Can’t even seek through songs.

  • BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • ImpossibilityBox@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Holy shit, an actually reasonable take on Lemmy regarding subscription services. I genuinely couldn’t believe what I was reading and was waiting for the “LOL, JK! Pirate everything, they don’t deserve my money and fuck every ad and paid service ine the universe.”

      Thank you!

      • circuscritic@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        Some subscriptions make sense for the consumer, or at least justifiable.

        IMO a music service like Spotify is absolutely one of them.

        Turning heated seats in a subscription? Burn in hell.

    • Maalus@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      This is such a lame excuse. If the company never turned a profit - they shouldn’t exist anymore. Not shittify their service till nobody uses it.

  • kratoz29@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • acceptable_pumpkin@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • iamgoingberserkk@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

      • Meltrax@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Literally the opposite. Pirating takes time, effort, resources, and I lose access to “everything” - I only get what I take the time to download and store.

        If a product I pay for provides a great service, I’ll keep using it. It’s worth the money for excellent user experience and convenience. It’s when they keep upping the price while reducing the features or content that bothers me, and that’s when I’d rather spend the time pirating than paying them for a worse product.

  • gmtom@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I don’t know why anyone would give Spotify money when they pay Joe Rogan to spread vaccine disinformation and union bust.

    I use YouTube music. It’s far inferior to what Google Play Music was, which was literally perfect, but it’s not Spotify and I really think it does mixes best of all. Apple Music is so very Caucasian, I gave it a shot but it just comes back to the whitest music possible every time.