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!? 😑
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.
Music ads are nonsense
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!
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??”
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 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.
According to them here that’s basically an ad that is shown only if the algorithm “thinks” it’s your music taste.
Could help some smaller artists in your preferred genre to show themselves, while Spotify makes a profit.
No small artist makes a profit with Spotify tho, it might help with publicity but the majority of the money lands in Spotifies pockets!
Yes, in a sense it can lead to killing all these small artists instead.
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.
“What are you gonna do? NOT use us? lmao owned.” - Spotify
I just use InnerTune on Android.
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.
Deezer nuts lmao
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.
- Buy the mp3s.
- Download them (& backup to a separate location)
- Listen to them on whatever mp3 player you want.
- Gradually accumulate an enormous music collection that you can listen to for free forever.
Get 'vanced lmao
Android auto, doesn’t have an app
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.
Apple Music has better audio quality and pays artists better.
I use Spotify for the social features. Everyone I know is on it. Audio quality really doesn’t matter since I’m using bluetooth headphones anyway.
Plus I’d rather support an independent European company like Spotify than any of the big five.
I’d rather support an independent European company like Spotify than any of the big five.
I’d rather support the actual artists more. Apple pays the artists 3 times as much per stream as Spotify.
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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.
Arr.
Wow, I’m not gonna move to another subscription music app. If I see this, I’m back to mp3s and maybe something selfhosted.
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
PlexAmp and Plex are a good option
You are also the product coz they keep raping your data and selling it to advertisers on other platforms.
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
I use Google Play Music and it’s been pretty good. Haven’t noticed any shenanigans, no ads or anything of the sort.
You paid yes but… what if MORE money?
I hear you, tell me more!
But think of the poor billionaires!
If you don’t own the music/games/movies you pay for, you are always 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.
You have a license, not ownership.
This is nothing but bullshit copyright cartel propaganda. Quit spreading it.
It’s is not a propaganda, it is just what copyright law is. Unless people waiver their rights specifically, purchased music is always licensed to you.
Meaning you cannot share the file to anyone else, because if that was the case anyone could buy it and share it with anyone else, making the concept of purchases void.
The only fair alternative would be to make the music a one time purchase of
Price per user * Number of Expected usersso that the artist gets their fair money and people can buy it by pooling money.That is stupid, but that’s how copyright is.
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.
but I can use it offline with any software I want on any device whenever I want
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.
I think with Spotify the artists are the product.
