I have got to admit I canned Spotify subs years ago - but how are they managing to grow their subscriber base whn it is now going to be £11.99 in the UK? That is way, way too high for what it offers...
I've had a grudge against Spotify waaaayyyy back when it first launched as an app on the computer.
For some reason, the Spotify app on my Mac wasted a ton of resources and battery. And it made me so mad I've never used them since.
Then years later they made dumbass Joe Rogan the face of the company so fuck all that.
fuck Spotify, I only listen to downloaded flac and mp3 music and YouTube
When I got tired of Spotify's shitty practices, I looked into other streaming services that could compare, and honestly I didn't like any other offerings. So I said fuck it, I'll just download everything and play it locally.
What made the jump easy was a service called Spotidown, I even paid for the ad free version it was so convenient. You literally copy the spotify link for songs and playlists and it let's you download it. There's a couple different services like this, that will make the switch easier.
Does SpotiDown have a linux version? If not, do you know an alternative?
Not that im aware of, sorry. There is a Windows based spotidown software, but no Linux. Spotidown is a web based service normally, so you could definitely use it in Linux. I actually downloaded all my music from it using my phone!
For Linux you can use ZSpotify. It runs in the command line, just use a burner account to run as in zspotify because it's against their TOS of course, and might get you kickbanned. It also requires premium, but you only need it for a day at most, in order to run the download. Then you can cancel.
I've settled for Qobuz. Its discovery features are terrible, but it's basically a music storefront with a streaming library. High-quality, had basically my whole library and I can buy albums directly for download.
My main beef with spotify is their attempt to privatize and monopolize podcasting.
Spotify offers audio hosting and a large userbase, but does not provide rss. A few people I like are trapped in this, and I have no way to listen to their shows apart from using spotify. They refuse to understand that this is an issue, just like youtubers are ok with lock-in.
Podcasting infrastructure is not monopolized yet, like video is. It is even bigger problem for me than underpayid artists.
So boycotting, and if you undersrand that, you should too.
I don’t see why people hate Spotify so much. I used to go out and pay £10 for an album decades ago, multiple times a month sometimes. Now I can basically listen to anything for the price of an album a month. Plus, you can play Spotify on just about any device, even all the open source solutions that Netflix blocked like 15 years ago. On top of that it’s Swedish rather than American.
Spotify is still a thing?! Who knew… so many better options out there… hoping they crumble between artists leaving and no one wanting to deal with the drama and prices… they are about to be the “new vine” of pitfall and demise! Bye bye bye! Let the company burn!!
What better options are there? I'm old so don't know
if you don't mind downloading the music then Nictoine+, it's a GUI for soulseek. essentially Napster/Limewire. Anything you can get on spotify you can pretty much get there.
Keep in mind, like Napster, it takes time to find things you want. If you have your own server or hell even a cloud server with unlimited bandwidth and a good chunk of space you can put your music on there that way you can just stream it to whatever device you use to listen to music. Essentially a media server.
What pisses me off is that I can't have a family plaln associated with my main Google Workspace account. Because it's a Workspace account. So if I want to have a family plan for YouTube Music I need to have it associated with a gmail account not my workspace account. That's such bullshit, if you ask me!
You can rip MP3 files by using a Youtube-to-MP3 converter.
Just stop using Spotify entirely.
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