Spotify Execs Bet People Will Pay for AI-Generated Music
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79 replies
I don't even want that garbage for free.
I wouldn't even listen to it for money (unless it is a lot of money
Right now I‘m enjoying premium family for free but if they start shoving AI in my face I won‘t use it at all anymore. I‘m already very annoyed by their obviously (and I‘m pretty sure technically illegally) paid for „recommendations“ on the home page and their stupid audio book credit system. I already wouldn‘t pay for Spotify premium myself in it‘s current form.
I had been enjoying premium for about 6 years now without being charged, but they finally tried charging me the other day and, since the card I had on file is 3 years expired, I am back to having friggin' ads 😩
how did you get free premium for 6 years?
I imagine it was a technical error on Spotify's end.
I use revanced for mobile and SmartTube for TV. Works pretty good
I was looking into revanced for it, but it looks like it doesn't work without ads since January. I'd just get MP3s but I don't have the storage for that many songs even on my PC, let alone my phone where I usually listen to music.
Music streaming companies with active anti-AI policies are: Qobuz, Tidal and Deezer
Bandcamp is always worth mentioning if you want to buy music directly
Bandcamp rules. Not only can you buy music but many artists also sell merch, sheet music, art and more. It’s a great, one-stop-shop to support your favourite artists.
And if you keep a look out, Bandcamp regularly email about “Bandcamp Friday” which are defined Fridays where they waive their share of the sale meaning the artist gets the whole cut!
Today is a Bandcamp Friday!
Lots of artists also do special things for Bandcamp Friday, like put up signed vinyls for sale.
I have been enjoying Qobuz, since quitting Spotify a couple of years ago. Everything's better quality, they have proper credits and PDF CD booklets, the classical music metadata is much better, it encourages you to listen more deliberately to music you choose, and I don't feel dirty for funding scumbags.
Qobuz is great! I've been using it for over 2 years now.
I've been using Qobuz for about a year and generally like it. There are a couple of things that are making me want to switch though. 1) Artists often have albums associated with them that don't belong. Check out the Australian band Jet as an example. 2) Some artists I like have albums on both Spotify and Tidal that they don't have on Qobuz for some reason
This is annoying, I agree. Join Qobuz Club and upvote suggestions to prioritise cleaning it up.
Contact the acts management to pressure the label to release on Qobuz too. It should be in their interest.
I am part of the club and upvote any comments I see about catalogue clean ups. I've also posted a few on my own, but haven't gotten any acknowledgement on them from the Qobuz team.
Edit: I know a lot of people have issues with AI, but this is a case where AI could scan their entire catalogue and provide a clean up list they would just have to confirm/deny and it would be way faster than their team going through it.
I have emailed the label to request the missing albums also be uploaded to Qobuz, but did not receive any response on that. I have also submitted the request through Qobuz for the albums to be added to and received the automated reply email, but who knows if anything will happen with that.
Yeah, me too. It's annoying how Qobuz encourage user feedback with a special app and then just go stone wall about it. There are several threads about common problems in their services and they don't give any response at all. I hope it gives some pressure anyway with the updoots for common annoyances that can no longer be ignored.
AI is overkill. All that is needed is matching acts and albums to one of the free or proprietary datasets online. Some API integration and maybe licensing and it's done. It's just a decision that somebody up the organisation needs to make that they don't for whatever reason.
Yeah I switched over to Tidal and I like it so far. The music quality is good and there's just a simple toggle in settings to turn off anything to do with AI.
The recommendations aren't as good as Spotify's but I'd rather deal with that than a barrage of AI bullshit.
I’ve found the recommendations in Tidal to be more hit or miss but overall better than Spotify since I switched almost a year ago. I felt that Spotify was pushing the same songs over and over, and I’d only find 1-3 new songs I liked a month. On Tidal it seems like the Daily Discovery playlist focuses on a genre I’ve been listening to, and while often none of the songs stick out, when it hits I’ll find 1-3 new songs that day, and it hits multiple times per month. It took a few months to get to that point though.
That's good to know! It could also be because I just switched over, so it doesn't have enough reference yet for what I'm listening to.
Bandcamp FTW
Also today is Bandcamp Friday, Bandcamp does not take fees on purchases today.
Sadly for much of what I listen to outside of band camp none of those Services have what I want typically. It's been a few years. Maybe I need to reassess it. But there is a reason I ended up on YouTube music. Just the breadth of the content. And the fact that you get regular YouTube ad free with it also isn't a bad deal. That's probably why I watch Mostly YouTube anymore these days.
But I found myself having to skip more and more past AI artist that pop up randomly in the queue. Something I wouldn't mind not doing. If any of these other services actually catered to the niches that I enjoy. Which is very hit or miss unfortunately. Last time I checked even Pandora and Spotify didn't have a lot of what I listen to.
Oh I have about 6000 albums shared via NFS across my home network. And a fully automated icecast / shoutcast station with liquid soap on the back end controlling bumpers advertisements playlists Etc Over The Wider internet. I need to get that part set back up again eventually. But bandcamp and YouTube are just great for discovery. At least for what I listen to.
I love bandcamp
spotify execs can suck my whole entire cock. finally unsubbed last year after the sub prices growing every year despite no fucking change to service. I'd rather fucking download all the music I want to listen to, which means your enshittified service is failing in its one goal. piracy is the way
It's goal is wealth extraction and for this quarter and next it exceeds them.
Their a bunch of absolute yeasty cunts.
Spotify pays real musicians pennies. Anyone who appreciates music should ditch them.
But .. they just deleted 75 million AI slop songs ...
https://tech.yahoo.com/audio/articles/spotify-deleted-75-million-ai-195459893.html
Guess they were just eliminating the competition.
Exactly... slop for me, not for thee
Not only that but they got data from all of that slop to see which slop got engagement and which did not. Now they can use that data to generate more convincing slop.
Already left Spotify after they gave millions to that traitor pedo supporter rogan
I cancelled specifically because of ai slop, and forced podcast garbage.
Some of those podcasts are hosted without the creators consent and even if they are asked to take them down, they put them back up after a while.
I specifically left because Spotify would not stop pushing drooling idiot Joe Rogan... and that is a podcast Spotify funds
same here
I won't even pay for Spotify. I've only bought one song since the advent of AI and it's from an artist I trust not to use slop
No shit with the company that has a CEO that calls music ~"content without production costs". Soulless middleman profiteering ghouls.
I'm glad I got rid of that shit years ago
Yup. I haven't used Spotify in years. I see these constant headlines and articles about Spotify doing stupid shit over and over and over again and wonder why people keep using that pile of trash when there are numerous better alternatives.
I've talked with Spotify users about the alternatives and how they are better and linked them to playlist transfer services so they can jump ship in as little as 15 minutes and they still refuse to do it. They'd rather keep using Spotify and constantly bitching about how terrible it is. They have effectively Stockholm syndrome'd their userbase at this point.
It's simple. because they are good consumers.
the advertising industry taught them well.
We were on a long drive last weekend and my wife was complaining that Spotify wouldn't actually shuffle randomly and that it keeps trying to get her to listen to AI songs and doesn't work well.
My response: You could stop paying for Spotify and use the free Tidal subscription I've been trying to get you to use.
Her: But it would be so hard!
Me: No, it wouldn't. It took me 10 mins to switch.
smh
10 minutes?! What did you do, watch a 8 minute tutorial video first? :D
Moving the playlists across, even with the tool they provide is a bit of a pain, I'm still having to occasionally remove bad tracks
I need to set up Revanced for my brother. He still uses Spotify
Betcha I won't. I ain't paying for shit from that garbage app.
lol I’m so glad I unsubbed back when they started letting ICEatzgruppen advertise on their platform. I paid for ad free, but simply knowing they were running ads for the all-American Stasi made me drop them like a hot potato.
Spotify would be wrong.
They're right, most people have shit music taste.
I have shit music taste, but only because I'm self aware enough to know I do.
You may be shrugging right now, going "well, I don't have shit music taste."
You do.
It's not shit, it's just easily hackable. If a real person recommends a song or band, I let most of my defenses down and try to find why it was recommended.
Consider those who just turn on artist radios, Spotify can't blacklist an artist they feature, to my knowledge.
Oh, there's an Ai group in your favorite artist's radio? Guess there always will be, and they won't be alone, why do that? Less they have to pay.
That has nothing to do with taste. You could be blasting Dave Brubeck and the next song is an Ai drum solo.
It’s crap. I’ve listened to a little of it. Generic, predictable, and full of issues like “singers” rapping out 30 seconds of high volume lyrics without a single intake of breath. But it fits in with the general overall quality of available music on Spotify. A sea of boring and low-effort junk.
Moving to Tidal as we speak. Enough is enough.
How are they all so incredibly out of touch?
I hope they "bet big" because they'll lose this bet. Everyone can see it but the billionaires.
spotify execs bet on land war in asia
I’m a fan of Rick Beato’s YouTube channel. It’s funny watching him review the Spotify top 10 as someone who is genuinely open-minded and who appreciates all forms of music. He wants to find something to like, but often struggles because they mostly have the same cliche drum beat, are short vamps instead of songs, etc. We already had enough low-effort, human-generated slop without AI taking it to a whole new low.
https://github.com/KRTirtho/spotube let's you use playlists while listening for free without ads.
I would not consume ai trash if they paid me.
These execs are saying the quiet part out loud. Duping customers is the name of the game now.
I brought this up with my cousin, who hates AI as much as I do. He says that he can't switch, because he has nearly 10 years of music on the platform.
The CEO may not be wrong in this case.
It's not super hard to leave Spotify if you are willing to invest some effort.
Use Exportify (free service) to download his playlists from Spotify as csv files. Or use something like Soundizz (paid) to directly convert between platforms.
You can parse the csv files and use something like Soulseek to create an offline library. Compress to aac or opus so you can take thousands of songs with you on your phone, or use your own casting service on a raspberry pi.
I'm aware it's possible. I'm saying that even people who hate AI may not leave because they don't have the bandwidth to abandon the service.
You don't need bandwidth to switch streaming services and import your old playlists though. For example a streaming service like Tidal tags all AI music and does not monetize AI generated music.
And if you weant the music straight on your phone, something like Opus 128 kbps is already considered high quality (we have come a long way since mp3). Let's say your cousin has 20 000 songs. That's about 60 GB in that form, which fits on most mid grade/flagship phones.
If you get Qobuz they pay for a 3rd party service to import your playlists. Did a reasonable job (mostly)
I'm a qobuz user as well, but the music selection just isn't as good as Spotify. It isn't an issue for me, but it will be a barrier to entry for some.
I’ll be honest. I listen to a lot of ambient/EDM while working, and I probably wouldn’t even notice if they started slipping AI content in, and probably wouldn’t be curious enough of the time to look into it.
I saw this on another thread but if you really want to help musicians directly, I'd recommend www.paymusicians.app.
I am not sponsored by them, and I have no ties to the company, but I (artist name Thassodar) signed up for them last week and just received like $.50 this morning.
May sound insignificant but, in the last 6 years I've been streaming, it's the fastest turnaround for any payout I've signed up for. And to get that fifty cents from Spotify I'd probably need several hundred plays. Consider them to support artists, and recommend artists you know sign up. I hope it's a better way to get money directly to the creator.
Maybe it's my frame of mind (I'm not "discovering" new music, I stopped paying for streaming when I realized 99% of what I was listening to was recorded in the last millennium) but I can't fathom how this would "turn free users to paid."
I don't want AI music; however Spotify has made great playlist of recommended artist of music I like.
There platform also works correctly for listening on WiFi which Tidal did not.
I think they will learn quickly that people don't like AI generated music. If people do end up liking it, then I'm sad because so far Spotify recommendations is something I talked highly about in past years.
It's too much crap now, the prices are going up, but the services are increasingly crap.
Last year, I cancelled my subscription and switched to self-hosting with Navidrome. It does what it's supposed to do, it does it well, no bullshit algorithms, and there are enough integrations to even provide a basic "discover this new song," "create a playlist the way I want," etc.
Yes, self hosting Navidrome is the way and I could never look back. I love it. Especially the Feishin app for Navidrome on desktop.
Thank goodness I decided to get out of this trap.
Or course they do, people have been guzzling down Boy Band crap for 80 years…
Of course they will! I was looking for a cover version of a famous song which led me into a rabbit hole of AI artists with a plethora of cover songs (all with no identity of their own), some with YouTube channels featuring "concert videos" by the artist (all AI generated) and they has comments that did not like AI of people celebrating the music and artist.
That Michael Smith dude got 5 years in prison for his AI music scheme.
I feel like this will hurt media companies in the long term. I can imagine that as this AI stuff escalates there will be plenty of services that will generate slop for you, so what will keep people paying for spotify?
i guess they dont care about that, that's a different quarter's problem.
Spotify execs learn they are wrong in 3, 2, 1...
I wont even pirate that...