music. Plus all of the unofficial covers which are on YT are on YT music
YT music does have a problem with reuploaders stealing revenue through "topics", Upper Echelon made a video about it a few weeks ago
Sounds like a temporary issue but google does take its time to fix anything
That’s definitely the nice thing about YT music for me. Whatever random niche songs my son wants about games or characters, or ordinary popular music any of us listen to, are always on there. Plus we use regular YT all the time on several devices, so it is literally the only streaming service I pay for.
I like Spotify, and when I want to support and artist I buy their merch, or I go see them live (the amount of money they get from ticket sales depends on if it's a live nation event or not).
I just started using Spotify for the first time last year, mainly because I got tired of trying to figure out what this meat paste wanted to listen to
YT is great when you know what you want to hear, but it's garbage at (music) recommendations (I haven't tried YT music)
Spoofie isn't the best, but for right now, it's worth the price just so I can actually get back to work, and not fiddle with YT for 3 hours looking for music this meat paste wants right now
Although, I'm open to alternatives, if they're viable
I don't use Spotify so correct me if I'm wrong. But I think Spotify has podcasts that are only available there.
I told my wife about other open source apps that have music without ads, and even though it had the music, there were some podcasts that were not available without Spotify premium outside of Spotify.
You’re probably right there, I don’t listen to podcasts so I was just talking about the music
If you ever get tired of paying for it, use ReVanced + Spotify (Android), or EeveeSpotify (iPhone)
I just hate the fact that free Spotify sounds so dogshit compared to Free YT Music, which is what I used for years until I got an android again and used ReVanced.
If you want Spotify for free and lyrics for free, just Google the lyrics...
While I mostly agree, there is a difference. In Spotify, you can play a song and it highlights the lyrics as they are sung
I'm not saying it's an excuse for hiding accessibility features behind a paywall, but for that you're going to want to search YouTube for "(song title) karaoke".
Not always, only if they're synced.
fuck off, it's not that simple. Spotify you can't just play whatever and also you can skip like 5 songs per hour or whatever the fuck. Charging for lyrics is fucking ridiculous and you saying just google it isn't any better.
Okay? That has literally nothing to do with getting lyrics for free...
The people are entitled to their free music and free lyrics right in the same spot. Having to do a single Google search to get those lyrics is inconceivable!
wait why should deaf people enjoy music? And not through vibrations but LYRICS?!?!
Some people use deaf and hard of hearing interchangeably.
Deaf (big D) culture spans various levels, like hard of hearing, yup!
Yeah it's a whole spectrum. I hear normally out of my right ear but left is at best 50% volume. Just genetics my cousins have similar hearing profiles. If I listen to music with just the right ear I feel like I'm missing out even though I can barely tell what goes on in left ear outside of bass and drums.
I'm thinking it's not Spotify that is keeping deaf people from enjoying music, but fuck the subscriptions also.
This one is actually out of their hands. Lyrics aren't free sadly and they have to pay for API calls. It's fucking stupid but the labels are the ones at fault here.
Fuck Spotify nonetheless.
I'm a bit confused. Do deaf people listen to music? Lyrics are generally freely available via Google.
Edit: see reply for a good explanation.
Deafness covers a broad spectrum of hearing difficulty, not just completely deaf. Most people that identify as deaf still have some hearing. I always forget that and had the same question as you until I read a comment further down.
It's likely that the person isn't fully deaf and so can still hear some music, but deaf enough that they can't understand the lyrics. Having the ability to view the lyrics in real time is handy rather than having to search them up all the time. Spotify also shows what lyric is currently being sung in real time, whereas you can't get that with a Google search.
Aha, I didn't know that. Thanks for the explanation! I'm going to edit my comment above to point to it.
To be fair, it's more likely the person isn't deaf at all and is just complaining.
Why is that more likely?
You are a shitty person, good sir!
why the FUCK does anyone still use spotify, it's a fucking joke. Unusable without paying for it.
paying $15 a month to listen to anything I want instantly is worth it
They don't have everything. I have plenty of tracks on my drive at home that aren't available. ALSO, sometimes you'll find a track you like and save it locally in Spotify, then Spotify decides they don't like that track anymore and you no longer have access to it. It still shows up in your library but it's grayed out.
Also their shuffle button is hot garbage, at least on Android. It's been garbage for years and it recently got even worse.
They have most of what I want. And what they don't have, I'll get myself :p
i have everything because i download what spotify doesnr have. ezpz
I've never used Spotify could you give a quick run down on why their shuffle sucks? Shouldn't it just be random songs?
It doesn't seem very random to me. What user "vodka" said might be true. Whatever, I can deal with that. What really grinds my gears is that Spotify frequenty turns on shuffle when I want it off, and it frequently switches to "smart shuffle" when I want regular shuffle. "Smart shuffle" will mix in songs that it thinks you might want to hear. I can't tell you how many times I've turned off shuffle without having turned it on. I assume they have some competent people working at Spotify so I can't imagine how they could have let it get to this state.
The simple answer is smart shuffle enables them to put songs in your shuffle that record companies paid them to push to you. In other words, Payola.
I heard they've fixed it, but it used to be limited to 100 songs, and it was a simple re-order and not actually random. It'd always put tracks in the same order (unless you've changed something in the first 100 tracks since last time)
You'd have a 300 song playlist, hit shuffle, and it'd "shuffle" the same 100 songs in the same order, but start at a different point every time.
Algorithms for randomness on things like spotify cant actually be true random because true random will sometimes do weird shit that makes users think its broken. Like if you put 10 songs from 10 artists on a 100 song playlist and hit random there is a not 0% chance that it will put all 10 songs from 1 artist in a row.
For sure, but I'd still prefer that over getting the same order of songs every time.
I pay $0 a month for that
BlockTheSpot + Spicetify esentially gives you spotify premium for free. No lyrics, and no downloads, but otherwise most premium features are completely free.
That said, I'm considering switching to Deezer, but they do have some missing songs, which is unfortunate.
Family plan is insanely good value especially if you fill it with friends (20$ for 6). If I were paying $15 for myself, never.
Yep, same. And it's a good service, and pretty cheap all things considered. Have found a ton of new artists, have played their songs, bought merch from their bandcamps or merch buckets, or whatever, and all because spotify's stupid algorithm does get it right some time.
But fuck them, I guess, for not giving enough away in their free to use tier.
Pretty good audio quality too, I have Sennheiser hd600 (300$) and have tuned the heck out of them. They sound amazing and I still cannot tell the difference between flac (uncompressed) and high bitrate mp3 (what Spotify uses).
Yeah, the only time I've ever heard the difference in audio quality between flac and 320mp3 is when I've been trying to sample parts of songs in Ableton, adjusting the bpm and doing some warping, and you get artifacts. When I listen to music, I have a nice system at home, and I cannot tell the difference. And maybe it's me, but beyond 20khz basically doesn't exist.
I agree with you completely but I am also one of those weirdos who just never stopped using Pandora so I have no room to talk, but 90% of my music listening is via my own music collection. IMO it's such a better experience than anything else.
Ive had good luck using a VPN that blocks ads. So far havent gotten a single ad on the free version.
I only use it in a desktop browser with ublock. It's tolerable, but they keep taking things away...
you can just crack the APK to use it for free.
I'll just get right on that thanks. So simple
it's incredibly simple. you use the revanced manager, check the boxes you want, and it does it for you. I don't know how to write a patch, they've all been written for me. here's their website, and here's their GitHub. only works on Android. I personally used it to crack YouTube music instead, but you can do Spotify
Thank you, much appreciated
Yeah, there's a farmers market nearby with the same fucking problem. If you don't pay, suddenly they don't give you the fruits of their labor! Bastards...
Agreed.
I spent the last month converting all of my Spotify likes to MP3 files and ended my subscription in Mid-June.
Their greedy, shrinkflating, enshittifying asshole CEO can go fuck himself.
How would one go about this? So I can avoid doing it accidentally, of course.
Well, I'm not advising that you do this, but I've read that there are tools on the Internet for converting Youtube links into MP3 files, and even better, I've read that the quality is a jump up from what Spotify streams to your device.
Interesting reading.
How much did the artists get when you downloaded the MP3s?
0 dollars and 0 cents
How much did the artists get when you streamed the music?
Maybe a couple cents. Not that much different
Lemme just slide this in here... Zotify
(Lyrics are hit or miss.)
I know Lemmy hates Apple, but if you want a Spotify alternative with good accessibility, then this is pretty cool:
https://www.apple.com/au/newsroom/2024/05/apple-announces-new-accessibility-features-including-eye-tracking/
Oh that's cool.
Apple Music also has read-along lyrics without any extra cost.
So does YouTube Music.
This is actually really cool. And now I wonder if you could use this to produce music specifically designed for haptics only
It’s like we’re circling back to those “extreme bass” CDs from the 90s.
damn thats crazy, i'm out here with my 300GB collection of music that i own and control and i can just, add lyrics to shit if i want to.
I don't because i'm not deaf and i don't really care for lyrics all that much, but it's also just, automated.
Could you add wrong lyrics to songs for me...
i could... Or i could not.
Hmmm, a question of the ages for sure.
I'm so confused by people under this post defending a company's scheme to make more money that disproportionately affects disabled people.
There's plenty of sites to buy mp3 and download them onto your devices, owning them forever. Pirate if you want to pirate, but don't blame others for your behavior.
I donate directly to artists, but fundamentally believe art and commerce are antithetical. And I won't be shamed into paying exploitative middle men.
Do you also buy eggs from farmers and mangoes and coffee directly in tropical countries or there you are fine with exploitative middle men?
I buy local eggs and tea, and mangoes are gross. But good on ya for being conscious of exploitative middle men!
https://www.fairtradecertified.org/what-we-do/what-we-certify/coffee/
I pay for spoofie premium because it's convenient
But I'm not defending this money-grubbing behavior
I killed my Spotify account when they started shoveling millions of dollars at Joe Rogan, and everything they've done since then only confirms I made the right call.
You can look up lyrics on Google for free, or what?
The lyrics on Spotify play along/highlight as the song plays so you can read along in time with the song.
This is actually a vital accommodation for the hard of hearing and partially Deaf because we can often hear/feel the beat and sometimes the melody, but we don't know exactly where in the song were up to because the tune of all the versus sounds the same, or vocal breaks of "ooooooh, lalala" can be mistaken for the start of a new line of lyrics.
So if you're just reading along with a static page of lyrics, it takes a lot of mental energy to figure out what's happening with the song, especially if it's a new song you're discovering.
We've had static lyric sheets for decades, you'd unfold the sleeve in your record and try to read along as you listened, never 100% sure you were doing it right unless a fully hearing friend was there to point at the words and be your version of the bouncing ball.
So to have this technology that almost completely solves this problem for a vulnerable community... Then to put it behind a pay wall despite the fact that Deaf people are more likely to be underemployed and socially disadvantaged than the general hearing populous is just callous.
Our experience of music is fundamentally different to hearing people, and yet Spotify will charge us the same rate for a sub par experience.
As a non-deaf person, I came in here looking exactly for your comment. Reading the post, I was confused as to how deaf people even enjoy music. You told me exactly the things I wanted to understand in a very good, and even relatable way. Thank you!
Search for something called “Spicetify” and make sure to install the marketplace as well for more addons.
https://spicetify.app/
Nice.
I didn't even know they did that, Glad I don't have an account with them. I'm partially deaf, most music I can't understand what someone singing. Those fun things people do of like "most common misheard lyrics" is basically my life. On the plus side I enjoy music from around the world because unintelligible music is unintelligible no matter where it's from. They're very few artists I feel like I can understand, and realistically I'm probably wrong.
In real life, I read lips to help augment my terrible hearing. Fun fact during the mask man dates during COVID, was probably the worst time for me. A lot of people I could hear talking as I could hear noise but I could not make out what it was. Leading to a lot of awkward conversations.
Anyhoo, that's all to say that for music that I do like I do have to see the lyrics. It's what converts the noise into words.
So, fuck you Spotify, My life's difficult enough already, I'm not paying your shitty service so you can charge me for my impairment.
Just like the rest of us, tbh.
Wit-ta burrdsahl sheardis-a loooooneleeeevieuuuuuuuuuuaaaand
-Red Hot Chilli Peppers
With the birds I share this lonely view?
Should have used Pearl Jam as the example.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdOtR2A5agc
– How rap sounds to non-English speakers
I would say, it because the lyrics aren't something Spotify made. No one's picking up Spotify because only Spotify has lyrics. Spotify isn't writing the songs. Regardless of what someone might think of Spotify or Spotify free, it's withholding something that they have that they didn't make from people that perhaps need it. It'd be like if broadcast TV or any on demand video service (YouTube, Disney, Netflix, etc.), said hey you didn't pay no more closed captions for you (where a free version is applicable, of course).
If Spotify wants to put stuff behind a paywall it can be features of the platform.
My personal opinion is Spotify sucks, full stop. The CEO is a real piece of work. This just goes on the pile of reason Spotify sucks.
why would you limit the ability to use lyrics though? It's the same shit that every big article tabloid is doing "pay us five dollar a month and we will show you our articles, that we think are good" after showing you like three, in four months for free.
Either give people access to the service, or don't, don't play the bullshit of "well actually, here's a free sample"
yeah but that still begs the question of why even give limited access. Just put it behind the paywall, it's not like people don't understand what spotify is, and it gives them a better excuse for selling a service anyway.
They're lyrics, intentionally making the service worse for people with hearing disabilities is ableist.
Another good day to go self hosted.
I agree, but unfortunately, there's probably not a good self hosted solution to this specific problem.
I use musicbrainz for music tagging, which is an excellent source for all metadata except lyrics. For better or worse, the only decent sources of lyrics seems to be genius and musixmatch, and neither integrate well with tagging tools like musicbrainz Picard.
If anyone else has found an easier way to do this, I would love to hear it.
I'm not sure if the application is safe. It may be malicious. Proceed at your own risk.
I saw a GitHub project called 163MusicLyrics that's sources the information from Chinese sources (NetEase and QQ).
The entire software is in Chinese, but the results looked really accurate from the sandbox I ran. It's even actively developed with v6.2 releasing least week. But again, I don't know if it's safe.
I'm not good at code but it looks like it's OSS, so you could verify the code yourself or reverse engineer something with the API calls they use?
Let me know if you come across something though. I'm also looking for a way to get LRC files easily.
EDIT: Also for self hosting, I use Jellyfin with Symfonium, and Tailscale. It works great for me and has been relatively low maintenance.
When listening locally on my computer I use foobar2000 and the OpenLyrics component - but yeah, it falls short sometimes unfortunately. I've written myself some scrapers that crawl some sites, but that still requires a bit of manual intervention. I'm still looking for a self-hosted app that can help with tags though, and more in a manual manner; I don't really like a script assuming that this album is this specific release when it might not be.
Besides, some files have the lyrics already in the tags - often the case when buying/downloading for free from Bandcamp.
Spotify's lyrics are also shitty, and often out of sync.
I personally don't really care about synced lyrics. Mine are unsynced for the most part.
I don't get it. They are complaning that their limited free plan is limited?
They're complaining that the limited, free-tier plan is worse than it used to be. And really, for no good reason.
When EA releases Star Wars 2: A Sense Of Pride And Accomplishment, we complain about how stupid that is, do we not?
Hosting costs a lot of money
And they run ads. The free-tier is not actually free, you know.
The 1 or 2 kB of lyrics are a few orders of magnitude smaller than the song being streamed.
The album art probably takes up more space than the lyrics.
So, album art should also be a paid feature?
Album art would make way more sense as a paid feature than lyrics, considering it's a largely cosmetic improvement.
How does it make more sense that “cosmetic” features are in the paid-tier? Would it not be the other way around?
Because it improves the experience, but isn't vital to it. If you want the free tier to be accessible to everyone, limiting things like lyrics that people like OP use as a disability accommodation isn't the way to do it.
They're complaining that one of the things the limited free plan takes away is something they were using to accommodate their disability.
I left Spotify for Tidal. But why would anyone feel obliged for free music from a commercial host? Just self host if you dont want to pay. Piracy is always morally right. It's preservation of cultural heritage.
I choose to pay for Tidal because of convenience. I refuse to pay for more than 2 streaming services. It's fairly easy for any adult to make choices like that.
This is an imagined problem and a fairly new one to.
Left handed people having to use tools and appliances designed for right handed people is an actual bigger issue.
(I don't know how to pirate or self host but I think you're cool).
Yes I do. I also will continue to pay artists through Bandcamp.
I'll take youtube music revanced. Installed more than a year ago, never updated since then. Logged in with Google account and still works fine.
Can you tell me what that is?
YouTube Music Premium for free. Make sure you go to https://revanced.app and not any other site, because the rest are fakes.
(FYI you have to compile it yourself but just follow the instructions. It's really easy.)
Thank you!
A cracked version of the YouTube music premium app. There is also a normal YouTube revanced app, but that one doesn't work that good anymore for me.
I never used Spotify, the whole thing seem stupid
Coming from the age of ipods and piracy, Spotify was a great alternative to that and reasonably priced for the usage you could get out of it. These days is harder to justify
Meh 6 people, almost every song we could want for less than 20 bucks is ideal.
That said I am gearing up to change streamer just because they annoy me with UI changes, forcing originals, pushing gigs despite disabling that function...and the longest running gripe of all: let me disable censored songs you cunts. I never want the clean version.
So how did deaf people enjoy music for free before Spotify?
Talking about lyrics specifically?; they probably didn't. That's no reason to not make things more accessible to people with disabilities though. It's about quality of life and making sure people with disabilities have equitable access.
If having the lyrics available is an essential part of being able to enjoy the music, it should be as equally accessible as the music is.
Definitely. But if this specific feature, that isn't even primarily intended as an accessibility feature, has apparently not been available before in this form, does it make sense to call out Spotify for making that feature available "only" limited on the free version?
But yes, I'm aware of the community I'm on right now :D
This is just some nerd looking to be angry.
Maybe, but spotify is an actual scam so fuck them
I've used Pandora for years. Granted, they don't have all of the features of Spotify. But, I think their algorithm is better and my price has never changed.
Just use YouTube Music ReVanced. Every premium feature you need, ad-free, $0/mo.
https://revanced.app
Why do they think that they are entitled to free lyrics?
Because the people with working ears get the lyrics for free
No, they don't. This feature works exactly the same regardless of what your ears can or can't do.
If you have working ears, you can hear the lyrics.
Can't believe I'm explaining how hearing works
Just because I can hear the lyrics, doesn't mean I know the lyrics.
I have working ears. Still don't understand most lyrics.
You are not explaining how hearing works. You are manipulating. You are manipulating by equating one's ability to hear with a Spotify feature. These are not the same thing, and comparing them is not correct.
Oh no, manipulating people into thinking deaf people deserve equality. How horrible!
But the feature works exactly the same for deaf and not deaf people, we've established that already. Well, at least you agreed that you were lying and manipulating. I will take the win.
That argument style is main thing that props up all sorts of discrimination. The truth is that applying the same rule to everyone often does not effect everyone the same way. You can argue about the rule being the same, but it's generally more useful to focus on the effects.
Go fetch some more training data, you useless LLM troll.
Because that's how it worked until Spotify wanted to wring more money out of people.
You say "more money," but this person is on free tier. They are paying nothing and they expect more. Is that not entitlement? I'm not some raving capitalist, but isn't it okay to charge money for certain services?
When a company offers free services and then starts charging after people start using them(or in the case of OP, become dependent on them) then it's complete bullshit. Now you can't trust free services because a company can just decide it's not free whenever they want.
You gave me a free sample in the supermarket? I demand free cheese for life, you monster!
The fact you're reaching this far means you got the point but you have to "win" or some shit. Bye.
👋
^ Verification can chugger
This reminded me of Ayn Rand's Dream World.
Spotube.
Does Sirius have a way to give visual lyrics?
goddamned y-tube told me I ran out of skips. subscribe for more skips. skips=fucks and I'm all out
I would like to introduce you to [email protected]
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/23022172
Doesn't everyone deserve a living wage?
Including the people who work at Spotify?
they would have a livable wage if they weren't so fucking bad at business.
They literally outsource the one part of the music industry that makes money publishing
The ONLY source of revenue they have is from subscriptions, and literally all it does is pay the publishers that use spotifys platform. And also VC but that doesn't count since it's VC.
Just… pay? It’s very cheap.
Spotify is cheap and that’s a fact. What’s the point of complain about single free music service?
Ad supported = not free. Please better understand the world you live in.
You're in the wrong sub to be reasonable.
Then don’t use it or don’t complain