"Sponsored recommendations": I pay for Spotify Premium, and yet somehow I'm still the product?
I opened Spotify this morning to be greeted by a modal popup with a "sponsored recommendation".
Why am I seeing ads if I'm already paying for the premium plan!? 😑
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If you're not paying you are the product. If you ARE paying you are STILL the product. This is how big tech works.
Basically every computer hardware manufacturer is collecting telemetry and sending it home. If you’re using MacOS or Windows, your OS is doing it aswell
Or Android, or iOS, or a Chromebook, or whatever other OS you're using next year, if it isn't some sort of Linux/UNIX system... and even some of those might not be great, but at least you can find out.
Tbh i have used linux on my home pc for years now and now they are very polished products , except most corporate apps are not there !
Which corporate apps?
Perhaps I'm lucky, but I rarely have an issue.
Adobe , microsoft office , catia etc etc etc
I mean.. Android and ChromeOS are Linux underneath. MacOS is.. related to Unix. Hang on, I need to look up that lineage..
Also Lineage.
Edit: MacOS used/uses the Mach kernel, and uses code “derived from BSD”, vague as Wikipedia is. That could mean it’s a whole copy-paste or that it just borrows ideas from BSD.
It has a history in the US anti trust (when the laws really worked)
MacOS has userland tools from some FreeBSD version (quite obsolete, IIRC). Also there's a port of bhyve called xhyve for MacOS. Its kernel I wouldn't expect to have much in common with BSDs.
I suspect that's a fraction of a percent of Android devices, though.
You become the product with name, address, and payment details attached to the account for improved demographic data for them to collect. Win win.
But you're paying for the GOOD recommendations now, not the free bad ones... /s
That's not how big tech works, it's how DRM works. It is possible to sell music/games/movies in an ethical way, without DRM.
In the immortal words of James Stephanie Sterling "corporations don't just want some money. They want all of the money"
Because why make money off you one way, when they can make money off you two ways?
It seems you can turn it off by touching "what's this?" or "learn more" the next time you see one of these.
Really shitty that they don't even put this as a setting though.
The lesson is that corporations will take, take, take no matter what. They will never honor any kind of social contract, and will always abuse anyone and everyone for profit to the maximum extent they are able.
So stop letting them take advantage of you.
And if they make a mistake, "my bad". You make a mistake and it's $100 in fees.
Unless, usually, they are a not for profit organization.
Or at least not a corporation that is expected to provide infinite growth for their shareholders.
And push for legislation that doesn't allow em to do this in the first place.
Cause it doesn't make it right, but on some level it's hard to blame them for pushing the limits, if there's no resistance or repercussion. That's how we ended up in this mess.
Tech moves fast. Government moves slow. Most of these issues boil down to legislative failures.
I go hard when it comes to this. Firefox + uBlock Origin, use open source alternatives, don't communicate outside of Signal, 2FA on everything, you name it. And it's exhausting at times, not gonna lie. But my effort reinforces my sentiment that it shouldn't fall to the consumer to put in all this effort just to have some a basic, healthy blend of convenience, privacy, and security.
Might I add, I hate the way every user-facing UI has devolved into the Youtube Shorts / TikTok "doomscrolling" swipe-UI now. There seems to be absolutely not a single braincell left in UI development to even consider the actual use case of the interface.
It's all just:
Not sure what this has to do with the post. You don't need to swipe to dismiss that modal.
Hold on! This is a modal?! That's even worse, I had these card-style things as scrollable cards before! 😧
what's worse about it? You just need to touch "DISMISS"
they made this tiktok change a few months ago but reverted back after backlash
That is literally what non-Open Source/capitalism is like:
Enshittification in action.
"Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die."
Facebook, TikTok, Amazon, it's everywhere. Once a platform has lock-in from users it turns its attention to vendors. Then once they're locked in it rakes in the profits until nobody can tolerate it any more and something else takes its place.
no, you pay spotify so they can give Joe Rogan money to make up bullshit every day.
What I really love about commercials is that if I click on them and order a life time subscription of whatever product they're selling, I'm still gonna get the same commercials.
People defend intrusive advertising by appealing to some sort of social contract (ie you suffer through these things in order to get Spotify or whatever for free) but it's not a social contract if the platform holds all the cards
Are we getting Spotify for free, if we're buying premium?
The problem is you can't "buy" products any more. Companies see that as interest, and then start to throw additional advertising to see how much they can get away with. Fuck that shit.
They've also run almost any way to do it outside of their ecosystems. If I want to listen to happy hardcore music, I have to hope spotify has it, but it's rare to find that on most playlists, I'd have to go spend thousands of dollars for the same experience that Spotify offers, and that's to own every track I'm even curious about.
Well we can always pirate !
Yo ho, yo ho!
Spotify is garbage. You pay them to basically pirate unlimited music (they pay table scraps). They have no values or integrity, but they do have a greedy business model.
I buy albums off bandcamp instead. Or from the artist's site directly.
A bit difficult if you want to just stream random music that somehow matches your interests.
There's other streaming services. I'd recommend any over Spotify.
Which one do you prefer / recommend?
I've been enjoying apple music on Android (the audacity, I know) mainly for family plan convenience. I used to use Tidal, back when it was the only one offering higher quality audio. Now that's more common.
However I do miss a few things from Tidal. It had full credits for albums and songs like a CD would have had. And when you're on a track and go to the artist it will let you pick which one you want if there's features or a collab. Apple Music will just automatically take you to the page of the first artist listed. So that's something to consider especially if you're into hip-hop.
There's many options though and they pretty much all pay artists more than Spotify does too.
If you're going to p1r@te, you don't have to pay sp0tify to do it...
That doesn't really fix the "somehow matches your interests" part of their need. Your torrent software isn't able to track your listening habits and recommend things that other people with similar habits also liked.
Pandora is still around and does a decent job finding new music based off listening habits.
I’m not going to deal with a seed box and a ton of pain in the ass steps in between to listen to music. I’d rather pay Spotify or Amazon or Google or any of the other providers because of the convenience factor.
Also owning music isn’t something I particularly care about. Games, maybe, but music is so broad that I’ll just listen to something else.
There are patches like spicetify which can do that and way more than just adblocking with a ton of customisation if that's what you're looking for
WTF is a seedbox?
I have no trouble listening to unlimited music, it's literally everywhere.
Plus it's not just about owning the album (although I absolutely insist on listening on whichever device I choose). It's also about paying the artist.
Sp0tify pays peanuts. When I buy the album from the band's site or bandcamp they get a hell of a lot more money from me. And I want to support them.
You cannot support any artist through Spotify.
How I have to torrent cause my isp will cancel service over it.
If you’re pirating you’re not paying the artist at all. Spotify is better than pirating.
I don't pirate. I buy albums.
You’re advocating for piracy explicitly
Bandcamp is DRM-free, so whatever you buy there, you truly own it. Unlike on most other platforms.
DRM-protected music stores went extinct over a decade ago, following Steve Jobs' open letter to the music industry on the topic. By 2009, iTunes music was completely DRM-free and alternative stores had to follow suit to remain competitive.
Wow, you are right! I was confused about iTunes, because it seems to require an app, but it is DRM-free and so is Amazon Music. That's great! So I guess only Spotify has DRM.
All the streaming services use DRM, it’s just download stores that are DRM-free. Which makes sense, when you buy an album, you should own it.
I see, that makes sense. But I also think that every content that you have paid to access should be DRM-free, so even in a streaming service.
It's personally a catch 22 for me.
I listen to an absolutely absurd amounts of different artists. A large portion of them simply don't have albums available for purchase and if they did... I would actually go broke buying all the stuff I listen to.
Every single day I type in a Combo of 2 random letters and numbers into spotify and listen to the first artist I don't recognize.
It really sucks that Spotify doesn't pay the artists anything reasonable but I haven't found an alternative that allows me to consume as much different music as I currently do.
This isn't even including the podcasts and audio books into the equation.
Why letters and numbers?
Some artists use numbers in their names and adding numbers will change what the search returns sometimes with odd results.
It's the same as pirating, except Spotify gets paid.
rutracker and soulseek are good options for finding music.
Napster was so much fun back in the day.
Greedy business model seems slightly unfair tbh. Spotify struggles to remain profitable and they’ve only raised their prices by like $1 in a decade
Maybe they shouldn't've thrown so much money into the pivot to podcasts, then thrown a bunch of money at that meathead idiot.
Yeah that $100 billion they gave Joe Rogan is where your payments go.
they didn't give Joe Rogan 100 billion dollars you dunce.
I think it was 1000000 trillion bazillion dollars, you drooling braindead goon.
This comment says a lot more about you than it does about me.
Remember when you called me a dunce? And now you're self righteous? Anyway, goodbye.
No company in their right mind would pay one person $100,000,000,000! Come on!
Just because they're incompetent doesn't mean they're not greedy.
Also, executives can still be cleaning up even as the company struggles to profit.
Executives being greedy isn't the same as a greedy business model
This makes no sense. Greedy execs are the ones who would implement a greedy business model to pursue their greed.
What part of the executive compensation package are you taking specific issue with exactly? From what I could see, they're largely paid in stock and the CEO hasn't taken a bonus since COVID.
Or are you just talking executives in general and not looking at what Spotify does specifically?
So they're incompetent on top of greedy. They're selling access to everybody's music and paying peanuts.
yeah, it's not spotify's fault that splitting $10/month between all the music you listen to doesn't pay the artists very much.
Yea, companies that pay more typically either charge more (Tidal) or have the advantage of a massive profitable company backing them (Apple Music)
Yeah they have been playing fast and loose with their 'premium' plan for a while. I cancelled and switched when they started serving ads to podcasts (not the baked-in ones from the podcast - dynamic ads inserted by Spotify).
It's insulting that they would pull this crap and embarrassing that we all put up with it.
I stopped using Spotify after I noticed that a song's share URL contains unique tracking elements. Then they started trying to lock down the podcast market, which reaffirms that leaving was the right choice.
You paid yes but... what if MORE money?
But think of the poor billionaires!
I hear you, tell me more!
About a year ago I switched from Spotify to a local library with the Symfonium music player on my phone and Rhythmbox on the PC. I have not once looked back.
Plus, you get the satisfaction of growing a collection that can last forever.
I highly recommend it !
may I recommend Strawberry on desktop? It's really nice to use with large collections! https://i.imgur.com/ViOJK6B.png
Why does my Strawberry look like it's from 1999 :/
GTK theme issue?
Ah that'd make sense ig, I had tried it on Plasma at the time.
if you're on windows it cant really theme that well, but if you're on linux you can use qt6ct to retheme it to look a bit newer, i'm using the "kvantum-dark" theme
Any reason to switch to this from winamp?
I've tried it, not my cup of tea. Rhythmbox conforms to my GTK4 theme a lot better, and the layout is so much more suited for me.
I feel that Strawberry's layout is ugly as sin, but hey, everyone seems to think Rhythmbox is ugly so maybe that's just me.
I admire any active music library management app tho. Seems like there aren't that many people with local music libraries anymore, so we don't get many new apps like Strawberry or Rhythmbox where MTP transfers, tag editing, lyrics, etc are big focuses. So cheers to the devs of Strawberry and thanks for the recommendation!
My dream is for Rhythmbox to be ported to libadwaita, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards. All the latest GTK4 music players are extremely simple, with no library management features whatsoever. Think Amberol, GNOME Music, and G4Music. I wish I had learned some C when I was young and had the time so I could just port it myself.
Yes!
How do you stream your music to your phone from your PC?
I don't. I compress the FLACs on my PC (into OGGs) and sync my desktop library with my phone. I have like 5k songs and they take up like 40gigs of space.
I used to use Plex to stream to my phone, but there were too many issues.
You should try using Jellyfin instead of Plex
I personally liked Plex a lot better than Jellyfin, even though it's open-source. They worked about the same and Plex's layout is a lot more pleasing to me and my family/friends.
After a year of local music, I don't see the need to stream at all. I have more than enough space on my phone and no worries when driving through places with bad Internet. Plus I don't miss anything when I enable Airplane Mode.
Yeah, I dropped Spotify when they started plastering my home screen with ads for podcasts that I didn't want to listen to. If there had even just been a way to hide them after the fact, but no. I guess they really needed to justify the deal with Joe Rogan.
I just cancelled Spotify and switched to Tidal a few months ago exactly because of shenanigans like this. I was getting popups to look at recommended eBooks that I had to buy.
That was it for me and I cancelled immediately. Between the ads and the countless bugs and issues I had while using their app, glad I made the change. Been a premium member with Spotify for almost 10 years.
"What are you gonna do? NOT use us? lmao owned." - Spotify
Deezer, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Tidal waving furiously Pick me! Pick me!
I haven't tried all of those, but I like Deezer. It plays music and it's much less pushy about podcasts or other crap that Spotify always clutters your start page with. The queue interface is also simpler to use. The only downside I see is that search is noticeably slower than Spotify on desktop.
Just buying the mp3s and having them forever.
Aren't you buing just the license to play it, though? Like, if they delete them from their catalogue you can't listen to them anymore?
Not unless you're "buying" it from some service that doesn't let you download the file. Definitely don't do that.
Yeah it's odd for it to act cocky when it's actually one of the few modern service products that has plenty of competition that people are willing to use.
Get 'vanced lmao
Android auto, doesn't have an app
Apple Music has better audio quality and pays artists better.
I'd rather support the actual artists more. Apple pays the artists 3 times as much per stream as Spotify.
I just use InnerTune on Android.
Spotify pissed me off with some billing or API thing (don't even remember the details) back in 2012, so I cancelled and never looked back. From what I'm reading now and then things is just getting worse and worse - and I have no clue why people (especially paying ones) are sticking with it.
My whole family uses it, and it’s fine (the paid plan). People just want to hate on Spotify in this thread. More power to them, but it’s nowhere near as horrible as they describe. I get all my music and podcasts from there.
xManager if you're on Android.
I canceled after the first time they did this with the "Drake takeover" in 2018. Their customer support claimed it wasn't advertisement, lmao.
It's funny because the radio industry used to have this pay-to-play model. It began to be called "payola" and triggered a huge controversy including congressional investigations and an FCC crackdown. Yet here we are, with the same shit happening again in digital format. This is honestly worse than payola since radio was free and this is not. I don't like paying to be advertised to. Considering leaving Spotify; there seem to be more and more shenanigans like this popping up, AND their subscription price just increased!
I work in the radio industry (digital side) and have to sign a payola contract every year.
The Wikipedia article says "payola" is an illegal practice and that text links to "commercial bribery" - so are they starting to get bribed into doing stuff like this too even though it's a paid service? That "they want all the money" statement must go deeper than I thought.
Once in a while here, for the rest no ads in the slightest here in the Netherlands, it’s all Gucci.
delete Spotify. it's toxic
If you don't own the music/games/movies you pay for, you are always the product.
I think with Spotify the artists are the product.
You NEVER own the music/games/movies you pay for. Even when you have a physical copy.
You have a license, not ownership. You're always the product.
I don't own the copyright, but I can use it offline with any software I want on any device whenever I want. I can lend the physical disk to a friend and if I don't like it or get bored with it, I can sell it. That's what you can do with music CDs and you used to be able to do with PC games before they contained Steam's DRM.
Saying I don't own my copy of Pokemon Gold or my vinyl record collection is like saying I don't own the books in my bookshelf.
I guess there is indeed a limit to my freedom to how I use them - I cannot write the words down one by one and start reselling my copy. But that's a pretty messed up concept of ownership where I probably don't even own the shirt on my back.
Tell that to all the VCR tapes in people's basements. Finding a working VCR player is nigh impossible these days, and it won't be too long until optical media is the same. Last car I bought didn't have a CD player. DVD drives are disappearing from computers. Game consoles a generation or two from now will be download only.
Content owners can't wait until the only option we have is to stream.
Instead of just stating this as the inevitable future, why not join us in realizing that this is a problem and push to do something about it? We all realize that physical media and ownership of content is going away, but we can push back by not buying into subscription models and buying what physical or at least one-time-purchase digital content we can while it is still around.
Your new car may not have a CD player, but external disc drives are still readily available. Buy up a CD collection (of lossless, DRM-free music I might add) and rip them all to FLAC files and keep them on today's dirt cheap giant hard drives. Now you can play them on your phone, car, laptop, Steam Deck, retro iPod, smart fridge, etc.
Same goes for DVDs and Blu-Rays. You have the option to convert them into whatever format is needed for the device you want to play them on because YOU OWN THE MEDIA and can do what you want with it.
Be the change you want to see. Cancel Netflix and Spotify. Buy CDs and DVDs/BDs. Build a local collection and have DRM-free content on all your devices that will be available to you for the rest of your life rather than for the rest of the month.
I agree, but movie DVDs and Blu-Rays contain DRM. It's probably easy to break it (which is illegal btw) and get regular files out of it, but the practice of adding DRM is unethical and we shouldn't reward companies that do it with our money. It's also possible to record your screen when watching a movie on Netflix (at least when using GNU/Linux), so you would get a copy of that movie, but we need to have higher standards.
I think if anything contains DRM, you should either not use it or pirate it instead.
You don't have to use physical media. You can buy digital DRM-free music and games online and store them on your hard drive like many people do. I was only using music CDs as an example, since they don't contain DRM.
This is nothing but bullshit copyright cartel propaganda. Quit spreading it.
I pay for Amazon Prime music premium or some shit, and about a month ago they started putting an ad up literally every time I log in telling me to subscribe to super-duper premium or whatever the fuck they call it. Seriously guys? How about no?
GenX here. Spotify came long after my youth. It came during my regression into second childhood.
TLDR: You don't need a spotify/tidal/whatever, a personally curated collection of music is awesome and not being able to instantly play anything is not a death sentence. It can make things more fun by introducing things like anticipation.
I was once a music-obsessed child whose only access to most music was the random chance of hearing it on the radio. There were a few magical tunes that I wasn't sure what album they were from or even who it was that would sometimes come in from the universe and give me a lift.
Then my mom got me a Woolco stereo for a birthday, 6th or 7th I think, and I now had the incredible ability to buy a 45 for a small amount of money - my allowance covered at least one, I remember, with money leftover for a large stash of candy to last out the week - and be able to hear any (one) song I wanted, anytime (that I was near my stereo). At used record stores I could get whole albums.
At some point I discovered that some record stores (I'm talking mall record stores in Saskatoon here, not hipster record shops on the lower east side) had a sort of 45 backlog, a section of older hit records you could still order, with a book you could look through for titles. Back then, it was understood that sometimes one hit tune was all an act was ever gonna have, and there was not a need to shove 9 remixes down your throat as an excuse to pump you for the price of an LP.
When you bought an LP, you got this 12" square of cover with it, big enough for detailed photos of the band, or lyrics, sometimes you'd even get a gatefold sleeve (so four broadsides instead of just two in full color, occasionally they would do this even without a second LP being included). Sometimes even high concept stuff, like Styx's "Kilroy Was Here" in the mid-80s, a concept album which featured still shots and narrative segments of a 20-minute movie the band had shot of the Science Fiction storyline, which was a response to the various shenanigans of the political establishment of the time. These included the Satanic Panic, which has been thoroughly explored in podcasts in recent years, along with Tipper Gore's P.M.R.C., which started with she heard Prince do Darling Nikki and by the end had elevated Frank Zappa, Dee Snider and John Denver as an unlikely triumvirate of free expression champions who spoke eloquently and with no uncertainty as to their message against this nascent fascism, and which I believe was the real reason Al Gore lost his election.
Anyone who loves music or freedom remembered.
Anyways I remember on many boring car rides where all I got was, you know, Aerosmith for the billionth time, that I wished there was a kind of car radio that you could just tune in by artist name and song and it would just play anything. As I saw it, we had telephones that I could talk to our relatives in other places with, why couldn't I just tell the radio station what song to play electronically as well?
And about forty years later, we did indeed have that. More or less. All we had to do was murder the idea of music as art that is worth paying the artists for. We can quibble over rates and such, say this streamer only shaves the skin down to a few quivering nerve endings whereas Spotify skins the artist alive, but we all know that flogging the artist until they have no skin left is not the way to produce great art.
So I got off. I've started to collect up my old physical collections as flac files, which my phone has plenty of room for. I make playlists like I used to make mix tapes to entertain myself on my drives.
Now in my case I can point to having spent about $20 in 90s-00s money on most of the albums I've amassed so I just put it together how i could. I bought LPs, I bought cassettes, I bought CDs and I even bought some itunes downloads, and in many cases I did it twice for the same record over the years. In other cases I never bought the record, sure. Some of those allowance weeks I bought blank tapes instead of 45s OR LPs.
But basically, pick the artists you actually like who are working and signaling that they need help, and make a point of sending them some money. Buy a shirt, buy a physical media, LPs are still a lot of fun but pretty pricey. But just, take your music into your hands and your hard drive. Don't stream anything. Carry it with you. Figure out how much space you've got on your phone, or get an SD card for it. Phone doesn't have an SD card? You picked a bad company to buy from I guess, cause now you've started to play the game of triaging.
In the 80s, if I was going out of town for the weekend to camp or whatever, I had to decide how much collection to carry with me. Do I just bring a few mixtapes? Do I bring a box of tapes to cover every musical necessity? Do (gasp) just listen to the radio? It was a whole part of your packing, deciding what music to have at the ready and what to not be able to play if you don't think of it now. It was a game you played with yourself. Later on it was burnt CDs, then CDs full of MP3s when the stereos got smart enough. But same game, until Spotify "solved the problem" by just making everything available everywhere, at a price you won't believe (because someone's been skinned to get that price, and it wasn't the scumbags at the head office, I assure you).
Get off the streaming. Take your music into your hands. Build a collection of your favorite music and cherish it. Support artists directly. Stop pretending that paying for a streaming service is doing anything but murdering music as art and making you lazy in the soul.
Unrelated service, but I use Walmart for their grocery delivery, which I pay for and I have a Walmart+ subscription. In the "my items" section, the section specifically for things I have already purchased before, they recently added sponsored items.
Yes, it's clearly marked but for fucks sake Walmart I'm trying to just get more of stuff I've bought before. You have pages and pages of sponsored stuff elsewhere, leave my items alone!
The crazy thing about paying for Spotify Premium is that their podcasts still run ads! disgusting.
Unpopular opinion - in Spotify (and Spotify ONLY) I actually like that it does this. I like discovering new music and Spotify seems to have really good recommendations sometimes. Sure they collect a lot of listening data - but how else could they give good recommendations if they don't know what you like?
I agree with you, but you may be missing the point - this recommendation is sponsored, so likely it wouldn't have been recommended unless the artist paid.
It seems relatively harmless as long as they don't overdo it though. The only incentive for someone to pay for this is that that you might like their music and will listen to it more in the future, which would be a win for you as well.
Maybe it also allows smaller artists to gain momentum without only depending on the magic recommendation algorithm.
Thats how all advertisements started. Small, not overdone. Then people became okay with paying and receiving ads. So they slowly increase the amount until you have what cable has become.
Most ads are terrible because they are annoying and advertise bad products. I think that's less likely to be a problem here because your music is the ad, if it is annoying and bad you will simply stop listening and they lose money on the ad.
If it would be ads for podcasts for example, it would be much much worse for me.
If Spotify cared about smaller artists they wouldn't pay them the least.
If Spotify cared about artist they would pay any of them even remotely fair!
Of course they don't care about small artists. That's my point, if you pay for ads you have an option to be less dependent on the platform to make you famous by paying for it. Simply waiting for people to find your music is unlikely to be succesful.
I still don't want to see ads. One of many reasons I don't use spotify.
The recommendations will likely become worse over time, because they want you to listen to whatever makes them the most money and that might not be the same stuff you want to listen to. The same happened to tiktok recommendations and youtube subscriptions (people stopped getting notifications on creators they subscribed to).
Without this feature, I wouldn't have known that Yeah Yeah Yeahs and PJ Harvey released new albums. So I'm torn. On the one hand, I'm happy artists I already love can still reach me; on the other hand, I hate that smaller artists I don't know about yet still have to pay to play
It's the least offensive type of advertising I see day to day. I couldn't care less how my listening data is shared, and I don't understand the zero tolerance some people have for adverts - it's not all bad.
If they ramp up the adverts, people will vote with their feet.
But that's not what this is. This is just an ad. Not a "since you like X, try Y"
If there is any company that can do personalized ads for music then it is Spotify. It's what they are best at, why would they skip that opportunity?
I recently tried a new feature they added that would add recommended stuff into my already made playlists. I didn't like it and turned it off in the settings, but it still persists in basically advertising music that is completely unrelated to what I have. Like I shouldn't be hearing fucking TikTok by Kesha in my 90's grunge mix. It's all the more infuriating that it continues to act as if it is on when I turned it the fuck off.
For being so sophisticated, it's incredible how dumb the Spotify algorithm is.
For me somehow it decided Pink Moon by Nick Drake was my favourite song. At first it just threw it in the mix randomly when albums finished playing and it went on to play suggestions, but after a few times of me not skipping it it went ballistic. Now every time an album finishes it goes straight to Pink Moon. No matter what Spotify radio I try playing it will be Pink Moon. I keep skipping it and it keeps coming back. I don't have a problem with Nick Drake I just can't stand that song any longer. I never once played that song intentionally.
In the end I just cancelled my subscription.
It feels like they did it on purpose, because the main reason I actually pay for Spotify is because it generally is actually pretty good at recommending songs based on other songs I've checked the like box on, and I was able to find new music that didn't completely suck balls.
This shuffle feature doesn't seem to use the same algorithm. It just shuffles in artists that are currently popular and may have paid for the bump.
I absolutely loathe this new shuffle feature. I want to listen to my playlists not be spoon-fed advertising garbage. I remember one year Spotify had this thing where it was injecting popular x-mas songs into your playlist in the free version. What's worse was you couldn't skip the songs. I went back to using old MP3s for the rest of the month.
Since they believe that they are the landlord and you are a tenant using their product so ... !
The whole notion of "If you're not the product, then you're the product" died a while ago.
Now, you're paying for the product, and you continue to be the product.
Paying for the product = monthly/yearly subscription You're the product = unique identifiers, data mining/harvesting, tracked across the web, etc. Perhaps even training some AI models in the background, too.
Buy CDs from the artists you like, and then rip them to .flac using Exact Audio Copy! 😁
I use Bandcamp and usually will wait for the days they give artists 100% of the revenue and buy everything I've been waiting on. You get a flac download so you can secure your purchase in case the site shuts down later, but you also have access to streaming.
Bandcamp is great too! I've downloaded everything I've bought from there, but one artist deleted their page and now I can't download what I purchased anymore. That's the only negative I can think about.
Yeah I get that. That's why I immediately download all purchases and back them up off site as well.
Plus, Bandcamp will also recommend new music and related artists. The recommended artists at the bottom of a band/artists's page are listed by the artist themselves, so you can pursue music that inspired the music you like.
Yeah and even the front page recommendations are so much better than anything Spotify ever gave me. Bandcamp is how I found one of my all time favorite bands, Zeal & Ardor.
I don't use Spotify anymore. But I also don't listen to "tons of different music". I have about 200 albums on Bandcamp and I pick up something new every couple weeks. I'm paying money, sometimes as much as a subscription, but I get to keep the music. It supports the artists. Sometimes they even send you a personal message.
Bandcamp got bought by epic and that sucks, but they're still the best music service I know.
Bandcamp hasn't changed at all since the Epic acquisition. Yet, at least. This is from an artist's perspective, too, as I use Bandcamp as essentially my website and main place to push people to if they want to purchase my music rather than stream.
Yeah I was real nervous when it first happened, but nothing has gone sour yet. I have held off some purchases until Bandcamp Friday though as a result.
Same, though I typically try to only purchase on Bandcamp Friday anyway just to further support artists. I mainly use Spotify and just make Bandcamp purchases for stuff that Spotify doesn't have, which is typically small bands, so it's worth it to wait.
And Spotify didn't advertise at paying users for almost a decade until, well, today.
Not that I'm a fan of the ridiculous "I tOlD yOu sO" posturing in this thread, given that it's been almost a decade of initially groundbreaking and later reasonably high quality service.
One thing those commenters are right about though is: these companies will pursue profit to the bitter end and ads are a virtual inevitability for any major media platform.
That's good to hear. I was pretty concerned.
I listened to 9,852 different tracks in 2022 from 3,247 different artists across 6,720 different albums.
It's just not feasible for me to buy them all.
Convenience and family plan is the only reason I have it. I've also got a local DNS server with ads blocked, so that helps. Otherwise I'd be pirating again. Have over 80k songs from back in the day, just need the newer stuff.
Install ViMusic on Android and all your problems are gone. https://f-droid.org/packages/it.vfsfitvnm.vimusic/
I cancelled my subscription. They're upping the price for the listening even though they've been steadily cutting the payouts to independent artists for years. Support small artists instead.
Never understood why anyone would want to rent their music in the first place. As good as the service may be when you sign up for it, you know it will eventually turn to shit as they're trying to monetize every last cent out of it, and then your only choices are to endure the shit or to quit the service and be left with nothing.
I also pay for Premium and get these ads. I always think it's funny because it's never anything I'd ever actually want to listen to
I stopped using Spotify when I paid for premium a few years ago And they kept interrupting me to remind me that I was listening ad-free lol
You can disable it pretty easily in the settings. I wish more apps let you opt out of ads so easily.
Apple Music pays musicians, Qobuz pays the best and costs the most
They both sound really good. If you have the money and are willing to compromise on a few things than Qobuz is the nice one
There's also Tidal. Which pays well but is a buggy mess
Apple also rolled out a really good seaparate app specifically for browsing and listening to classical music.
Classical music doesn't organize easily into "bands/albums" the way most works from the last 80 years do. Most music players tend to fall apart when you try to organize a library of classical music in any coherent manner. So they solved this problem by desiging a completely separate UI for it.
That's pretty cool. Shame it's iOS only.
It's on Android as well
Oh cool, thank you. Turns out the device I was on was too old for it.
I've been on Tidal for over a year with barely any bugs. Highly recommend!
Yes. You always will be with any corporate streaming service.
Soon it will be pay for Spotify on the same tier but also hear ad's.
How to introduce ads to the current premium tier without having everyone complain and leave
Step 1 - Introduce a new paid tier that's cheaper, has all the premium features, but still has ads
Step 2 - wait a few months
Step 3 - increase all prices so that new "cheaper" tier is the same price as the current premium tier
This sounds like the Netflix model.
Maybe then they will turn a profit
Or pay artists for once lol
I dropped Spotify and starting using iBroadcast and haven't looked back. Glad to cut another subscription.
I wasn't aware of that service. - Thanks, good tip!
I complained about this to their support one time
They gave me a month free lol
No small artist makes a profit with Spotify tho, it might help with publicity but the majority of the money lands in Spotifies pockets!
I'm sure this comes as no surprise, but they need to fix their algorithm. Don't advertise me Morgan Wallen when I've been listening to speed and thrash metal for the past six months and the last country song I listened to was Hank III over a year ago.
Honestly I think it's like Facebook, the advertiser can pick and choose what demographics see it- and some of them don't care, and just hit "select all". Waste of their money and annoys people who have no interest in the artist/genre being advertised because it should be targeted.
They control the algorithm. If it gives you good recommendations, it is because they want to lure users in. Then they will slowly start pushing only whatever makes them the most money like other platforms do.
Tidal is a good alternative. Will have to go elsewhere for podcasts, though.
I'd love to leave streaming services and roll my own server, but I rely on things like the Release Radar and song radios for discovery and just haven't been able to find a self-hosted solution for that.
I don't want to have to plan out the music I'm going to listen to, I just want to dive in.
I use the Spotify data via Every Noise at Once (https://everynoise.com/research.cgi?mode=name&name=) to gather band suggestions, but it is an annoying amount of work compared to having a script that sees all of my music and makes a playlist of 20+ songs using that data for me. Have not found a solution for that.
Shit like this is why monopolies and oliglopolies don't work. I hope people complain AND jump ship in big enough droves for this to change. Self-hosting and the old fashioned "buy your own music permanently" option are good too.
I don't use streaming services, I just buy MP3's (or AAC's on iTunes or whatever they're using nowadays, it's been a while) and keep them locally and on the cloud. Never liked most Streaming Services' recommendations anyway.
Mp3s are fortunately in a really good place with them being DRM free. Was why when Google Music shut down I was still able to download my music purchases and keep them for myself. It's one of more widespread consumer friendly digital options out there compared to all the DRM and account based digital options that exist for other products.
Meh, for not very much a month I can pay for premium Spotify and rip 320 mp3s to my hearts content, for anything that is more obscure or just not released on Spotify I buy through bandcamp. I used to buy a lot more but being much poorer now I'm going to take advantage of saving so much money and still being able to have files that I can hold on to and use how I like.
Juat rip thr files, Spotify pockets most of the money so if it's about supporting artists it's a bad solution anyway!
I haven't subscribed to Spotify for quite some time, have they added proper 2FA feature (not for artists)? I think it's been "under consideration" for a long time
Me listening to Joe Rogan in my car:
“This episode is brought to you by Athletic …”
“Aaaargh! I pay Spotify! They gave you eight and eight figure contract! Why the fuck are there ads??”
Use blackhole or newpipe
Can you download for offline?
o_O
O_o
You are also the product coz they keep raping your data and selling it to advertisers on other platforms.
Not to be confused with Tim Janus, world championship burping title holder. I believe he also holds record for longest recorded burp at 18sec.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=gU3jBonhsrQ&feature=share7
Spotify Exclusive Podcasts also contain sound ads here in germany. For me it was a reason to unsubscribe as i don't listen anymore to so much new music and have a own catalog of music from past.
The biggest bullshit...
I have around 5000 songs in a playlist. Anyone got an idea of how to migrate them to just local .mp3 files or something?
Any sailor worth his salt needs spend a few seasons earning his sea legs before he can begin to call to claim any understanding of the sea.
AKA, There is no easy way. It will lots of time and manual labor to find all the individual files in your Playlist.
Have you looked at spotify-downloader? it uses YouTube, so ymmv for quality, but it could be a good first step.
If you have a shit ton of time and don't care about mediocre to bad quality for the size, you could do the straightforward 80s way, play and record on "tape" (which can be digital files nowadays).
If you have any way of exporting to a list, then you might have some luck with some console wizardry and yt-dlp. Essentially "search" each title on youtube and auto-download the audio from the first result and try to fill in the track and artist fields automatically.
the synonymes entry in the english language for "ads" is expanding everyday
I never understand this. Is someone paying for spotify to push their music on people?
Is this like the new mlm scheme where artists have to pay spotify first so the algorithm prioritizes their songs so they can earn that same money back?
The screenshot literally says "sponsored recommendation". Not sure how much more clear it can be that somebody paid money for that.
I ment to say I don't get why anyone would pay for that.
Artist are trying to get paid for people listening on Spotify, not the other way around.
I guess It's like advertising your product on amazon so people buy from you not others, but somehow it feels stupid when you think about it in the context of a music streaming service.
Well, spins the first week can lead to having a BB100 or BB200 track/album.
That kind of thing is important for the legs of an album/track.
Arr.
There still is ni better way to listen to music than downloading it and playing it locally or via private local network.
Plexamp!
This is exactly why I see Spotify as nothing more than a green garbage bin. I'm going back to my vinyl records.
Why should they not make more money out of you? You already sold yourself when you signed up.
Music ads are nonsense
Wow, I'm not gonna move to another subscription music app. If I see this, I'm back to mp3s and maybe something selfhosted.
PlexAmp and Plex are a good option
I've been downloading my spotify playlists as .mp3 so when they start pulling stunts like this I can simply just move elsewhere and lose nothing
Are you using any tools to automate this?
I find HQ audio version from YouTube and put the links into an app that downloads and converts them while adding correct artist, title, album etc. I don't remember the name of the app right now but I can check if you're interested
Just been downloading all songs off Spotify to have them locally and find another way of expanding my library forwards, I've had enough of Spotify.
Because the dollars must flow
Dude right though!! Those are the worst!! And they only seem to pop up when I'm tossing a playlist on right as I start driving, worst fkn thing!!
So if Spotify pays artists so poorly (I'm not claiming they don't), then why do those artists stay on the platform? I have no qualms about using my paid Spotify account. I don't really care how much they pay artists as long as they are paying artists.
Critical mass. They remove their songs from Spotify and the likelyhood of people changing platforms to keep listening to them is next to zero.
In a past thread on this topic, I've seen a few indie artists say that they benefit because Spotify amplifies their audience. They make crap on the streams, but a larger audience base is worth the trade-off since they'll be able to sell more concert tickets and merchandise.
Honestly spotify should really let small artists make their pages more interesting.
Spotify has definitely helped me to discover new artists, but then I mostly listen to that artist on Spotify (Mostly because I'm not in their country.)
One of my arguments is that inde artists and creators are as responsible for the enshitification of the internet as companies like google and Facebook are. They both are invested in making the internet into some global bazaar instead of a library.
How so?
No streaming platforms pay well. Are you saying that artists should pull out of all streaming services? How would new artists get their music to a general audience?
I'm saying artists seem to be doing fine. If they don't like how much Spotify is paying them, they are welcome to pull their music from the platform and put it in other places.
The choice is between getting paid pennies but with some exposure vs not getting paid at all with zero exposure. Obviously Spotify is the better choice, but it doesn't mean that it's a good choice for artists trying to make a living.
They aren't entitled to anything. Just like the rest of us, if they are not happy with the amount they are being paid for their work, they are free to go work somewhere else.
You have no idea what you're talking about. What you're saying is basically a "you criticize society yet you live in it" argument. The artists that you perceive as doing fine are the ones making money off of ticket and merch sales. This is where Spotify as a marketing opportunity comes in. You need a following to sell tickets and merch. Basically your only option to garner a following is to put your music in the places where people consume it most.
Hey, Youtube is free to upload. Get your shit out there. These artists are no more entitled to money than I am for doing my job. If I don't like what I'm paid, I go find a different place to work. They can do the same thing. If they insist on making shitty music and whining that they aren't paid enough, that's no one's fault but their own. Society owes them nothing.
No. It's the fault of the greedy profit hungry streaming services. You can try to diminish the bands complaining by calling their music shitty but I regularly work with bands as an audio engineer and I can tell you without a doubt that many of the most talented musicians I've worked with need to make music as a side hustle because it doesn't pay the bills.
The reality is that presence on streaming services is essential for growth as an artist in this day and age. Youtube isn't going to to cut it. People are allowed to complain that a system is exploitative. You're also ignoring the fact that even though streaming services pay peanuts, peanuts are better than nothing. Taking music off of streaming services deprives you of the miniscule income you get from it and deprives you of the publicity you get. The only way to get a following is to be on as many of the major platforms as possible. I'm not sure why that's so difficult to understand. More people listening means more people potentially buying tickets or merch which is where the real money is.
Edit:
This also might be one of the most stupid things I've read. Everyone is entitled to fair compensation for their work. You are, musicians are, everyone is.
So do it, why are they so special?
You live in a fantasy world my man. Things aren't fair, they never will be. we do the best we can with what we've got. I have no more sympathy for these people than the hard working people down at the local whatever, struggling to make ends meet.
Spotify is injecting sponsored content into Premium , they're double-dipping —subscription money and advertiser cash. That’s how big tech works and play with us.
I cancelled my sub after I kept getting bombarded by some Michelle Obama podcast/book thing. Popped up so many times over the course of a week that I just yolo'd out and went with Youtube Premium (which gives Youtube Music as part of the deal).
Totally agree—paying for Spotify Premium should mean no ads, period. These “sponsored recommendations” feel like a sneaky way to double dip. It's just corporate greed masked as personalization.
They specify and free music, and fail to mention ads in podcasts
Tbh the times that these come up it's usually music that is right in my wheelhouse. I've found lots of new music through the recommendations of Spotify.
Use vanced Spotify and don't pay them at all. I don't use it cause I prefer to have my flac files stored locally and discovering new songs is stupid on Spotify (mostly mainstream bullshit) but for someone used to using Spotify it's a good choice.
I use Google Play Music and it's been pretty good. Haven't noticed any shenanigans, no ads or anything of the sort.
I understand some people against this, but it's the same as Netflix recommending a show or your cinema showing you other rmpvies to watch. Yeah it could be seen as an ad but it can help you find new content or enjoy other stuff we are not talking about an ad about something completely unrelated like a new toothpaste ...
Except this is a sponsored recommendation. In other words they don't show it to you because it matches your taste, they show it to you because someone paid for it to be shown to you. In my experience none of these sponsored recommendations have been something I'd remotely listen to, usually they're just random big mainstream artists.
Except all the examples I provided are also sponsored.
Right, and I dislike all of these as well lol. Trailers at the movies might be the only one I'd have a soft spot for, probably from nostalgia from seeing them as a kid.
That's annoying. But I think there's a misconception of "if you pay for something it must be ad free." There's goals to get to X revenue. It's totally reasonable to have that way to get to X to be a blend of subscription fees and some forms of promotional content. Also, I am curious if the record labels have any agreements in place that require Spotify to do occasional promotions to both premium and non premium users in order for the service to have access to their music. I'd be curious to see what the "why am I seeing this?" link says.
Imagine not wanting to be recommended things you'd like lol
But this is a sponsored recommendation. It's an ad. Will I really like it or do they just want money?
Only one way to find out. If their algorithms are any good at all, you'll like it.
No matter what, artists only seek to be on Spotify to get recognition/listens, so it makes no sense to be upset about this.
This is the boomeriest shit I've seen online in a while.
Not wanting sponsored content on a paid service?
You sad no one listens to your music or something?
Yep that's what it is. No one is streaming Cruel Summer - SCB's version and now I'm sad.
Yes. If I want a recommendation I'll ask for it.
Ok Boomer lol
You asked for it when you signed up for an app that is built around recommending you music
Perhaps just consider purchasing music outright, if you don't want features an app is built to provide.
Signed up for an app that plays the music I tell it to without having to buy every CD. Not recommendations, access to their library.
If I was on the free version, maybe. But on premium where I am specifically paying NOT to have ads, yea, ads piss me off.
Except Spotify literally is based around recommending you music, and recommendations appear at the bottom of every playlist. Let your playlist run past its end and you'll be fed recs.
If you bought something you don't want, that is specifically advertised as the thing you don't want, you're the problem.
Idk what's up with people and hating progress for its own sake, but you sound like an idiot when you say shit like this.
This is seriously some "old man yells at cloud" type shit.
Have you never noticed the "repeat all" option? Which is how I have all my shit play so I don't get recommendations after my playlist completes.
This isn't old man yells at clouds. Having ads and pop ups on a service I fucking pay not to have ads is complete and utter bullshit.
If I want to go looking for song recommendations I certainly can. But I do not appreciate them placing intrusive ads that take up my entire screen.
"have you noticed that music players have an option to repeat music?"
Yes I am aware of how apps I choose work, unlike OP.
could you explain why you think spotify is built around recommending music moreso than playing music?
Because tons of apps play music and Spotify recommends music?
spotify not being based around playing music because other services also play music is definitely one of the takes of all time
Good thing I'm not on Spotify. Even if I was, I only want recemdarions on my terms, like maybe when I check out their recommended lists, not as an ad shoved in my face after hypothetically paying for their service. If not wanting ads, even helpful ones, is wrong I don't want to be right.
And that's exactly why I buy my music, you're right.
Congratulations on avoiding this issue by being a smart consumer. OP could learn from ya.
Losers born every minute. Lol