Users vow to boycott Spotify after streamer runs ICE recruitment ad
The ads urge listeners to “join the mission to protect America” by becoming U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, but users of the music streaming giant have taken to social media and Spotify’s website to complain, and announce their withdrawal from the audio platform.
https://www.newsweek.com/users-vow-to-boycott-spotify-after-streamer-runs-ice-recruitment-ad-10878788Open linkView original on lemmy.dbzer0.com1016
Comments170
You never know what the final straw will be for any given individual
Welcome warmly anyone who joins the fold -- no chastisement, only positive feedback for a positive step.
Exactly. Better late than scared back to the other side...
It is for me. I’m glad I ran across this article.
I boycott nearly everything else already. I’ve kept Spotify as a little treat even though I’m not a fan of their business practices. But this is it for me. It will be a tough adjustment, but I can’t support companies who support fascism.
Its a line that's crossed. Podcasts and what not aren't government. I'm generally ok with the idea that individuals spewing shit from their mouths is one thing.
Taking money from the regime in exchange for helping the regime to clamp down on human rights? That's crossed a line. Disney learned the hard way and now Spotify will too.
Say what you will about capitalism, but I do deeply appreciate the fact that "learned the hard way" involves purely economic decisions and no actual threats of violence
I don't remember who said it, but some billionaire equated boycotts with terrorism.
Plus not everybody sees every news story.
Exactly what I was going to say. With so much shit going on all the time and so many awful companies making even worse decisions, it's easy to miss what cartoon villain-esque business companies are getting up to at any moment.
I was subscribed just so my Music Assistant could have my playlists and my kids liked the ease. I've exported those lists and just canceled.
You're wrong actually. I'm unsubscribing as we speak.
Yes.
It's a line that was crossed. Fascist mouthpieces, while yes are very likely funded by regime allies or themselves directly, at least allowed for plausible deniability. Which is something I strongly support - innocent until proved guilty.
An advertisement recruiting for ICE is directly accepting money from the regime for suppressing human rights. There is no plausible deniability. None. Zero. Zilch. Nadda.
Military recruitment ads were different too, as it was supposed to be for the national interest to have a military to respond to INTERNATIONAL threats. (Obviously... That one is changing quicker than I'd like). It's also usually not directly from the president himself.
But ICE, the FBI and other feds are nothing more than anti-human rights. They always have been, and it's a very clear line I draw at monetarily supporting.
I’ve been wanting to for a few years now as the service gets worse (where is my playlist radio?) but have been complacent. This is the last thing to push me over my limit. I’ll be transferring my decade-worth of playlists this weekend.
Nahh, all those other reasons are kind of hidden from the average person who doesn't read music or tech news, most of them probably have no idea that Spotify sucks. I'm sure there's even people hearing the ad right after witnessing ICE violence firsthand
I fall into this camp. I've been using YT Music more than Spotify for a while now and I haven't paid attention to any controversy since they added Joe's podcast. "Recruiting for ICE", however, is one of those things that will spur me to instant action. .
I mean I've been feeling the urge to for awhile now, it's just a lot of work to move the family to something else. This is renewing my interest in sitting down and spending the time to do it.
You say that, but me moving my family plan over to Qobuz barely even interrupted the album that we were listening to - just waited for the track to end, and then switched services. Much better sound quality, much better curated recommendations, no more supporting fascist arseholes. No time like the present, do it.
Yeah I just have to sit down and move everyone's playlists over.
does using a modified version that makes them no money count? asking for a friend
It's better, but they gain something by collecting and selling
youryour friends data.The patch blocks sending analytics. Besides, without anything tied to the account, they'd only get your taste and that's it. Kinda worthless in my opinion (without the ability to serve you ads)
Is good but is also both illegal and traceable since Spotify definitely knows your IP address. Probably among the riskiest ways to get your streaming on
Yeah but they'll just ban you. They're not going to break down your door.
IF they care. I'm not talking about mobile apps here, you control what network requests go through or don't. I don't remember anyone getting arrested (or banned) for blocking ads.
edit: for clarity I'm talking about a specific patch on pc compared to modified apps on android
It's been the most stable way for ages, and at most they'll just ban the account. Either way I don't know of anyone getting banned bc of this exact version. Maybe if you chat with spotify support and admit it they'll care, but I highly doubt it's illegal to block ad requests (or telemetry), adblock isn't illegal and it's no different to that.
Regarding my IP - every website I ever visited already knows it. If you're not on static IP it's insanely easy to change, rendering an IP ban useless.
edit: to make it simpler - there is no law that says you have to accept requests from an ad server, just like there is no law forbidding you from blocking them. And breaking ToS isn't illegal by itself, at least over here.
I wonder how deeply integrated the ads are. Can a PiHole stop them?
Should be able to. Web players + adblock used to be a foolproof solution, I didn't keep up with it though. I guess they could get some podcast ads and a few banners in.
Love my pinhole but it can't stop YT ads
Absolutely. People are insanely slow.
Also often only leaving a service or similar if it personally affects them negatively, otherwise just seeming angry but literally changing nothing.
I was thinking of re-subscribing, but I am probably not going to now.
Does it count as boycotting if I use the service for free with an ad blocker?
Okay, post your selfhosted and open-source/non-corporate alternatives here!
I have personal experience with FunkWhale . You upload music and it lets you stream or download. Simple, functional, nice. But missing fun features out of the box like sharing, scrobbling, and recommendations.
I've heard good things about Navidrome and Airsonic.
Considering setting up Jellyfin.
I just use Jellyfin, with Finamp for playing on my phone.
I am considering Jellyfin on a VPS host so securing it is a concern (though not a major one; I basically grok reverse proxies/nginx etc)
Interested in your observations as a user and admin
Different person but it's really not a big deal. I've created a username for my friends, and they for me on theirs. Easy as pie.
I keep a local backup just in case something happens, just setup vps again and go. I use nginx to force https, and go. I've also limited to US, Canadian, and U.K. ips only so pretty much never see unusual activity trying to access it (if I ever share with someone elsewhere I'll whitelist their specific IP).
I'm also running full IPv6 which just worked.
Edited to add: I only share with trusted friends who I know won't two and delete the database or something. Just use basic security and you're good.
oooh why didn't I think of that? Imma do the same for some of my selfhost VPS (such as the abovementioned Funkwhale). I have friends in US/UK/Canada but as it turns out none in, eg China or Russia, which is like 85%+ of malicious connection attempts
I was hosting behind nginx for a while, however recently switched to tailscale VPN. The reasoning was less to do with security (though that's a fine bonus), and more to do with the fact that I couldn't get split DNS resolution working very well. As in, use one address while on LAN but a different address when I'm away from home, mostly relevant on my phone. I was getting frustrated with that and Tailscale just works really well once it's set up.
Try radiooooo for a fairly wide selection of tracks from 1900 to the current year. There are featured playlists compiled by the site itself, but no user generated 'channels/playlists'. Virtually every country is represented (although understandably you may not find any/much content from Azerbaijan in the 1920's or Tunisia in the 40's). Content is not divided by genre, instead by country of origin, decade and "Slow, Fast, Weird".
Navidrome is what you're looking for. Jellyfin does music but it's better for TV, Movie, YouTube and books.
Client like symfonium can do some of the recommendations
Plex or Plex amp.
For those that don't know: host on home computer, stream, or download to phone (think download needs paid.)
Plex is freemium and only partly open source correct?
That makes me very nervous.
What parts/features are walled off?
If downloading requires $$, then I guarantee it's just a matter of time before you lose access to "your" music.
Is there a pure open fork?
Plex is freemium in the sense that the software walls off certain features. But the content is always hosted by you; Plex doesn’t actually control any of your media. You’re not hosting it on Plex’s servers. So there’s no way for them to realistically take your media away from you.
Jellyfin is the FOSS alternative, but isn’t quite mature enough to overcome the “friends and family factor” in many peoples’ setups. Basically, Plex makes remote access easy, by proxying the initial connection. The same way DDNS turns a dynamic IP address into a static URL. You host the media server, it tells Plex “hey, I’m located at this address”, and then your various devices simply ask Plex what your server address is. So in that sense, connecting with plex “just works” much easier.
Plex also handles all of the signup and onboarding stuff; Sharing your media libraries is as simple as having them create a Plex account, sending each other friend requests, then granting access to your server. Plex handles all of the backend authentication stuff, and they made their own account, so you’re not bogged down by managing a ton of different accounts.
With Jellyfin, all of that DDNS and account management stuff needs to be set up by you. The Jellyfin devs don’t host any centralized servers, so there’s no way for an app to ask what your server’s address is. And since they’re signing in directly to your server, (because again, no centralized service to handle that), it means you as the server owner are managing accounts for all of your friends and family. So if grandma forgot her password for the fifth time this month, you’re the one resetting her password.
There are other ancillary services that help smooth a lot of that out, but setting them up is a fairly obtuse process if you’ve never done anything like it before. And it also means that you’re setting up six or seven different containers, just to emulate what Plex does right out of the box. The demographics here tend to skew towards system admins and IT professionals, so all of the inevitable “psh, setting it up is easy. I did it in 15 minutes” comments are built upon a lot of external knowledge and experience. Of course, there is a relevant xkcd for that:
On the bright side, you can run both in parallel, and see which one you prefer. They’re just providing access to existing media folders (and indexing that media to grab metadata, album art, etc,) so they’re perfectly fine to run side-by-side. Many people (myself included) do so.
Thank you this was a really useful comment.
I happen to be an IT guy (but not much of a Networking guy) so between Claude and Stackoverflow I can probably set up "ancillary services", esp if there are general guides somewhere.
I'm definitely willing to spend more of my own time and money if at the end I have something I truly own. Bonus if I wind up understanding a little more tech in the process.
Also worth noting that Jellyfin has several known vulnerabilities. Nothing catastrophic, but there are a few “people who already know your library’s naming scheme can access media without authentication” types of things. If you follow the recommended guides exactly, it means you’ll end up with the exact same library layout as lots of other users. It can largely be solved by simply using slightly different folder names, but it’s still worth mentioning in case you want to avoid some random bot being able to access your library. And the Jellyfin devs have openly stated that they have no intentions of fixing them, because it would require a complete code rewrite.
Most people will say that it’s best to avoid exposing it to your WAN, and simply use a VPN to connect to your LAN instead. But that completely blows the aforementioned “friends and family factor” out of the water, because now you’re requiring them to figure out a VPN before they can even begin to access your server. And it also means that they can only watch on devices that will actually be able to run a VPN connection. So your grandma’s shiny new smart TV will be completely unable to connect (unless you feel like being the family IT support, and setting the VPN up on her router).
And while we’re on the topic of smart TVs, some of the most popular ones don’t have a native Jellyfin app. You can sideload on most of them, but (again) we’re considering that friends and family factor. If your grandma has to sideload the app before she can even access it, it’s a non-starter for many people.
On the other side of the same coin, Plex recently disclosed a password breach. Hackers got emails and password hashes. So there are benefits and drawbacks to both systems. Of course this is largely solved by not reusing passwords and simply resetting your password to something new, but that burden is on the individual users.
When I deployed FunkWhale, I set people up with sub:Sonic on their phones. That is working well (except for the complaint that FunkWhale is "boring" and doesn't have "features")
A plus is that FunkWhale has a default web-based player, so as long as the device (eg Smart TV) has a browser, it can stream. Kludgey, but usable.
I had Plex for a long time, but switched to Jellyfin as they've been pushing more paid products even to lifetime-pass users. Very easy to switch, haven't looked back.
I'll start with I have not researched alternatives to Spotify with my comments here. Reason I have always had Spotify is that it's just so easy to see options to listen to and BAM I've got hours of playlists and podcasts right there. Reason I never tried to do any self hosted media (I have an Unraid server and access to music) is because I don't know how to get the above item without having to go out and find artists, download music, setup playlist, etc etc. Any thoughts on my laziness?
*arr stack my friend. I use docker-compose files for pretty much everything. Jellyfin as a media server for pretty much everything, many choices are available for a front end, but my symphonium purchase has paid for itself many times over.
This is pretty close to what I set up, but not exactly.
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/26287096
Get friends who also value keeping their music. Everyone uploads; everyone benefits
Navidrome's alright, Jellyfin has, in my opinion, a bit of a better UI, but not by a huge amount, and it's handled my metadata a bit better.
TY. super appreciate comments like this from people who've already done the work and tried stuff out
Music Assistant with Lidarr
Interesting, I hadn't heard of Lidarr.
The github is active, lots of features, cross-platform support,
This gives me pause. My user base includes non-technical family members. And the model I am looking for is for us to upload our own music to share (like old-time mixtapes) vs straight-up pirating
Lidarr is to fill your collection with. Music Assistant is for playing. It creates a web interface that you can play to any smart speakers or just devices running the browser window will allow you to send songs to it. They are working on an app and hopefully it will be released soon
I quit Spotify the first time they refused to deplatform fascists.
Same. Cancelled since the gave Joe Roegen a platform for his fascist propaganda.
I wouldn't say Rogan is a propagandist, just a convenient idiot that is a platform for fascists. Very slight distinction, but tables with Nazi's making it a moot point.
I only use Spotify to get song/album URLs (web client search w/o login), which I then pass to spotdl to download them off YouTube. Now I have all the music I could ever want, offline and without ads.
What in tarnation? Thank you!
Holy shit what a find. I knew stuff like this existed, but I never knew I could install it in one command and download dozens of songs with one more. WOW. Thank you kind stranger!
How much storage space do you need for your entire downloaded music library, that's the only concern I have about downloading music
Depends on how much music you want. I have about 3500 songs at the highest quality free YouTube will let me download songs at, and that comes to around 15GB.
I have around 12,000 tracks, 70GB.
Very much depends. I host the digital music collection for my entire family (6 people) all with very different tastes in music and very large music collections. According to Jellystat, I'm hosting roughly 52,000 tracks taking up just shy of 2 TB. I used to keep track of how many albums I had but I've long since lost track.
On average, a CD ripped to FLAC seems to run around 300MB. MP3 or OGG would generally be smaller (but with quality loss), dependent on the bitrate, call it 50MB - 200MB.
In short, a person hosting a normal sized personal music collection is unlikely to run into space issues.
it's not 2008 anymore. audio file storage space is not a concern, we have larger storage drives now
Oh hell yeah, using it now.
Wow. Amazing. This comment needs to be pinned.
Followup -- do you know if I should use my VPN when doing this? I have been doing that for torrents for a while, but I wasn't sure if Spotify, YouTube, or anyone else will reach out with cease and desists like has happened to me with torrents in the past
Also now I'm wondering if the URLs on Spotify identify me if I'm logged in (I have a bunch of music saved in playlists and libraries but I cancelled my subscription so it's in free mode)
Right now Google is more focused on breaking the library that powers downloading from YouTube (yt-dlp). They haven't succeeded yet, but that's definitely an easier path for them than prosecuting piracy.
I doubt Spotify will try to punish you for this since the content isn't actually being stolen from them directly.
That makes sense. Thank you for this response.
No VPN needed. The media being downloaded is coming from YouTube.
So as far as they know, I'm just playing their music from YT Music my browser in free mode?
I've been buying drm free music (mostly from Bandcamp) for years. No regrets.
If you can't find it on bandcamp, check out https://www.qobuz.com/
Why would you uninstall the app? Cancel your subscription and use Xmanager to get their premium for free. There, that way, you don't support them with anything and still enjoy the service. 😄
When I checked that a few weeks ago it was patched and not working, was I mistaken or did it get updated?
Works no problem. They've just changed how it works slightly, but it works fine. It now just directs you at a link to download and already patched app. You can still choose any version you want. It has this long ad before you can get to the link, but you can either block it with blokada or watch it to support the devs.
Throwing this out there for people like me who thought it would be a hastle to migrate ~5000 songs and playlists. I recently swapped to Tidal. They are the same price, but you can get the first two months for $2, and there is a music/album/playlist transfer service for an additional $2. It also grabs public playlists you follow, but didn't create. I was able to convert everything and cancel spotify in about 20 minutes. Plus it saves me ~$25 by not paying for the next two months. Haven't had any issues with it so far.
This is really good to know, and it looks like they have a family plan, which is what I need.
YouTube (Google from Google music) showed the same ads, too
Fuck! Now I have to cancel my subscription! This sucks I guess time to set up music on my media server
Good idea. Also give Qobuz a try. I did that and it went very well.
I just tried this today, tested it and then signed up for the free trial.
Then the app just stops responding. Eventually when logging into my account on the site to try and figure out what broke it tells me it cant log me in through a vpn. Even tho it let me create the account and play music through one an hour ago.
Bad enough that it has this restriction (that spotify doesnt) but to make the app just not respond to input is awful.
Vpn is kind if a neccessity in the uk now if you ever want to see imgur so back to spotify :(
This is the way! I did exactly this (with Plexamp) and I never want to go back.
Jellyfin and Lidarr is a potent combo for managing and streaming a collection.
What does it look like on the phone/client end, if I'm comparing it to using Spotify? Is there a recommended app?
I never really used Spotify, so I can't make any direct comparisons, but one thing I can say is that Lidarr and Jellyfin will not help with exploring new music. They're things you host yourself, so they can only interact with your own collection.
Lidarr manages a music collection and works primarily through a web page. I've only personally used it on desktop, so I can't vouch for the mobile UI. Desktop UI seems good enough, no real complaints. You can use it to do things like index your collection, show what you may be missing, standardize folder structure, file names, and metadata tags, and automate downloads of missing content or upgrades for low quality content through bittorrent or Usenet. There might be third party apps to use it if you prefer, but I'm not aware of any since I never felt the need to look.
Jellyfin streams audio, video, and I think ebooks. It has a web client, too, but it also has official client apps for desktop and mobile. The UI is decent, pretty intuitive, no real complaints, but I feel like it could be improved somehow. Still, it works well, and it doesn't cause problems. However, Jellyfin has had some security vulnerabilities in the past, so I think it's recommended you not directly expose it to the internet. So instead of setting up port forwarding on your router, you'd want to use something like a VPN or maybe an SSH tunnel to get into the house from outside. That makes it a bit more technical to set up since you need that extra service to access it safely, but that's only necessary if you want access from outside the house.
It's hard to find an ethical player in the media space, especially the streaming space. It's hard to even agree on what that would look like and how it would work.
Having said that, it's clear that Spotify isn't it. From the first time the client paused an ad when I muted my laptop volume I knew the enshittification was coming. I've been Spotify free for a few years now, but decline to recommend my current solution because it's not much better. When I have time again, I'll be sorting my local music library and physical media.
ICE ads would have sent me over the top. That would be a FAST cancel from me.
It's hard to find an ethical player in capitalism.
I've not used Spotify since they provided Rogan with a platform, ICE ads was the next logical step for that fascist friendly platform.
Happy to say that I've never used Spotify outside of closing the tab when I accidentally click a link that sends me there.
It's interesting to see the hate for boycotts in the comments, as if boycotts are ineffective. They absolutely are -- if they can get DISNEY of all companies to change their tune, they absolutely can work on other companies. Disney is much more diversified and well-funded than Spotify is
They're supporting Nazis, but at least they're also putting up prices.
Well fuck. Spotify is going to be the most difficult to let go but there seems to be every reason.
Its such a convenient platform, but such a terrible business. They seem to believe they're untouchable.
I hear Tidal is nice.
Tidal is excellent. Spotify only recently allowed lossless streaming, which tidal has been doing for a long time. There are apps you pay like $5 to and transfer your entire library. Which I cancelled same day. After it gets to know your music preferences, the recommendations are daily playlists instead of weekly, and in my opinion they’re much better.
Not to mention they pay the artists the most out of all streamers, which is why I initially changed.
Been self-hosting for months. Rebuilding my music collection has been an ardous but invigorating experience. I have been listening much more music than ever before with Spotify, with a way better user experience. Turns out I missed music.
What's your tech stack look like for this? I've seen some guides on Lemmy here already for it. Always curious to see what other people come up with.
My stack is:
All services configured in a single rootless podman compose file that runs on a laptop.
Perfect! Thanks!
I moved to Tidal, and out of 10,000 tracks, I lost ~30 of them.
Other than missing the "Magic shuffle" which helps me discover new stuff, its a good enough streaming platform.
I switched to Qobuz about six months ago after also trialling Deezer, Tidal, Apple Music and YT Music. Highly recommended. Their curated playlists are excellent and I can't believe what a different the higher quality and lossles bitrates makes. They pay artists way more than the other platforms though, remarkably, they're the only (major) platform to actually publish per-stream figures, even if they're only averages. Based in France if that matters to you. They only offer paid plans but do have free trials and provide users with a code for a third-party migration service to bring your playlists over.
The reasons to cancel your spotify subscription won't stop coming.
PSA: It's not just Spotify.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/ice-ads-all-over-streaming-services-spotify-hbo-pandora-1235447970/
"But the recruitment ads have been running on more than one music or streaming platform, with fans flagging concerns with the ads on Hulu, Max, YouTube, and Pandora, over the past six months. "
"In August, DHS confirmed to The Independent that it would be running advertisements on YouTube, Max, Amazon Prime Video, X, LinkedIn, and other internet platforms. "
"Similarly, Spanish-language channels such as Univision and Telemundo have also run ads featuring Kristi Noem urging “illegal aliens” not to come into the country. “Join the mission to protect America with bonuses up to $50,000 and generous benefits. Apply now join.ice.gov and fulfill your mission,” says one ad."
Amazon video and X would be surprising NOT to see on the list.
Self hosted media server. I don't get quite as much content but I still have thousands of hours of content ... Back to the olden days!
Can I do something like this on a Raspberry Pi?
Something like Syncthing, but for hosting media would be fantastic. No need to deal with opening ports in the router and all those shenanigans. Something that you install and it just works, without any additional software. Is there anything like this?
Navidrome/Airsonic with reverse proxy is best. There are lots of Android and iOS apps that stream music from you server. Rather than a reverse proxy, you could try connecting via tailscale maybe? I think at minimum, this would require your phone to be connected to tailscale whenever you want to listen to music. Not sure if this would work or be practical.
Best I can do is jellyfin with a reverse proxy
As others suggested, a simple server with a subsonic api is all you need. tailscale on it and your mobile device and you can stream with a handful of open source apps.
I am using a pi to server my music for years but been self hosting my music since google music died - never got on the spotify bandwagon.
A little docker/podman is all you need. I also work on an free android app for this purpose as well that I just posted an update to yesterday.
You can. I started my Jellyfin server on a RPi3. Not great hardware for video streaming, but it will work fine for music. Could also use Navidrome. For local network only, that would be all you need.
To stream your media collection outside your home network, you'll want to set up either a reverse proxy and set your ISP's modem to forward the traffic to the reverse proxy, or set up a VPN like Tailscale. Tailscale would be the simpler option most of the time and is more secure for the average self-hoster.
Plex, but they're getting big brothery. They do support relay through their own server.
jellyfin + cloudflare tunnel. Still big brothery, but less, pretty easy and not against their tos
Syncthing only works because it's bursty. Once you start trying to run sustained data over it, people will run out of capacity pretty quickly.
Something could probably be done DHT/Torrent style. All the listeners share in the transfers, but the availability might be dicey.
For me, it's Jellyfin + Tailscale. I always connect home and play from my media server and if TS ever gives me any lip, i'll change over to headscale or just wireguard.
Jokes on you I never used Spotify.
For real though, the only thing I use Spotify for is uploading my own music. The only reason I don't remove it is because I only get like 5 listens a month and they all come from my mom. She already got upset that I deleted it off soundcloud earlier this year and I really don't wanna bum her out. Now, if I was actually good at making music and was actually making money I'd remove that shit today and go to Bandcamp.
Good, then you cost them more money in storage than they earn from hosting it.
Is this what we all should do? Just make shitty music and upload it to fuck with their storage?
However, if you need to pay to be an artist...
A couple months ago I was listening to sound cloud ads and Krusty noems voice came on saying how she will find you, there's no hiding, turn yourself in now for a better deal. I'm paraphrasing I hope someone has it recorded. That shit was scary, everybody should be thinking about home defense.
Just canceled and deleted my account. Swore I'd never do that, years ago.
If you’re not gonna start your own media server or don’t know how, tidal is the way to go
I've been boycotting Spotify since before it was cool.
Are these the same users that that vowed to boycott Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Substack? Or are these the same users that vowed to boycott when Spotify started banking Joe Rogan and other rightwingers?
I've stopped using all of the above years ago, I'm no hypocrite, but I also know the number of people who will drop Spotify over this are a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of its massive user base. Nothing will ever change when it comes to big social media/tech companies like this because too many people don't actually care.
People care, but seemingly not enough to actually follow through and drop their subscriptions.
You have to be willing to cause yourself some inconvenience in order to do what's right.
Tidal is ok for now but it doesn't really run ads so who knows what they might be supporting behind the scenes
Look into SoulSeek. Apparently you can connect it with lidarr and then just host the media off your server.
As soon as Tidal or Qobuz add a couple real key functionalities that Spotify has but they don't I'm switching right over
Or, be part of the user base to increase their numbers and be part of the wave that provides user feedback so dev teams can prioritize those features.
Not that I trust Tidal not to turn to shit eventually, probabaly some time after an IPO.
I know Apple isn’t popular with Lemmy users, but Apple Music feels like more of a safe home for that reason. Apple’s business model is very established, unlike Tidal which could change rapidly with an IPO. At the end of the day, nothing is safe that isn’t self hosted, but there are only so many hours in the day to self host services.
I already did this. I joined both, paid them money and then found out they were lacking these features after doing so. I gave them the feedback. Unfortunately the lack of them really gets in the way of how I like to listen to music. I'm sure others will be feeding back the same
Yeah I also saw that Tidal had announced they'd be scaling back the amount of funding on development fairly recently before I tried them out. Which didn't fill me with much hope. But I've not written them off at all. It's not like Spotify is really raising the bar at all these days anyway
Wikipedia: "Tidal is now majority-owned by Block, Inc., the owner of the point-of-sale system Square."
Yo, hard pass. Corporate platforms are just enshittification waiting to happen. And Jack Dorsey can suck my balls in particular.
Same deal. Just a matter of time before all your music disappears because of some geoppolitical or corporate billshit
if it can be opened up to a country, it can be blocked just as easily.
Ok but I'm not sure personally what my other option is? Of course there's buying the music directly, which good on people for doing that. It is the best and most ethical way. But something I always find kinda frustrating about the "just buy your own music" comments that are always all over these posts is I have a very wide music taste and really like to keep up with new music too. I have over 12,000 songs saved on Spotify. I'm also broke, jobless and homeless. I'm sorry but doing that isn't a viable option for me. I would love to be able to support all these artists but the best I can do is play their music a lot on Spotify and spread the word about them to others. I also go to a lot of gigs but so many acts that I like are big enough that they play big venues and are very expensive to see because of it.
Download all you can. You can always stream from audio to a WAV or MP3 and keep that. Or download from YouTube.
Once you actually have a copy of your music you have options. But while it is all inside some asshole's walled garden, you are at their mercy
What about Deezer?
I believe their founder (or CEO?) also has his own controversy. Based on what I've seen so far, Quboz is the best choice if you really need to use a streaming service.
A few months ago I was looking for a Spotify alternative and tried out Deezer, Tidal, and Qobuz. Deezer would have no idea what song I was just listening to on my computer if I switched to my phone. That was a deal breaker. Tidal was pretty good, but lacked collaborative playlists. I landed on Qobuz and am pretty happy with it. The one slightly annoying thing is I've seen a few cases of bands having albums mapped to them that aren't actually them, but some other band/artist with the same name. Not a deal breaker for me, just slightly annoying and something that will hopefully get cleaned up over time.
Spotify just can't help but to take Ls.
Welp, no more Spotify for me
I thought people were already boycotting Spotify?
Man, y'all are weak-willed.
ive litterally never used spotify... just never really got the point when youtube has all the music I want.
Its for people who used to buy their songs on iTunes. Technically a better service, but still shit. Its easy to pirate though. Reminds me of adobe software from the 2000's.
I rarely listen to a whole album nowadays.
Pretty much since streaming music has been made easy I've seen people make playlists of thousands of artists. I don't see how you can easily achieve this by pirating or buying the albums.
Making playlists on youtube I guess, but it's not nearly as polished an experience.
There was Spotube that did a very commandable job at making a Spotify-like UI for that, but it was still way jankier than using the real thing. And it stopped working (might be back up)
I'm not trying to be a contrarian, but I see comments saying there are good alternatives all the time and I have yet to find one
You can pirate Spotify directly.
Other than that, I prefer albums because the songs are part of a whole. Giant playlists are convenient, but often vacant of connection or meaning, which I think is what is important about art.
As far as pirating directly, thats not difficult to do but you do have to download everything on purpose so it takes work at first.
Personally, I think artists will more and more simply sell their own music without middlemen. The big pop acts will probably always sell out though, but thats not really music if it can't be played live without prerecorded tracks.
On desktop I use Spicetify, it simply removes all ads (among other things)
Are you referring to an Android app? Last time I checked it had stopped working, I should check again.
For downloading there's deemix also
Its mixed bag for sure reliability wise. Thanks for the link to the desktop one though thats better anyways.
I've stopped paying for Spotify years ago, switching between Tidal/Deezer/Qobuz a few times, but I still use it on my PC (spicetify...) It's what I want from a desktop client. And the "discover weekly" feature recommends me great music. Using youtube really doesn't cut it (also it's getting increasingly difficult to use)
I left Spotify with king gizz and haven’t looked back
Already done.
If you weren't boycotting them when they bought exclusivity with Joe Rogan you're part of the problem.
I wish headlines (and journalists in general) wouldn't be so afraid about repeating words and names.
My first question was "Which streamer?", and now I'm thinking they probably just didn't want to use the name "Spotify" twice.
I've been noticing this trend over the last few years. They also seem to be using pronouns less.
Gaming journalists will write about Mario and say something like...
"Super Mario Odyssey is the newest Mario game where the red-hatted plumber takes on Bowser! The Nintendo superstar has all kinds of new abilities, and the mushroom-chomping, goomba-stomping hero even has a new friend!"
It just makes things annoying to read, imo
I quit Spotify when they gave hundreds of millions of dollars to vaccine denying cocksuckers. But I still see people using it, and they all seem to be gay men, or oblivious women.
What?
I know Apple Music isn’t much better, but I think I can convince some of my Spotify friends to make the switch with this article. I could also be convinced to switch to Tidal. I think they pay more royalties per stream than Apple Music, and Apple Music pays more than Spotify (correct me if I’m wrong).
Again, I know Apple Music probably also has issues, but Apple doesn’t seem to be in the business of selling your data… yet. They also have less bloat (e.g. no AI DJ) compared to Spotify. However, I’m not happy about Tim Cook sucking up to Trump.
Jellyfin, and similar makes a lot of sense for movies, but imo, music is released too frequently to maintain an up to date library. I do buy physical copies of my favorite albums, but streaming is really nice for music discovery.
Wasn't using it, but I had it installed.
Key word: had. I just uninstalled. Fuck fascists and anyone who supports them.
People still using Spotify?
boycott is for weaks, go damage them, filter ads out to cut their profits and still use to drain their servers.
The tough part is that my parents are on my Spotify family plan and not tech savvy at all to use anything that I would self host. I know I can patch Spotify app and self host content on my PC but there's no way they could troubleshoot anything if something broke. For them Spotify works and me not using my own Spotify account isn't going to accomplish anything even if I disagree with the companies decisions. I like Spotify and would like to keep using it because I have found lots of new music through it but it's a tough spot. Companies take advantage of users that don't know how to do anything else.
Why can't you & your parents live without Spotify? I've lived without it my entire life and I promise you nothing's lacking. Is your idle comfort & convenience more important than doing your part to STOP OUR CURRENT HITLER??
Users still using Spotify lol.
I quited Spotify and I don't get these kind of ads.
@technocrit Have never used Spotify because it does not treat artists fairly. ICE advertising is disgusting. Please reconsider your subscription if you care about such things.
Fucking propaganda as if it was pre WW2 again…
My tax dollars at work
Not HBO... Nooooo
I don’t think I ever paid for Spotify. I occasionally listen to podcasts that I download.
I made a tool to help with this. It sends encrypted Signal alerts when ICE shows up in your area based on community reports. Honestly been struggling to get the word out because everyone thinks it's spam, but it's legit and people are using it. iceheadsup.com Please check it out or share with someone it could help.
Damnit. Ok.
Interesting that it's not a problem when youtube runs the same ads.
I've been boycotting them for years. People here on Lemmy don't give a shit. So many shills and cowards. Fuck you all.
I don’t give a shit, honestly, but probably that is because I am not American.
Lmao
YouTube plays the same ads so I guess you’re a moron like the rest of us or whatever
That's what Revanced is for.
You are a moron.