innovate its product features
What. It’s meant to stream music. Tf do you mean?
The bad Ai dj. The car thing they rolled back. The new logo that’s the same as the old one, but now border. The cache that causes you to hear the same ten songs multiple times in a week.
the playlist saved for offline playback that will still try to connect to the internet for like 30 seconds when you open it while actually offline. the Discover Weekly playlist that will serve you the song that you’ve marked as “not interested” over and over and over and
I use Tidal and get annoyed because the shuffle clearly has a recency bias to it, and it keeps trying to recommend show tunes to me in my Daily Discovery, and the suggested albums for me has become considerably worse since the last update, but everything i hear about what Spotify has been doing has made me glad i switched over a couple years ago.
How good is tidal? Is its catalogue as good as Spotify?
I’ve recently switched from Spotify to Tidal and I’m happy with it…
Yeah, get a trial and see though.
Tidal does have higher bitrate songs, also atmos and sony’s 360 audio and when done right the spacial audio sounds nice. Amazon music is decent too and it comes with prime.
The UI that gets progressively worse with each update, ruining what was perfectly fine before. The attempts to create the audio focused equivalent of TikTok.
The way shuffle constantly shuts itself off even when set within the settings to be the default. The shitty Smart Shuffle that adds in songs that break up my playlists terribly. The way it plays the same song again the first time you enable shuffle and hit next.
Yall are noting not even the reason why I went to Apple Music: no ability to actually consistently sync an offline library across devices, your own files.
The “repeat” option that activates itself is probably the most frustrating bug. I can’t recall the last time I legitimately wanted to listen to a song on repeat but it enable itself very often.
If I could simply remove the feature I would.
That’s never happened to me
The attempts to create the audio focused equivalent of TikTok.
That actually sounds pretty cool, how do I get that?
You do you I guess. If you scroll down far enough on the android app home screen it will start displaying recommended content in the typical short-form layout. I believe you can also click on a small rectangle on some playlists and it will do a similar thing.
The cache part pisses me off. I’m fucking paying you to stream me music. Not the same fucking shit over and over and over again.
I really don’t get it. Users have been begging for a true random shuffle for years. It’s not a hard thing to implement.
True random shuffle would be a terrible idea. No one wants the same track showing up multiple times in a row, which would not be uncommon in true random shuffle.
I think the idea is that the play order for the entire playlist is shuffled on each loop, so you play all songs in one order, then it shuffles, and you play all songs again but in a different order.
^this - why is it so hard to implement sigh
You can make a truly random shuffle that doesn’t do that in like five pibes of code. This is the most pointless objection to random shuffle that I’ve ever seen.
I mean, not really. This is actually a non-trivial topic, and true random is a really bad label for what someone actually wants out of a shuffling algorithm.
See the following engineering blog post on the subject: https://engineering.atspotify.com/2014/02/how-to-shuffle-songs/
Lines of code. Lines. Not pibes.
In unrelated news, I hate autocorrect. Pibes is not a fucking word.
I disagree that that’s what it means, IMO “shuffle” explicitly means each track exactly once. Pedantry aside, what I meant was a truly randomized order when you shuffle a playlist. It’s a major critique of Spotify among users and has been for a very long time.
If anything, they’ve taken features away from people lately. The quality is still shit. Lossless is still nowhere to be seen. Free users are losing options too. Yet they’re making record profits, and jacking up the price
Spotify actually doesn’t make that much profit, if any.
But the record labels are major shareholders and definitely influence the pricing structure. Spotify is essentially a marketing frontend for the record industry.
I am literally looking at their financial report for 2024 Q1 and it shows a profit.
They’re reporting 1.00 billion in gross profit as of Q1 2024 so yeah, they make money. It’s kind of impossible to compare much though since they’re the only freestanding music competitor that’s popular.
The closest comparison I can make is using Apples reported figures of making around $9.2 billion in revenue for its 93 million user base.
Meanwhile Spotify is making around 2.63 billion in revenue for its near 3x subscriber base estimated around 240 million. So I wouldn’t say they’re not making money, but maybe you can see why they think they can squeeze a lot more. Best to just unsubscribe honestly, they’ll keep doing this
So they’re leaving a lot of money on the table and getting criticized for their greed? I’m not sure how that’s a coherent position.
This is why they have record profits. They attack at both ends. Strip features, increase prices.
They did add audiobooks.
Though the interface for audiobooks sucks, so I hope they improve it.
The last thing I ever wanted from Spotify was audiobooks or podcasts. We’ve had excellent apps available for several years already, we don’t need half assed bloat added to (very poorly) replicate the same features
The part is what drives me mad. Podcasts and audiobooks are not that hard to do properly. You could very easily separate them into distinct apps or at least a special tab that acts like a proper player. Instead audiobooks are basically albums.
There’s a shuffle button.
On an audiobook.
Nah, what’s worse is that it’s only 15(!) hours per month!
Which for most people would give you a week of audiobooks to listen to in your commute to work.
Sure, but it also only counts book time. If you listen 2x it’s only 7.5 hours.
Yup this is what irks me most. I don’t think of audio books and music in the same context. Why the fuck are they mashing them together? Wrapped includes podcasts…
deleted by creator
Why not use a free/cheap pocketing app designed for it specifically? All the podcast apps I’ve tried are far better than spotify. UI-wise at least.
It’s the dumb goal of tech bros to create an “everything app” that does everything you want.
Their podcast and audiobook integration has been so sloppy.
AI generated music based off your likes and listening. It lines up with his statements. There was no innovation here. The same as every “disruptor” technology that just cheapified everything and one it was ubiquitous attempt to remove the core of the business.
They haven’t ever been profitable with just streaming music.
The only reason I keep Spotify anymore is that I’ve got a family plan with something like six accounts. I gave those to random acquaintances back in the Facebook days - people who are really into music.
If I cancel Spotify, there are five people out there who are suddenly and without warning going to find themselves without music.
I really don’t even remember who they are, but I feel like continuing the subscription is my community service
Pretty sure you can see their email address. This should give you the opportunity to message them stating you’ll be canceling the subscription. They’ll still be able to subscribe on their own.
I never did get a music subscription of any kind. Guess I am glad about that now. I just host my own server. Spotify never had a quarter of what I want to listen to anyways so I guess there is that.
Listening to Legion of Mary 12-10-1974 right now.
Spotify Premium in practice has new benefits!
More specifically: Lyrics that they took away from regular users some time ago.
They fucked it up for premium users too, though, since they’ve done that. Half the songs that I knew to have lyrics either no longer have them, or they constantly “fail to load.”
Seriously, damn, that’s feels like such a basic thing
I remember I used to have an add-on (at least I think it was an add-on; didn’t Spotify officially support those at some point?) that synced the lyrics of a song to the timestamp. It used user submissions to figure out the timestamps and edit the lyrics. It was pretty cool.
I’m so grateful, I have thousands of songs and just hit shuffle and made my own playlists. I always thought internet radio was overpriced 😅
Just for funzies, my Spotify family plan in Canada is $17.84 CAD, which works out to $13.05 USD at current exchange rate.
Usually Canadians are screwed harder on, well pretty much everything, so I’m surprised that Americans are paying more for this. Guess it’s “what the market will bear” or similar nonsense. Please discuss.
Just FYI, Napster’s family plan is only $14.99 CAD
I just download to actually have the songs. No DRM, No Ads, No song getting removed from streaming service… I have 500+ songs downloaded in opus format and it only takes 2.5Gb with many of them being longer than 5 minutes. I don’t know why people keep using these services while they keep saying they hate it because there are so many ads or why they keep paying for DRM (aka. not owning anything)…
Same here, been collecting since the iPod Mini days, 18,000+ songs and 100gb+ of data (almost all mp3 though)
Serve them up with Airsonic and i’ve got my own streaming music service i can use anywhere.
Yeah I also use Jellyfin so I can also stream them from anywhere!
Opus at max bitrate is only like 1/4th the size of FLAC. At that point, why not just store it in 10GB while keeping the full quality?
That definitely makes sense, maybe I should do that… thanks
Where do you download them from?
Not OP but I use bandcamp so I can pay the artist a decent amount rather than what ever Spotify does. Not sure if the new owner has increased the cut they take though
Napster
Tidal, Deezer and Quboz all have ways to download the content. The most stupid one being to record the output of the music player, but there’s tools that automatically get the full metadata too and ensure the audio is cropped to silence.
To do it in an intended way, Bandcamp and other services let you pay once to have access to the source file on your account “forever”.
For Spotify, there is
spotdlwhich downloads the music from YouTube Music, and then embeds the metadata from Spotify.Isn’t YTM like 128-192kbps AAC? I’d rather not even bother ripping that lol
Do you have any recommendations on what would be better to do?
If you must use Spotify, use ZSpotify with DOWNLOAD_REAL_TIME and hope you don’t get banned. Alternatively, use it with a burner account.
I prefer Deezer and pay for Deezer HiFi. Deemix still works to rip FLACs from there.
Thanks, I certainly don’t have to use Spotify.
Musician here…
…I tell people to download both the mp3 and the wavefiles from Bandcamp. Sometimes Soundcloud has a download option (depends on the artist). I still buy CDs where I can.
Soulseek is still a thing.
YouTube Music
I cancelled spotify a few months ago, when getting some free Apple music with my Airpods. Not the best, but still happy that I don’t have to use Spotify anymore, will probably shop around after my free period with Apple is done
I was satisfied with Apple Music myself (until I no longer had need for it), but I keep hearing that Tidal is one of the better services if Apple doesn’t quite cut it for you. Supposedly they have a reasonably fair cut for the artists compared to Spotify, and also good audio quality (to be fair, Apple has high quality available too, if you enabled it in the settings)
deleted by creator
Honestly €56 million in profit seems small for an operation as massive as Spotify that has so throughly saturated the market. That does not make it excusable at all. I’m just surprised to see that number.
Who cares what the “company” does when, as CEO, you rake almost $400 MILLION a year
https://mywage.ca/salary/celebrity-salary/daniel-ek
PS: and this is while receiving “no salary” (which they sell as if they were running a charity and meager $1.4 million in “other” compensation
I mean I understand there are a lot of caveats to that statement. Like I said, just kind of a surprising number. A company as massive as Spotify can have its revenue shift 10 of millions easily within a year, which means with a little nudge they could easily become unprofitable.
It would be like, I don’t know, realizing after you’ve paid all of your bills and groceries everything you have $300 at the end of the month. Not a lot of wiggle room. This isn’t sympathy and the stakes aren’t the same lol, I’m just saying their margins are not as high as I would have suspected.
A cursory search shows me competing figures - 7000+ and 15000+ employees. Both are very, very large numbers. Id have guessed they make hundreds of millions a year, not mid-8 figures. That’s probably what their payroll runs for 3-6mo.
Edit: for perspective, they have over 200mill paying subscribers. If ~800,000 left they’d be break even. That’s like .4% of their MAU’s.
It would be like, I don’t know, realizing after you’ve paid all of your bills and groceries everything you have $300 at the end of the month. Not a lot of wiggle room
Well that depends… if I have only $300 at the end of the month but I have already paid every bill and allocated $1,000,000 for entertainment, another $1,000,000 for personal expenses, another $1,000,000 for pet services, etc etc etc… the $300 left mean nothing… why do I need “wiggle room” when I can not just wiggle but literally run in every direction until I get tired and still not hit any limits?
The relatively small profit margin is a PR strategy… one that is working well on you giving you the false impression the company is “tight” when in reality, they are milking every bit of it before you get to that figure.
It’s not good PR because it makes me think they’re poorly structured and poorly allocating their money lol
if it makes you not buy into their subscription, then it’s poor PR… if it makes you think they are not greedy fucks, then it’s good PR
None of this impacts whether or not I pay them. It makes me think they are wasteful and greedy. Those are not mutually exclusive
I’m sure there’s tons they’ve made that their accountants have managed to classify as something other than “profit,” so they don’t have to pay taxes on it
First reasonable response I’ve gotten lol
Most shitty companies do it with stock buybacks
Profit is AFTER they pay their CEO and other suit’s
Yes I am aware.
But is that net or gross?
If it’s profit it’s net by definition. Gross can’t be profit. You’re thinking of revenue. Gross is total revenue before any costs deducted.
You may need to realign your usage of phrases. Their 2024 Q1 financial statement has a line for “gross profit” and “net income/(loss) attributable to the owners of the parent.”
I’m going off the number from the article that your dude linked. The guy said “€58 million in profit.” Totally possible he’s wrong though.
I’m just saying there is a difference between “gross profit” and “net profit” because their official financial statement differentiates between it.
I dunno, my QuickBooks shows me gross and net profit. Gross profit is your income after you remove cost of goods sols (COGS). Net profit is what the org nets after everything else like payroll and other expenses.
Yeah you right. Don’t bake and lemmy, folks
They are usually losing money
https://www.statista.com/chart/26773/profitability-development-of-spotify/
That’s insane… 1000 plays per track?
told them to go fuck themselves and canceled my subscription yesterday. they really didn’t stop to consider just how many options people have for music
I was telling people to try music on spotify and youtube, and then buy it on bandcamp etc. Download a copy. There sometimes comes a time when labels crumble, or streaming sites go bankrupt.
So now that Tidal has moved its Hi-Fi tier price down to match Apple’s wtf is Spotify doing? Charging more than the competition, paying artists less, and not even offering lossless?
And as long as people keep subscribing to them, they’ll March right along collecting that sweet money.
Spotify is less vulnerable to customer churn compared to TV/movie streaming services, as users are less likely to switch music streaming providers due to the hassle of rebuilding playlists and losing personalized recommendations.
There are services for transferring playlists
I predict in a few months, they will put their API behind a paid tier.
deleted by creator
Data takeouts are non-optional under the GDPR, so I would be very surprised if that happens.
yes but often there are some mixups… which is a PITA for those of us with ~10K+ songs
I’m an album man so while I have beyond that many tracks it’s more seemless for me.
Would you happen to have one to recommend to switch from Spotify to apple music? I’m thinking about moving but my playlists are keeping me from leaving.
I moved all my music using the SongShift app on iOS which was super convenient. At least when I bought it, it was a 1 time cost of like $5, not sure about now. But it matches songs and lets you see which ones don’t line up and then copies the playlist over exactly the same.
I used TuneMyMusic when I switched to Amazon Music a few months ago. It worked really well. It costs $4 or $5 to subscribe for a month but it’s a huge time saver.
And they don’t offer music videos like Apple does
Spotify has over 200mill paying subscribers and over 600mill total I believe. They an afford the peel off unfortunately.
From what I can tell Tidal won’t even publish their subscribers so it must be pretty small.
Nvm I think my app bugged out
deleted by creator
IIRC this means the family plan costs more than 3 individual plans did like 3 years ago. If not more than it saves you like $.50 in comparison. I would try and look it up but Google search has also turned to shit so I don’t feel like dealing with it.
The Internet just isn’t fun anymore.
Indie internet is better, hi Lemmy
They’re still scraping us unfortunately
Meanwhile every update makes the app worse
Round #451 of telling people to stop using Spotify and consider one of the many, better alternatives.
I mean they do have one good thing going for them: you can separate the art from the more controversial artists, because you know for sure the artist isn’t getting a damn thing from spotify
What are some alternatives? I’ve heard Tidal is one of the better ones. I’m not necessarily opposed to piracy/ripping my CD collection + self-hosted streaming, but if I can pay someone else for the convenience I’d rather do that.
Do any services have a comparable family plan too?
You should list some.
Deezer, Tidal, Qobuz, Apple Music
How are any of these better? They seem to all be shitty in all the same ways. Also I have no intention of giving Apple a single dollar, for a littany of reasons.
Deezer user checking in. After Spotify’s Rogan deal I tried Pandora, Apple Music, and Deezer and the latter was the only one I could live with. I’ve been using it for three years and never plan to go back.
I purchase the family plan of YouTube Music. In addition to the music, it comes with ad free YouTube videos. I watch a lot of yt so it’s a no brainer for me. Never used any other streaming service so I can’t compare.
I would suggest anyone bothered by this to look into xManager.
Kind of love and hate that their website doesn’t explicitly say what it does. Like, if you can’t figure it out, you probably shouldn’t do it, even their GitHub is a bit dodgy on what the software is for, you can figure it out, but it’s never explicitly stated what it’s specifically meant for. “We help you install old versions of the app who must not be named” kinda bullshit.
I think it’s intentional to avoid eyes on taking it down.
This is the way.
