There is a good cracked Spotify apk out there.
Ribbit
128 kbps or 256 is what they use, no higher or lower.
Idk if it uses max quality but XManager is great. I don’t use Spotify
And yet they still don’t offer high quality audio.
I was worried for a second until I read the article. $1 more/ is not a huge price increase and I’m ok with it considering they haven’t increased the price as long as I’ve been subscribed and I’ve been subscribed for at least a decade. Also, I use Spotify daily…for hours at a time.
My Spotify bill literally just went through. Not sure if the family plan is going up as well, but it looks like I escaped it for a month if it does.
Yeah, I use spotify family plan for a years and it’s been so cheap for years. I don’t get how people can get even upset outraged about it.
To the people who are talking about Spotify not offering high quality, what’s wrong with Spotify Premium’s 256kbps AAC? That’s pretty dang high quality…
What do they mean first? Family plans went up from $15 to $16 in May 2021.
deleted by creator
error loading comment
Sounds like they need more money to purchase more podcasts to put behind their walled garden
Now I’m even more glad to have ditched the streaming sub model to buy music instead. Of course new releases may follow and go up by $0.10 per song.
Is the service you are using allow you to download the music DRM free, or is it only streamable?
If it’s the latter, might want to reconsider. Just like movies purchased on these platforms (Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, …), the license holder of the intellectual property (IP), usually the record/music company, can pull their content from these platforms at any time and you will not be reimbursed.
I’ve downloaded music for free for a while now. Mostly off of YouTube.
I get most of my music off of Bandcamp which is DRM free. The catch it that Bandcamp is mostly independent or small artists. For artists that are not on Bandcamp I usually buy MP3 albums on Amazon which are DRM free.
Everyone’s ‘okay’ with it until it’s $5 more. Then another $5. Then another $5.
This is what’s happening with all of these streaming services. They’re all doing the gradual boiling water trick. They know if they turned the dial all the way to hot to make the water boiling, metaphorically speaking, that nobody in their right mind would want to jump in. But if they just turn the dial slowly, let the temperature build up by hiking these prices bit by bit, it wouldn’t cause that much of a stir and people will be complacent with it.
removed by mod
It’s what the software industry calls dumping. Microsoft got in trouble for doing it with IE. They give something away for free or cheaper than the competition, basically subsidizing the cost with another lucrative division of the business. We make a bunch of money selling Windows, so we can afford to give away IE for free. And eventually we’ll put the competition out of business, then we can increase the price once we no longer have any competition.
And when someone is short on money or just too tired of keeping track of which services having what media and switching chairs all the time ? remember there is always the way of Jack Sparrow, and go sailing to the 7 seas. ARRRGH!
removed by mod
Easier to just use torrents.
I agree with you, but this site is full of people who hate the idea of companies having to make money and just steal shit all the time. It’s a lame attitude to have I think, they believe they are entitled to others work because they don’t like the distribution model.
It’s the quality of service that they offer, I don’t mind paying £60-70 a month for all my tv/movies but when the services don’t even work well, have terrible experiences and constant caveats to using them it’s just not worth it. Go spend the money on a self-hosted solution for a better experience and be done with it. It’s not exactly cheaper either it’s just less of a headache.
Some of us have very good reasons for pirating, I was paying for every service under the sun in the UK last year and I dropped them all simply because the moment I went on holiday practically none of them worked. At that point, I realised that they just weren’t worth it and I could build something out and self-host a far better service.
So I spent something like 2 grand doing that knowing at least I’ll never have that issue again, Piracy is always a service issue first and foremost and most of these services are crap. Netflix still at least has a reasonable interface and a good experience across every device but Prime video is atrocious, P+ is likewise terrible and don’t ever get me started on NowTV.
If i was in a righteous mood, i would say :
1 - Paying for consuming media older than 30 years is a perversion of the intellectual property idea, of supporting artists for a short window of time by artificial restriction of the right to culture and knowledge, and then to release the works to the public domain for the enjoyment of society. That the capitalists extended said window to be the death of the autour + 70 years, and then invented the idea of owning the art-invention-etc made by worker-artists is the real robbery of the situation. The current phase of studios trying to leverage AI tools (and AI tools that are essentially industrial scale pirates AND plagiarists) to make even more exploitation of artists is not surprising to me.
I forgot to add: the original north american idea was 14 years + 14 years, if the artist made a request for extension to get the 2nd period. Imagine if we had 14 years copyright now, everything made 14 years ago would be released and available to watch or even to make derivative works…2 - I am not north american, i am third worlder (Brazil). So, since i have the money and time to spend, i prefer to spend money on domestic artists and domestic works to benefit my nation, which is a lot poorer than western artists and populations, and with much less famous cultural works. Instead of giving (more) money to Disney, i can go on music shows or theater here, or sign up one of the local streamers, and pirate the foreigner’s content i want. Brazilian artists, that really need the money and attention, i try to pay whenever possible (if it is even available). For films made by disney (and equivalents) … they will make enough money from cinema release here and from their foreign rich country, no need to give then a monthly transfer on top. The book Open Veins of Latin America is something of a reference in this type of reasoning.
Switch to Apple Music. It has all the music Spotify has, the music is higher quality (all the way up to the highest quality you can get), exclusive radio shows you can’t get on Spotify, handmade playlists that are curated by a real human, a completely separate classical music site included at no extra charge, and more all for $10 bucks a month.
Nah, YouTube music.
Shit software (like utter garbage), iffy catalog, generally trash experience, but it fucking includes YouTube premium which is just incredible especially if you use vr.
Also they’re doing something weird where sometimes you can play video Playlists on audio only players like smart speakers. And you can always upload shit.
What are the data rates for streaming FLAC?
deleted by creator
So Apple uses ALAC, which is it’s own version. Do you mean how much data is used when streaming? If so, I’m not sure. If you mean what’s available it’s:
High Quality (AAC 256 Kbps)
Lossless (ALAC up to 24-bit/48 kHz)
Hi-Res (ALAC up to 24-bit/192 kHz)
TBF these days ALAC is not that much different from FLAC and equally lossless and open source/royalty free. It’s just that ALAC as used prioritizes file size over decode speed.
Where’s Spotify Hi-fi my man?
99% of the userbase doesn’t even know what Hi-Fi music is, so doubt adoption will be a thing. Look towards apple music, deezer, tidal, etc for hi-fi music.
Honestly hifi isnt practically useful. It’s extremely difficult to tell the difference between flac and 320kps mp3 (very high quality setting in Spotify). Most people can’t tell the difference even with audio equipment costing a fortune.
I used to be obsessed with getting the very best quality but frankly I gave up because there just is no discernable increase in fidelity (I use a dac+Sennheiser hd 600)
*Hifi isn’t practically useful for most listening
Exactly, most music industry stuff is overpriced or overengineered snake oil.
I’m using Qobuz atm, but I heard Spotify is better for playlists and discovering new music :/
Now might be a great time to join the Fediverse alternative FunkWhale. I’ve already built up a collection of nearly 10,000 songs on mine, almost all of which i downloaded from deezer.
Can you ELI5 Deezer abd FunkWhale, and how they replace what Spotify is offering?
Deezer is a streaming service like Spotify. Unlike Spotify, you can download directly from Deezer using piracy tools such as Deezloader. The user then presumably uploaded these to FunkWhale, so as to own their own local collection.
Holy shit, deezer still exists?
Yeah, I just unsubscribed 2 months ago because they removed their regional pricing which caused rates to increase 4-6x in some countries.
You can get ARL’s for free pretty easily, no need to pay either company: https://rentry.org/firehawk52
Yeah it’s where most pirated FLAC content comes from these days
I am still using private bitorrent sites for my music. Use Navidrome which seems to be the best alternative to the abandoned subsonic app and been collecting since 2005. I am somewhere near 300k in songs at this point. I tried Spotify once when I got 6 months free and found I was just to used to my way of discovering new music that I kind of hated how Spotify tried to do it.
I keep having hope that someone continues to improve the few apps we have left dedicated to personal music libraries otherwise one day I may have to switch.
Have you given funkwhale a try? I used to host subsonic years ago but i dropped it at some point, started my collection back up after i found out about funkwhale, It also has support for subsonic clients although i havent personally tried that myself yet.
Not personally, but I have seen it. I just have so much stuff I never found the need to have other people to connect with for stuff I am missing so it didn’t seem worth it. The only stuff I find I want is stuff that’s new release and get it within a few weeks when I have time.
I use navidrome and it uses the subsonic API so I’m guessing funkwhale should still work with it but I never looked into it. I host for myself really, my wife, father, and a few friends will use it from sparingly.
Spotify can increase the price to $100 and it wouldnt affect me because I download and store all my songs on my phone. Oldskool but works even when I turn off mobile data.
I just use YouTube Music and patch it with ReVanced for no ads. I used to download all my music too but it became too much hassle and I didn’t have time for it anymore. My music taste is also quite obscure so its hard to find high quality audio files for it. I still download my favorite songs for when I lose service though.
Tidal increased their prices recently too, by the same amount. And for that I’m getting the high-quality audio Spotify keeps on promising for over
a yearTWO YEARS now.Don’t get me wrong, Tidal still has its own problems but I don’t get why people still choose to have Spotify over one of its competitors.
My guess is most are like me, I use Bluetooth headphones and are on the go if I listen to anything. So higher quality doesn’t really matter.
I mean that largely depends on your headphones and whether or not they (and your playback device) support decent Bluetooth codecs
This is what I mean. This is why ppl would buy Spotify premium instead. Most do not hear a difference because of the devices they use. I am also pretty sure most do not hear much of a difference so that the price would justify it.
I actually hate Spotify as a company and find their app/service to be frustrating to use, thanks to them almost constantly dicking around with things.
But… I still use them. Why? Because unfortunately with my needs and preferences, it’s the only music streaming app on Android that doesn’t have a completely shitty experience when either using it with AndroidAuto, or when casting music to my home stereo receiver. Their app offers the best experience and features against all the other apps I’ve tried (and I’ve tried them all).
Tidal’s AndroidAuto experience is so minimal it’s not funny. No “like” button, no “add to library” button, no “dislike” button, so that killed them for me.
Apple Music on Android is quite buggy when trying to cast to my home stereo. And their AndroidAuto experience is also buggy and lacking too many features I want.
Deezer is pretty much the same as Apple Music from my experiences.
Amazon Music is just “Bleh!” overall.
Qobuz was really lacking in features I want the last time I tried it.
YouTube Music drives me nuts with the way it integrates with regular YouTube.
So I’m stuck with Spotify. And I don’t like it. But it’s the least problematic for me when compared to the alternatives.
If I used an iPhone (but I prefer Android), I’d switch to Apple Music in a heartbeat because on iOS, Apple Music actually works quite well.
My one hope, at the moment, is the forthcoming music streaming service from Tiktok. I have no idea how good/bad it will be, but I’m eager to try it when it hits the US, just because I’m praying it will finally enable me to kick Spotify to the curb.
/rant
Agreed. I love Spotify, but it ain’t for the UI. What a mess.
I used my YouTube username account for YouTube videos and my email account for YTM. It’s works perfectly.
I know what you’re talking about, using a single account for both ruins the already bad preference tuning. You would think they would address this problem with a setting by now.
320kbps is basically indistinguishable from lossless, even with insanely good headphones/amplifier/DAC/speakers.
LOL, audiophiles always want the best, far past the point of diminishing returns. Kinda like PC builders. (I’ve been guilty of the later.)
Audiophiles put PC peeps to shame imo. Never do i experience more overkill and gatekeeping.
but mah 192KHz!!!
Never mind that the first step in playing that stuff involves filtering all that extra shit out because a) I can’t hear it, and b) the speakers can’t reproduce it. All because I refuse to believe in the sampling theorem.
/s
You could use something like Qobuz or Deezer that actually has lossless audio.
As someone who tried to use Tidal for nearly a year because it paid better rates, it’s literally just 2 things: Artist Discovery and Algorithm Degradation towards a mass consumer mean.
Spotify actually feeds me tons of great indie artists I’ve never heard before. Tidal was a constant struggle to purge mass produced giant record label pop from constantly infiltrating every single station and it almost never gave me some little artist who maybe has 5k listens total. I get those literally every single day from Spotify though.
Yeah, this has been my experience as well. Discovery on Spotify is really good. I’ll listen to something new and be like “how haven’t I heard of these guys!” And then I check their artist page and yeah it’s like a few thousand listens total.
Spotify and YouTube Music are the only streaming services I have found that make it easy to integrate songs that aren’t on streaming into your collection, and I don’t like YouTube Music so Spotify it is.
It’s been over two years now. It was announced at the start of 2021 😅
