• ravachol@lemmy.world
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    23 days ago

    I develop kew (a terminal music player), so I’m biased, but I started kew because I rejected Spotify many years ago.

    I think that kew (or other private/offline music players) together with flacs from Qobuz are actually a great alternative to Spotify. Throw in some Bandcamp albums in there for great justice. Once you have a decent collection, you will feel liberated.

    I especially think that Qobuz needs more exposure.

    https://codeberg.org/ravachol/kew

    https://www.qobuz.com/

      • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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        20 days ago

        I’m only vaguely aware of them because one of their songs was used as the House theme, and I still thought the article was describing an upcoming cyber attack on Spotify.

  • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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    22 days ago

    As soon as I need to subscribe to multiple services to find my music I’m going back to piracy. Fuck that anti consumer shit.

      • Zink@programming.dev
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        21 days ago

        fun fact:

        Jellyfin works for music (and audio books) just as well as it does for movies and TV shows!

        And being open source, there are apps specific to certain use cases. Like on ios there’s Finamp for music and Plappa for audio books.

        It also streams in FLAC quality!

        • b34k@lemmy.world
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          21 days ago

          Plex also has Plexamp which works great for music, if you’re like me and got the lifetime Plex pass long ago.

          • Zink@programming.dev
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            21 days ago

            Lifetime Plex Pass here too. I got it long ago.

            I still migrated my server and uninstalled it once I tried Jellyfin for a few days because of the performance difference alone.

          • manmachine@lemmy.world
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            21 days ago

            yee, so far I haven’t found anything close to Plexamp on features that I want, that lifetime license paid for itself a long time ago

      • sircac@lemmy.world
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        21 days ago

        Probably I should develop other habits, but I find hard to improve the amount of good discoveries I got through Spotify with barely no effort… I do the effort to “obtain” those I like from time to time, yet still the effort is low, efficient and worth of it

        • Phegan@lemmy.world
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          21 days ago

          My fear is, when do those turn into trashy AI music so they don’t have to pay artists.

          • sircac@lemmy.world
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            21 days ago

            I have doubts trashy AI music can trigger me at all… in any case nothing is forever, so I am paying attention to the drift in the offer and quality, at current pace my forecast is that within 5 years my musical habits will have drifted away from spotify to something I do not know yet…

            The only continum in my whole life is my ever growing offline library, modernized with technology pace, and that is fed regularly and more likely will be preserved… and if someday I lost everything, I will still have my love for the music I find worthy to remember…

  • BlueMagma@sh.itjust.works
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    22 days ago

    Have you guys read the article ? Spotify is denying the claim of massive attack and other platforms as misinformation, they are claiming that the firm the CEO invested in is only working towards military defense of Ukraine against Russia’s invasion. I don’t know what is true and don’t have the time to check, but it looks to me like a decent response if true.

    Not saying Spotify isn’t problematic, but that might be overblown misinformation.

    Then again, if you want to cancel Spotify, good, I’m all for it, I don’t like the enshitification they are undergoing. But this reason might not be the one you should put on the resignation form, it might not send the right message to Spotify.

    • some_kind_of_guy@lemmy.world
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      21 days ago

      Spotify has been shitty from inception IMO. I’ve tried it a couple times at different points and first off, just didn’t like the UX at all.

      The “free” tier is unusable if you’re an active listener and not the type to just have something, anything, playing as background noise.

      My biggest pet peeve with Spotify and most of the other big modern streamers: There’s a tenuous connection between the listed artist and a “real” artist, so there’s no way to tell if you’re listening to something intentionally created that can be found elsewhere, or just procedurally generated slop uploaded by some rando. Google is just as bad if not worse with this since merging Google Play Music with YouTube. Apple seems to get this part right, but I have no other reason to switch.

      Anyway, that’s not even touching any political/ethics/business aspects of Spotify. It’s hard to imagine it becoming any shittier, and I’ve always wondered how they have the market share they do. At some point I realized that it’s kind of just the default option for the more casual listener who isn’t already slotted into Apple or Google for everything. Plus it has official, polished integrations with a lot of other apps/ecosystems (e.g. Discord, Xbox).

      I’d sooner bring lossless versions of all my stuff local and tag every track by hand than give them any amount of money, but it’s clearly not made for me so that doesn’t mean much.

      I’ve been driven more to web radio stations, even terrestrial radio (streamed or actual FM). there are some great free/non-commercial choices out there still with human DJs. (Shout-out to kexp). Human-curated radio is still viable for discovery and going out of your comfort zone musically, and human “taste-makers” still have a place, which is reassuring. There are a few newish low power FM stations around me which are actually good, which is an interesting and unexpected development.

    • ccunning@lemmy.worldOP
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      22 days ago

      Can’t speak for anyone else, but I read it and also don’t know what’s true beyond the headline which, in my mind, was the key takeaway regardless of the bands motives.

    • blargh513@sh.itjust.works
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      22 days ago

      I was a reasonably happy Rhapsody/Napster user until crypto bros bought it and turned it into fucking garbage. They literally broke the damn app (not phone, entire web app) for weeks after some weird change where they put crypto crap into it. It was entirely unusable.

      After that I gave up. Spotify has far more support and integrations. I don’t care for Spotify and how little they pay their artists, but it works and support is far wider.

      I’d go back to Napster if they weren’t ass as they did actually pay their artists better. Their app footprint is tiny and support is weak. I integrate a lot of stuff with my home assistant and other things; trying to do it with Napster would likely be a frustrating dead end.

      • bluemite@lemmy.world
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        22 days ago

        Give Qobuz a try. I did the free trials on a few services and found it to be the most feature complete

    • bluemite@lemmy.world
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      22 days ago

      You can put one of the other reasons, such as: a) they pay some podcasters a LOT of money and have one of the worst payouts to artists out of the streaming services b) they donated to the inauguration of a cheeto, c) they are just getting lossless audio, but at a lower quality than some other services

  • BCBoy911@lemmy.ca
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    21 days ago

    TBH if you’re an artist you’ll probably make more money by NOT being on streaming platforms and having people buy your music directly - spotify in particular pays fuck all, you might as well have your music on The Pirate Bay. Hell, putting your own music on pirating platforms is probably better for discovery, and people who like your music will buy the albums.

  • bomberesque@lemmy.world
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    22 days ago

    This news finally made me get off my fat lazy arse and do what I’ve been telling myself to do for far too long…

    Hello Qobuz

  • moakley@lemmy.world
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    22 days ago

    Shit. This is honestly the thing that’s going to make me cancel Spotify.

    What’s the alternative? Spotify has almost all the music I want to hear. I don’t think the competitors do, and there’s no easy way to check.

    Any new service I sign up for will need to have my favorite obscure band of all time: Splashdown. I don’t own a computer, so piracy is not an option. Where do I go?

    • Zink@programming.dev
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      22 days ago

      Youtube Music has two different bands called Splashdown, and each has two albums.

      It’s definitely a step in the wrong direction as far as not supporting giant evil corporations, but the music is there.

    • MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works
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      22 days ago

      Qobuz is what i have my eyes on.

      Only reason I haven’t switched over yet is me and my friends share a lot of music together so I’ve been working on a personal discord bot to share the different links, and I’ve yet to get it working 100% yet (it failed when testing with a rick Astley album of all things)

    • ccunning@lemmy.worldOP
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      22 days ago

      FWIW Apple Music has two Splashdown albums. Not really recommended per se, but it’s the service I have access to and was able to look it up for you. I think they have a 1 month free trial available?

  • HeyJoe@lemmy.world
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    23 days ago

    I feel like i am seeing this more and more. I wonder when the tipping point will begin and we start seeing people leave in droves.