Can't even seek through songs.
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https://medium.com/brain-labs/why-spotify-struggles-to-make-money-from-music-streaming-ba940fc56ebd
For anyone wanting to rage at Spotify, I'd remind you that Spotify has never actually turned a profit. They lose money on every single paid user, and even more on free users. Tl;dr of the article (sorry for the account-wall) is that Spotify is contractually obligated to give around 70% of every dollar it makes to the labels, who then eat most of it and give a few crumbs to the artists. If you want to support artists, buy their merch, their physical albums, and go to their shows. If they're independent, they may actually see some non-trivial revenue from streaming as well.
Spotify may also be contractually restricted in what level of access they can offer for free - licensing can be very messy - and they also do need to create enough incentive to actually make the paid tier worth it. Given that a month of access to essentially all music ever costs about as much as a single CD did back in the day, it feels like pretty incredible value to me, personally. Yes, you can of course always pirate if you want to deal with the hassle of that, but you should at least keep it in the back of your mind that, if everyone did that, we wouldn't have any music to enjoy at all. If the cost of streaming or buying music is genuinely a burden, I wouldn't blame you that much for pirating, but if you can afford it, I do think the value really is there, if only to avoid the sheer hassle of pirating and managing a local library. And if you really think that streaming is just uniquely corrupt and terrible, CDs haven't gone anywhere.
But if you can easily afford to pay for music and you still refuse to, at least have the honesty to just admit that you want to get things for free and you don't care about anyone involved in creating it getting paid for it, without dressing it up as some kind of morally righteous anti-capitalist crusade. It's normal to be annoyed about having to pay for things; we all are, and we all want to get things for free. Just admit that instead of pretending your true motivation is anything deeper.
Well, if you don't pay with money, you're paying with your attention. Do you think they create this huge service just for funsies?
Tbf, out of all media streaming services across movies, series, and music, Spotify has the highes bang-for-your-buck. It's still like Netflix at that time when there was only Netflix and you could watch almost everything on one platform. I still buy records that I like on physical media like vinyl, but Spotify is such a great deal for convenient listening to all music out there.
What a shame it would be if this drove more people into using those awful cracked versions of the Spotify apk that give you most of the premium features without a premium account. Truly the godless heathens over at xManager (https://github.com/Team-xManager/xManager) must be rejoicing over this.
Cheers, I knew about ReVanced but this is a new one for me
might have something to do with their motto “don’t make us popular”
Real shame.
In terms of privacy is xManager safe? When I downloaded it I was faced with an ad which seems sketchy for a GPL licensed application.
Been using it for years. The ad thing is recent but it’s safe. They have to make money somehow and it was only an ad when I was downloading the app off of their updater. After that the actual Spotify app is add free.
You can also turn off the ad in the manager via a toggle.
This wants me to download TikTok…
If I were to use this, would I use a Spotify login/password with it? I’m not clear if this app allows you to save playlists and favorites, etc.
It builds a custom spotify apk that you install. Except for the parts it cganges, expect it to be the same, logging in included.
Who tf uses Spotify without a premium account?
I’d rather pirate that shit that use it for free (I like to hit next all the way).
IMHO Spotify is one of the few services that it is worth to pay.
If they gave half that profit to the artists on there, maybe. But they give about 10% iirc. Give up with these services and just buy the CD, vinyl or whatever. Then listen to your hearts content.
Buying or even pirating literally thousands of albums just wouldn’t be feasible for me. Way too much cost, effort, and time. Spotify is well worth it for me as a consumer.
i listen to too much music to be shuffling around CDs while driving
We don’t rip CDs anymore so you can store them as MP3s on your phone? People have forgotten how to do that? I’m getting old.
no i do that too with stuff that isnt on spotify. most recently with Dagmar Krause’s Tank Battles. but, again, i wouldnt have enough storage space to download all the shit i listen to even if i had all of the CDs ripped
Damn, you must have a massive collection. Solid state memory is fairly cheap these days, even for flac.
i mean i could get a TB sd card for my phone. but im lazy and spotify has most of what i need right there lol
and yeah i have a massive collection, 25,378 songs liked on spotify
Quantity over quality eh? I hope that doesn’t happen to subscription-based gaming.
everything i like is quality
How much can I get for one of them bananas?
Many people that did that have careers and families and a general opportunity cost for their time. Ripping CDs is so unbelievably far down on my priority list it doesn’t even register.
What? It takes 5 minutes to pop your new CD in the drive and let Windows Media player handle it for you, track information included.
Priority isn’t about LOE.
Good for you.
I have a 1TB sdcard
can i borrow it for the forever
“And so Bittorrent was invented…”
Buy it on Bandcamp and download it. Or rip it to mp3/flac. Then blutooth the phone to the car radio.
bluetooth is not on my car. also Bluetooth quality sucks. also id be spending thousands of dollars to buy all my music
Not all artist release songs on albums or the albums were limited release and are hard to find, but spotify has them.
Go to Bandcamp. Its usually there. Of course that site is in the shit for now thanks to their staff being laid off after a buyout, but the bands are still getting the money.
I buy the the digital release to support the band and just keep listening on Spotify. At that point the band won’t get more money out of me for the songs and I get the covience of Spotify
Removed by mod
Cough cough xmanager cough cough.
On github or xmanagerapp dotcom cough.
I checked that and still don’t know what it does…
Basically enable those very features that were disabled in the free version
As I understand it it gives you features that were available in earlier Versions? Sounds nice! But I guess it won’t give you access to premium content right?
That would enter the pirate subject wouldn’t it?
Anyway yeah using the free option provided by Spotify seems like the worst case scenario.
Yeah, it’s basically premium except you can’t download the songs and something else I can’t remember.
Pretty sure they also have a version that can download for offline playback with some caveats
It also doesn’t include the car thing either.
I agree with you here. There may be a better service out there, but I certainly haven’t found it yet. I use Spotify in my car (via USB to my phone), in my kitchen, master bath, living room and kids rooms on Google mini’s or Amazon Echos… And I don’t have to go out and download anything, it just plays what I want when I want it.
those who listen to podcasts. i can download them and they’re commercial free.
Huh, I think Spotify is a poor podcast client, compared with the competition.
really? what am i missing?
Well, I use Pocket Casts and it has volume booster and trim silence options, as far as I remember Spotify had none of those.
I use it for podcasts. Those exist outside the normally restricted music playlist stuff.
Never paid for a service which uses internet,NEVER!
I think Real Debrid is worth it.
I have the family premium plan and honestly love it. I haven’t downloaded an mp3 in years because Spotify is so convenient. As far as subscription services go, this one is top tier for me.
Now when we look at movie streaming… well that’s what the music streaming could have been like. What an absolute mess.
Enshittification everywhere. Selfhosting forever
I've been using Spotify for almost 2-3 years. The only thing I can say is the app gets DEGRADED EVERY YEAR!!! They do their best to bring more and more bugs with each update. I'm done with Spotify shit, also they removed a lot of regional songs from my country. The only reason I pay for Spotify is because I can download/rip their music and store it on my Plex Server.
Spotify in on itself is worth paying for BUT…
Their app for android sucks blue donkey balls and I’d happily pay more if I’d get to use a slightly less retarded cousin of this app.
The other but:
Spotify in on itself is not very bad right now and basically could and SHOULD continue as-is forever.
However, the economic system as it currently is requires it to continually come up with new crap that nobody needs nor wants (see also all Microsoft software that went from absolute shit thirty years ago to absolute slimey shit with lots of useless but pretty ding dong bells attached to it with a nice camera hidden inside to spy on the insides of your butthole) and it only a matter of time before…
Some exec gets hired there that promises to double their revenue, then implements some shit that will double their revenue once, gets this exec his bonus upon which he immediately quits to go to the next company to fuck over with a pineapple, leaving Spotify with a huge exodus of users, a dwindling service, and two years later it’s dead.
I’ve seen this cycle with too many large companies, and it’s the same story over and over. Be it Boeing, Disney, just about all large game companies, etc etc…
Spotify app sucks in the sense that they keep refining their UI to reduce the number of buttons on the bottom of the screen. When it first started they were five, then after a while there became four. I got used to where everything was, so of course with the recent update there now three so I have no freaking idea what is what.
Is there a term for this?
I really see this fucking our economy
Cory Doctorow calls it: Enshittification
It’s pretty fitting I think.
Or “platform decay” if you need to talk to your grandma about it.
“Enshittification,” an inevitable part of the cycle of capitalism…
Not really the right use I think. It was coined specifically to describe platforms’ lifecycle of changing who they benefit. What’s above is just constant churn in the attempt of infinite growth or just hanging onto market share trying to decide what people want (or tell them what they should want).
A paid subscription service like O365 or spotify isn’t too similar to the advertising “business partners” of a social media platform like tiktok. Of course language is descriptive rather than prescriptive but I feel like overusing this term loses the perceptive observation (and the message Doctorow wants to promote) of how these businesses work. Microsoft adding new features and spotify changing things to either make their app management easier (they claimed that’s why they got rid of android widget for a while) or promote their own stuff doesn’t seem to fit.
Normal part of monopolization.
Well it’s not “In on itself” anyway
Why would you pay for Spotify over Napster?
Like is there a reason to?
Napster still exists? Didn’t know. But in any case, I have no problem with paying for a service when I have the resources to do so, and if the service is not trying to fuck me over.
Spotify app sucks, but at least so far they haven’t tried to fuck me over. Once that changes (and it will) I’ll happily torrent music, just like movies.
Napster is a paid legal site now
I have no idea what napster offers, does it have the same amount of music and family plans available?
Yes, it costs less and has higher quality audio
Their app for android sucks blue donkey balls and I’d happily pay more if I’d get to use a slightly less retarded cousin of this app.
Can you still not play a playlist in order on Android even with premium subscription. I cancelled my subscription when even viewing the playlist and tapping the first track started playback with shuffle turned on.
On android, have premium, use the app a good amount, never encountered the issue you are reporting.
When I first started with Premium, you could toggle shuffle mode on or off before hitting the play button. But then that went away and there was basically only a Shuffle button, so you had to do the sequence like here (from 2022)
https://www.drmare.com/spotify-music/play-spotify-album-in-order.html
but at first you didn’t have to do this bit
Step 4. Open the “Now Playing” page and turn off the “Shuffle” button.
And I think at that time the forums were saying it was only the Android app where you had to do this (and I want to say that desktop/web app were indeed not putting me through these shenanigans at that time, was a probably 4-5 years ago, maybe more). And then when I further had to start doing that 4th step of disabling shuffle in the now playing screen I had just had enough and cancelled.
Other posts from 2023 seem to indicate this is now the standard UX on all platforms
https://www.audkit.com/spotify-music/spotify-play-album-in-order.html
https://integraudio.com/play-songs-order-without-premium/edit:
Here’s a community thread going back to 2015 (“modo aleatorio” means “random mode”) with commenters chiming in through late 2022.
https://community.spotify.com/t5/Android/Playing-albums-in-order/m-p/1262705
So I guess I may have my timelines a bit off, but I strongly remember the Play button originally having a little sub-button overlay you could tab to enable or disable shuffle before hitting the Play button proper.
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Thanks. I’m genuinely curious about the UX that @StorminNorman has now. Premium users deserve a better experience.
Not normin but I’ve never had a problem either. Here’s the screen I get when I open a playlist, can toggle between shuffle, smart shuffle and normal to the left of the play button.
Does yours look different?
Thanks! Glad to see they are no longer being complete idiots about it. I haven’t looked at it since cancelling, but yeah it was very different. They had completely removed the control to enable or disable shuffle from this view, if you hit the play button it was going to shuffle, period. If you hit a track to start playback (in shuffle mode) on that track you had to then go to the now playing view and disable shuffle.
Same here. Was surprised to read this comment, went to the Android app, played a few playlists. Shuffle is off by default, first song on a list starts playing. Switch it on, go to another playlist, it is still off by default. Is it some a/b testing by Spotify I am lucky not to be part of? Would certainly cancel my sub if that was the case.
I mean, there were quite a few elements of the ux I was mad about, like promoting stuff I’d never want to listen on the front page just because Spotify paid a gazillion to creators, but shuffle is not it.
You can pay a playlist in order on Android only if you Premium I believe.
I could not without a stupidly bad UX which was reportedly limited to Android while desktop/web/iOS were sane about it. I had been giving Spotify a try after Google squashed Play Music for YouTube Music and I canceled Premium and went to Google with YouTube Premium specifically over this issue.
From what ive seen it’s not souch that Spotify doesn’t allow you to do that, it’s just that their app is developed by some junior devs and managed by managers who have no idea about what a good app is. The result is, well, Spotify. It sucks, really, but at least gives me the bare necessities
What did Boeing do?
Dreamliner and 737 MAX, the latest being more egregious since people died.
Hire a bunch of managers that made loads of decisions that made Boeing a lot of money short term (like exporting loads of complicated jobs on programming flight computers) to Indian companies that were cheap and rather incompetent. The results were predictable, all 737 maxes being grounded for years, Boeing went closer to bankruptcy than ever before and those managers were already long gone with their big bonuses.
Tidal app is good but slightly off (mainly with offline mode, but probably there’s a way to do it once you get used to it. I just don’t need offline mode that often).
Apart from that it’s a solid player.
So they went to the same model Pandora used to use 15 years ago
Well the model Pandora still uses.
Pandora had a cheap yearlong plan. They scrapped people’s existing plans when they switched to monthly and wouldnt credit the remaining months on long term subscriptions.
Cancelled then and have never used Pandora since. Since then it has been Youtube for a specific song (until recently due to adstacking) or reliable nautical measures.
It was the reason I came back to Spotify when I decided to give Pandora a shot, way back when.
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Right clicking on the UI: believe it or not… premium feature.
Having an UI: premium feature. Genius move, I must say. Makes people more accustom to console.
The console is a UI
Technically you are right.
Right clicking, straight to jail.
Putting all the best features behind a paywall, opening up ad space as well as sponsored song spots… Where have I seen this before?
This is literally just commercial radio.
This is enshittification 101
Spotify is losing money, they gain nothing by having free users, if they convert some people to paying customers it's worth it for them. You can't expect to listen to music for free when license holders charge ridiculous fees.
Yet they can bring in the fear factor blockhead and other hot garbage for how many hundreds of millions of dollars?
It's funny, Rogan lost me as a listener right around the time he made the Spotify deal.
At the time I actually had Spotify premium too, I just wasn't interested in the conspiracy right wing shit.
Then I pretty quickly got fed up with Spotify and dropped my sub altogether.
YARRRRR.
When has he pushed right wing conspiracies? He seems to push back against them.
I will admit that he is a huge sucker simp for Tim Pool claiming to be progressive. Tim Pool repeats talking points for the Daily Wire and claims to be against the establishment.
Pretty constantly. I don’t have any examples on hand since I don’t generally waste my time with him, but anti-vax conspiracies were very common to see from him during the pandemic.
You’re joking, right? You’re asking when a known rightwing nutjob has spread rightwing nonsense…
He’s a California liberal who supports universal basic income, anti depressant use and thinks that Christianity is backward.
I mean there are ads… does the ad revenue not counteract the licensing fees?
How many people use ad blockers?
It’s not like when an ad is served and seen by the user, the user always buys the advertised product…
They should come up with ad blockers, that block the ad on the user side, but did the system behind it, the ad is still being served and no one loses anything.
I guess, this is, what the ones are doing, that still work.
It’s like the big awakening of licence holders. Like someone finally explained to them what the internet is, how it works, etc. All around, things are starting to get re-structured in the way it worked in irl before. The same charges and middlemen.
The gates to the open internet are being closed and the registers are being set up.
We’re also not a consumer anymore, but a subscriber. A subscriber can be traced, bound to your product for a lifetime.
I only hope that, unlike movies and series, big labels don’t get the idea of starting their own music streaming services and end the licensing to all existing music streamers.
For now it’s like Netflix in the old days. All streamers have about the same catalog in music.
You can’t expect to listen to music for free when license holders charge ridiculous fees.
Except I can - there are amazing artists out there releasing their music for free.
Spotify is losing money
Then why are they still in business? Oh, that’s right - because that’s bullshit. The make-believe capital of the company may not be increasing, but I’ll bet you the owners are lining their pockets.
They are a public company that was $4B negative free cash flow last year. The employees get paid, but I’d love for you to describe the mechanism where a board member derives value when the stock has tanked over the past two years unless you are saying that they are shorting it, which would be public information and get them kicked off the board typically.
… Except they gather your data and use it to try and make profit.
Say least radio required them to give genuine value to you. Radio had to give away shit and run contests to get caller info to figure out how many listeners they had, to get advertisers etc. It was a real business.
Spotify just buys the music catalogue and then forces you into their ecosystem.
Data gathered: you listened to the music we selected for you. Not the best data
Your search data and history.
Listening profiles: what tastes do you have, and what other things do you like? If you like Ray Lamontagne and Taylor Swift what else might keep you on the platform?
What % of people like X? What sorts of trends are happening in music? Chord preferences, rhythms, bpm, etc
All of this aggregate data can be sold to different companies, record labels, etc.
Search data no
Because you never choose
History no
Because you never choose
Listening profile no
Because you never choose
What you like no
Because you never choose
None of this can be sold if they never chose what to listen to. It’s data suicide
You pick songs, they squeeze ads and other songs in between (IIRC) and can gather data from how you interact with all of that.
You’re understanding the value of big data.
It’s why I reject all of these services. CDs, baby!
Ahhh okay. Yeah cds rock xD
Except it seems like you can still skip forward. That’s not something you can do with radio.
In addition, radio has those incredibly annoying station identification bullshit announcements like “You’re listening to JFRH, the cooooolest FM station in the greater Grumug metro area!”, often with annoying sound effects like lasers and so on. Even worse, they often interrupt the music to have an ad for the station, in which the station-ad claims that this is another hour of ad-free music.
It’s shitty, but it’s not as shitty as radio.
No, its worse than that as it pays far less. In the peak days of radio the artists/labels got a far larger cut than $0.003. It made many artists rich. These days who is really making a living?
It was already like this in Europe when I began to use Spotify in 2015. I do not hate it because the app’s free tier is already unusable to me due to the adverts.
Adverts set to 137pc volume is absolutely crackers.
The free version is completely useless on smartphone. I hope the limitations won't come to the desktop version
Tech Bros, reinventing classic technology with a veneer of techno babble.
