Spotify Is Social Media Now?
I've done it. I've finally reached my "old man yells at cloud" moment. Why, why, WHY is Spotify adding features straight out of the social media playbook?
Anybody have recommendations for alternatives?
In my head there's:
YouTube music (google, gross)
Apple music (no way they're not on a similar trajectory)
Bandcamp (limited, but at least bands see some money from it)
SoundCloud (weird reputation, though haven't come back around to it in a good 10 years)
Tidal maybe? Would love to hear some recommendations.
Edit: I neglected to mention why I don't like the messaging feature. I've never used it, yet with a few of my friends there are already dozens of song exchanges in the thread. It's clear that spotify has been using user-specific links for a while now to track who sends what to who. That's a pretty clear anti-feature for me, and is enough to make me jump ship.
https://newsroom.spotify.com/2025-08-26/introducing-messages-a-new-way-to-share-what-you-love-on-spotify-with-friends-and-family/Open linkView original on lemmus.org
Buying and ripping CDs is my way to go. Completely without social media features.
The social aspect is talking to the cashier.
They said social media.
Well that's the CD
What even...
That’s so much effort and clutter when you can just download MP3s or FLACs from the web.
Indeed, with services like bandcamp, Beatport and Trax source, you can download load MP4, WAV and many more.
I was thinking more getting into OPH or RED or using SLSK, but whatever you like to do!
I can guess the application for the last of those but what are the first two?
Orpheus and REDacted! Both private trackers.
Ahhh, lol guess that's why I didn't recognize them. I don't have any contavts to get in to private trackers. They ever do open signups?
I believe OPH has signups sometimes, but I’m not sure. RED is interview only, but it’s not too tough to get into!
Bandcamp because you discover music since albums are so cheap.
Qobuz is good IMHO. I've heard good things about Tidal too.
I left Spotify for TIDAL a couple months ago. No complaints here!
Seconding Qobuz. Feels a lot like the best of all of them. Streaming, massive library that captured most of my existing Spotify saved, and I can actually buy music to keep as well when I want an album
big fan of qobuz, the only reason i ever dabbled in spotify was to make sharing links easy
I'm so glad I still just buy and maintain my own local music library.
Same, but I still want some form of a recommendation engine. I also want to discover new music.
I do use Spotify for that as I have a family plan for the family, I have also tried Apple Music. Spotify I tried to seed only with the newest stuff I listen to and Apple Music knows most of what I already listen fo.
Both can work but they are both a lot of work before I come up with something I really want to buy. It's hard to guide them to more obscure stuff, even if you explicitly only train them on that kinda stuff.
I tend to have better luck just with being on subreddits for specific types of music or discussing music with friends. The quality to obscurity ratio can be quite high if a real genre expert shows up and gives a brain dump. Last.fm can be quite useful too.
I'm not sure what kind of music you are into, but if you just make playlists that you would want your kids to listen to, then other kids might get to listen to then anyways. And if you're kids Hsieh to find them what a gift you will have given them.
I say this as someone who's musical tastes is knowingly because of my oldest brother. And while I no longer find new music very often because of my brother, I have found a couple other people that now let me introduce new music to my oldest brother, but also I would not have connected with them without my big bro.
Yeah I introduce new music to my kids by playing it in the car. For me Spotify playlists are the same amount of work as just letting the recommendation engine throw stuff at me, I have to go through a lot of stuff to find something I like and then often it's just one solitary song whereas I like to buy whole albums. I'm not so into one hit wonders.
Have you tried ListenBrainz?
I have ListenBrainz hooked up to my Navidrome server. Haven't used it much though, find it a bit confusing.
Can always discover using YouTube Music with an ad blocker. Then add what you like to you local collection. Or use something like last.fm to track everything you listen to, no matter the platform, and get recommendations that way
Spotify has been on the way to ruin for a while already. The UI is partly Tiktokified/Instagramified.
Bandcamp + Yar har fiddle dee dee + Jellyfin or Plex.
For music something like Navidrome is much better, IMO. But you could easily host it in addition to the former two, not instead.
Oh, and you can combine the subscription to Tidal with yar har by umm... permanently caching the songs offline by means of 3rd party tools. It might seem pointless at first glance, but having the music stored on your server ensures you'll keep having it, while you still can spontaneously explore new stuff on Tidal.
I'd steer away from Plex. Their devs have clearly been headed in the wrong direction. Enshittification inbound.
Obligatory I miss what.cd 🥲
RIP WCD
I’m on some new alternatives and they’re good, but WCD was unbeatable.
I'm still of the mind that what got taken out because it was starting to support artists better than their labels / streaming platforms did. Losing it was a catastrophic blow to music preservation.
Until jellyfin isn't garbage, and has basic functionality like using a remote compatible interface that's going to be a no dawg. My lifetime membership has been worth its weight in gold.
I feel you on the interface - genuinely. I also got the lifetime... But honestly they are becoming more and more "disconnected" from their roots. The latest ui changes would embarrass a first year art student and make a ui/ux developer weep. As a developer it's infuriating watching the decisions these people make.
Kodi using the plugin to sync your jellyfin library. Works a treat.
If we are talking mobile, I use Finamp for playing music from Jellyfin and it does the job.
Come to think of it, I don't use any of the official jellyfin apps, there are plenty of options because it's all open.
Tidal is great as far as streaming services go in general.
I hear people saying Tidal is unethical because of where its finding is coming from, and the ties its investors have.
Qobuz seems to be the shit as the next alternative.
Hm, I watched Fantanos streaming service tierlist and from what I've seen, they seem to be on the better side businesswise. And I do like the product much more than Spotify nowadays, but I'm one of those weird people that listen to whole albums and not to algotorial playlists to study/relax/makeyourtaxes to.
I'll have to check that out. 👍
Same, bro. Me too. ❤️🎶
I recently cancelled spotify and switched to a selfhosted navidrome server to stream my personal music collection.
I've done the same thing. Works real nice. Using Symfonium on my Android phone
I'm using Qobuz for music streaming. It's alright.
Last time I checked they pay artists more than the competition, they curate playlists and editorial content rather than pushing AI left and right, and my experience is generally good.
Minus points for lacking API and native Linux client. On desktop Linux the web app works well.
Deezer is my streamer of choice, nearly identical with artists, OK discovery. Premium includes high def and you can currently stream to multiple devices, like, say, play on sonos for the Kids and listen to yourself without one device stopping
You can also rip music files from deezer into .flac
Its funny how people are still using Spotify when other services exist. But yea people, complain about Spotify and it's features.
Edit: if you don't like something quit it, don't complain. Companies don't understand until numbers start dropping.
I went to Spotify from Tidal because Tidal just didn't have the music I wanted to listen to.
I can't see myself wording until there's is a service that just has all music that I'm able to find through Spotify. Sad but true.
I went to YouTube music because I found spotify's library way too limiting
I looked at it but at the time, Spotify wasn't as shit as it is today as a company. I just don't want to give Google my money anymore either.
Sadly it's my last remaining payment to Google, hard to beat yt music and yt premium in one package when I use both services so heavily.
I get it. We all just need a better alternative. I'm not holding my breath though
It's been a few years since, but the wholesale merging of music as a category with the entirety of YouTube really gets in my craw. Like, thanks, but I don't need or want "8 hours of AI-generated lo-fi chill beats for work and studying by xXx-alphachad69420-xXx" showing up when I'm looking for legitimate art to listen to.
That doesn't seem to happen to me on the yt music app ever so idk
Deezer, qobuz, bandcamp and goes on.
Never heard of qobuz thanks, I'll check it out, the others also don't have the same selection for me. Had a few months of free Deezer when I bought some noise cancelling headphones and they were okay, but still too many of my playlists (there is a tool I forget the name of they helps move/recreate playlists between services) and entirely too many of my lists had unavailable artists or versions of songs
I really do wish my country would just create a repository of the Arts and then collect money from all the leeches to compensate the artists so we can just enjoy our preferred art without needingd to feed the businesses that crush innovation and artists rights
I like streaming music, I dont need to own it, but I have been struggling to find a good music streaming service.
I used Spotify for years but the amount of garbage they keep adding made me cancel my subscription. The last straw was when "smart shuffle" kept automatically turning itself back on.
First I switched to YouTube Music but the user experience is honestly trash and I moved on pretty quickly. The separation between video and music service was ridiculously inconsistent.
I used Tidal for a few months and I appreciated the simple UI. However, the recommendations are insanely bad. Not once have I found a new, good track on the daily mix to add to my library, it was driving me crazy.
I started using Qobuz only a few weeks ago. The track radio is honestly pretty bad so far. I start the radio on a lofi track and start hearing video game ambience noises 5 tracks later. Literally bird sounds with whitenoise from an OST album. I havent tried the daily/weekly queue a lot yet, but I hope its decent because I dont know what to try next.
I wish Spotify hadn't entshittified, it had the best recommendations/radios by far but its just not usable for me anymore.
Funny that i switched from YT music to Spotify for a while and found its recommendations much worse. The app was cool and flashy though, especially on tv
I think what helped my Spotify recommendations a lot was the option to "exclude from taste profile". I might listen to lofi for 12 h straight but I dont want any lofi recommendations at all, so that feature was nice.
Also I never pressed "like" on anything, I only ever disliked things in order to keep recommendations more open. It felt like Spotify understood the assignment while e.g. Tidal kept blasting me with a genre that I accidentally listened to one track of and kept "disliking" every single artists.
Winamp died because the company that acquired it tried to turn it into an everything app.
Winamp died for our sins :(
Misread that as winamp died for our skins.
This as well.
Winamp died because pirating music mostly died. That's the only reason.
Winamp died because the jump from 2 to 3 (if memory serves) was a profound hit to system resources... Followed by the dev team apparently fucking off on anything that wasn't optimization (see above for likely reason.)
Add in a dose of music platforms figuring out streaming and you can put the final nail in that coffin.
I'm content with tidal for now. I mainly listen to music on my desktop, and I like that it's just music. No podcasts or things I don't want to see.
Just don't use the feature. Not everything is screech worthy.
That's a fair response to the original post. Made an edit to expound.
My problem with it is that I've never used Spotify messages, yet there's already a few threads on my account with dozens of "messages". My best guess is that the thread tracks unique links that I've sent to friends outside of the app and they've opened while logged in with their accounts. I don't like that.
spotify started with more social media feel
Honestly, Apple Music is not that bad. Tried to love tidal but the app just really sucks with frequent crashes and terrible ui.
Thus far Apple Music feels like old apple playing the streaming game and I have yet to find enshitified features being added. Even the recommendations are more in line with my expectations, think of artists with new or upcoming releases that the app knows you’ve been listening too.
Ui wise I still miss Spotify, it WAS just better. But it’s going further from that everyday. Apple Music also has flac quality if that interests you and you don’t have to pay extra for it. In terms of paying artists, tidal still takes the crown and apple is second.
Spotify has this now as well and you don't pay extra for it
But Spotify adds ai features I don’t ask for
Try Metrolist for android. I don't know what is available for pc in this manner. And if you're one of the "If buying isn't owning, then pirating isn't stealing" people, then there's option to save the mp3 files from both Spotify's and Deezer's database. Any telegram bot titling this kinda thing will do the job.
Thanks for the recommendation! I explored the app (hopefully this is the project you were referring to), and I couldn't find an option to connect to Spotify to save MP3s. Can you elaborate or point me in the right direction?
Yes. This is the one.
And for the telegram one, go to the searchbar and type : @DeezerMusicBot , then in the chat menu, /start the bot. Choose simple "search" and it'll appear in inline mode. Then type any song title and wait 3-4 seconds for it to appear. You can type Artist's name additionally if the song title is too much common.
After you make the bot appear in inline mode for the fist time in its own inbox, then go to the "Saved Messages" section of telegram and just type @
It should pop up the option to choose the entire bot. If it doesn't, simply continue further writing as shown in the picture and you're good to go.
Lemmy summarised:
When streaming services don’t pay independent musicians with 10 listeners per month a living wage: 🤬
When Lemmy users pirate music and pay artists literally nothing: 🤓
It's because we live in late stage capitalism. Our systems require infinite growth, so when Spotify tries to grow in an over saturated market. How else can they increase profits? Throw shit from all over the place to see what works. This issue is why every company jumped on the Ai bandwagon because it was the first real leap in a Market since the internet. Problem is 51% of all money spent in America was spent by the top 10% of the population. That top 10% only needs one Spotify subscription per person. The bottom 90% aren't going to waste money anymore on subscription services.
This place is so high on its own social justice warrior juices I'm so glad normal people don't know I post here
Spotify adding a share music with your friends feature is late stage capitalism my gosh are you being dramatic or what
Never left Pandora. Still works exactly like i set it up. Damn, 15years ago?
Spotify customers created a bigger evil
spotify has hi def now
They pay out more to artists than literally anyone else?
I don't find Spotify difficult to use at all
No idea about privacy policy
What do you mean by this? How haven't they?
That's funny so do I, I listen to a lot of music and the majority are not popular, this helps increase the share of the pie so the artists I listen to get paid more
It's not
did you have the actual concern? i read the article and didn’t see any actual privacy issues besides:
do they really think i care that spotify knows what i listen to and when i listen to it in order to give me recommendations?
it’s one of the rare cases on the internetweb where im more than happy to give them as much data as they want in exchange for giving me better recommendations for artists and songs that i might like and listen to
that chart isn’t accurate at all because that’s not how pay per stream works
it might be true that tidal has a high payout rate per stream, but if you notice on the right is how many listeners there are, tidal has n/a vs spotify’s 265 million, i believe its up to 276 million now
there’s straight up just more people streaming which dilutes the pay per stream because there’s more people streaming than ever, billions of streams every hour
spotify’s streaming rate is variable for each artist because it’s your number of monthly streams x your total share of all streams
the more streams you get, the bigger the share, the higher the payout, there are millions of artists getting plenty of streams and are very happy with what they’re getting
spotify also has different rates depending on where you are and what your plan is, so im on premium and live in australia so my payout per stream is near the top, someone on an ad supported plan in india is paying out a fraction of what i do, but maybe that ad supported indian user will get a good job soon and enjoys spotify but hates the ads so he gets premium, adding to the pool that gets paid out to artists and spotify is #1 by a long way
also funny that the company with unlimited money (apple) has such a low payout rate on that inaccurate chart, vs spotify which pays out 70% of its companies revenues to rights holders
https://blog.discmakers.com/2025/06/why-does-spotify-pay-the-lowest-royaltie/#h-TOC_01
whatever works though
And Duolingo now has chess. What a complete joke; both those corporations and the people using everything uncritically.
At least they went with an intellectual game instead of some brain rot, addictive, pay-to-unlock-levels bullshit.
I had Tidal, but sending music to my home Sonos devices was too much of a pain in my butt so I reverted back to Spotify.
I'm so confused, if you don't want to use this feature, just don't use it?
Also for my money messaging has never been 'social media' otherwise we'd have to call MSN Messenger social media and that ain't right
Idk that I'll use this feature but it makes a lot of sense. I end up sharing links to Spotify tracks across multiple different friend groups multiple times a week. They share with me too.
It's obvious that Spotify would like to encourage people to stay "within the walls" of Spotify more when sharing this stuff. Some people will love this feature I bet. Idk why anyone would be upset by an optional chat though.
It's that Spotify has obviously been tracking the songs I've exchanged with friends for a while now. I have never used the messaging feature, yet every album I've sent to friends is already in the messages thread. They've clearly been using unique links to track who sends music to who -- covertly, even outside of the app.
Not to support their tracking methods.. But if you were building an application that focused on a recommendation engine, you'd probably benefit greatly by tracking what users share with each other to tune the engine better.
The chat feature isnt really changing much for you except for showing you, slightly, how the sausage is made.
That is a sound approach until they audiobook the shit out of it and suddenly there’s 90% of screen space showing it on the interface. So far it’s okay but there’s a growing trust issue between Spotify and myself as a user given their track record to make things shittier.