I’ve never used the free tier on Spotify and I don’t understand how anyone can. The ads alone would make me throw off my headset in disgust. So yeah, not going to affect me, and I do enjoy reading the lyrics a lot.
That said, I am experimenting with swapping over to Apple Music because I feel Spotify has become too expensive.
With xManager, the free tier comes quite close to premium. No ads, play whatever music you like. The only issues are lower sound quality & no downloads, which are really non-issues since you can just find other sources to download the music from, at flac quality
The ads aren't even for anything. It was just really patronising ads for Spotify Premium.
Their business model is genuinely to just annoy you into paying.
It only annoyed me into stopping using their service
You either pay or you leave. Spotify wins, in both cases
OR you get an adblocker
I recently flipped to apple music and apart from seeing a few songs missing on albums i don’t really listen to anyway, it’s only been an improvement. the lossless audio is quite nice
Spotify gives me ads and when I complain they tell me they're not ads and that they're offers lol. My only complaint.
I just love watching everyone freak out about Spotify's shitty business practices while I'm casually looping YouTube videos with an adblocker.
Eh, I switched to Spotify last year (++, of course) and there’s a lot to be said in favour of the Spotify algorithm when it comes to music recommendations, as opposed to YouTube.
This. You get actual bang for your buck
Anyone who uses spotify just to listen to their own music isn't using spotify correctly.
I do. While I get your point, I mostly use it so that I don't have to maintain my own music library. But maybe I should try switching to something like Navidrome.
Have you checked out the made for you playlists? The Monday discover and Friday new music playlists have been key in how I find music the past like 10 years.
They don't really work for me. I listen to different genres, different languages. Sometimes I only like a single song from an artist. My taste is weird. I usually discover new music organically through friends, or sometimes I'll hear something playing somewhere and stuff.
To me, it seems like the Spotify algorithm has a heavy bias towards newer songs, and also towards English songs. Both of those are in minority in my playlists, but somehow that's all it recommends me.
I have gotten good recommendations from both but of course Spotify more often
YouTube sound quality is poor, and 99% of your bandwidth being devoted to video is wasteful. Just use SoundCloud or something. Better yet revanced patched YT music or xmanager Spotify.
Edit: or better yet vimusic
I finally got a sub to Apple Music when I learned I get lossless by default. Yummmmmm.
I still hoard flacs, but Apple Music is dope.
Waiting for Spotify lossless to ditch flacs, I really want to like Tidal but I've had major issues every time I try and stick with it.
Spotify capping out at 192 was a nope for me hahaha. Someone on Lemmy mentioned AppMus had hi-rez lossless and regular lossless and I was like “yep done”
I don’t like iTunes though, so on my computers it’s still flac o’clock.
Spotify runs at 320kbps AAC which is totally fine quality-wise.
YouTube's sound quality is comparable to Spotify's - IIRC it's 128kbps AAC versus 160kbps MP3. Also, a static video's bitrate is around 300-400kbps, so you're not wasting that much bandwidth
YouTube supports 160kbps opus, which should be pretty much transparent to our ears. But the audio is reencoded in the uploaded video, which then gets reencoded by YT again.
These multiple lossy reencodes are probably why YouTube audio sounds worse then Spotiy. Artists upload there songs as lossless wav/flac, which the gets reencoded/compressed a single time.
Didn't know that YouTube had 160kbps audio... I checked a auto-generated upload on yt-dlp, and while it had an Opus stream, all of the audio streams were encoded at 128kbps.
Both Opus and properly-encoded AAC audio should be virtually indistinguishable from the original source, but I do believe that Opus performs slightly worse in blind ABX testing. Again, you'd barely be able to tell the difference, so sound quality is basically the same.
(As for encoding, I believe that YouTube uses the source audio if it's already encoded as AAC, which most video editors do by default, and music distributors send the same lossless source to YouTube as they do to Spotify, so I don't think re-encoding will make a difference)
For the paid tier, yes, but the free tier is locked to 160
There are some add-ons that turn off the video to avoid wasting energy.
But they still waste the bandwidth. The YouTube music either premium or revanced is still the "most economical" way.
To be fair, Spotify is unsuable without premium.
Spotify is unusable without premium Xmanager
Is what someone would say if they didn't know any better.
Using Spotify without premium, as Spotify offers it, is unusable. There might be other options than paying, but the vanilla Spotify experience is horrendous
It does make sense though since Spotify has to pay musixmatch for the service.
Even then you might not see them. I've noticed recently that a ton of songs that used to have the lyrics attached no longer show the lyrics or have the button to show them. And I do have premium.
I noticed that as well, and I, too, have premium
Meanwhile, I'm sitting here with my pirated apk and I can still see all the lyrics 😂
Music is one of the easiest things to pirate, so much so that I often forget me downloading flacs of the songs I listen to is supposed to be a no-no
Between a flac playing app (Musicolet on Android and MusicBee on PC) as well as YT Music Revanced, things go smoothly
The only reason I don't pirate music is because of discovery. I haven't found a good way to find new music without using a streaming service. And then, I'm already using a streaming service, so why bother.
This. Back when I was a spring chicken I had nothing better to do with my time than download random songs and albums. Ain't nobody got time for that now.
Why do people use Spotify still? Momentum?
It's convenient. It's where all my playlists are... that said, I'm open to alternatives?
- Listen on YT with adblock
- Download audio with Newpipe (OPUS 160kbps)
- Manage files with Amaze
- Listen with VLC
I like this model, because YT has niche creators and I dont have to care about "Spotify changes X" news. Note: I have 1.5GB songs stored locally and listen ~30 minutes daily. I acknowledge discovering new songs is slower
You can just use NewPipe background player. NewPipe lets you create and save playlists. No ads.
Well, piracy, but I'd say apple music or tidal, etc are even better than Spotify. There's are services for transferring your playlists.
Been using Soundiiz.com for that!
That's the one! I'm sure there's many options though.
People, don't let your playlists stop you from shopping around streaming services.
download mp3s from youtube. Use rhythmbox on linux and metro on android. Metro even tries to find the lyrics online
Now thats what inconvenient is.
Yup, can understand if your library is small, but for bigger libraries that's definitely the most inconvenient thing you can do.
Speaking from experience because I was basically forced to do it that way when I didn't have regular internet access yet. My library was longer than 50 days. Just Hip-Hop alone was above 100GB.
I used to find a shitton of music that way, but the inconvenience was real. Worst was music that I had to tag myself for example. Love mp3tag but that's shit.
I find it inconvenient to have limited skips and depend on one service to give you the song you want with the version you want. Also spotify ui doesn't make sense to me, things just don't work at times. Not to mention the ads.
If you pay for premium you won't have most of those problems...
I don't like paid services, especially when you can get the same or most of the same stuff for free. It's just not worth it for me, so that is my suggested alternative, doesn't work for everyone.
Not really trying to argue with you but we were not discussing your preference haha😅 Just trying to say spotify premium is pretty convenient at a cheap price
There's cracked apks out there for Spotify if you're completely against paying
Unlike movie and tv streaming music streaming convenience is no contest for piracy if you're an enthusiastic.
And this is coming from someone would download albums and discogrpahies, using programs to meticulously tag and organize them. I wish I had the time and patience now, and for the highlights of my collection I will, but with my music craving a music stream subscription is well worth it.
Mp3s from YT are garbage quality, it's double transcoding from YT's already low quality input.
Yeah. If you’re gonna be downloading music from youtube, might as well just torrent flac or at least 320kbps quality instead.
Torrents mostly have pop music ime.
(Popular music trendy, ie Brittany Spears, Eminem, etc.)
This is the most 2001 comment I've read this week.
Um, you need a hookup?
You can download audio from YouTube as 160kbps opus files, which aren't lossless sure but it's the highest quality you can get from YouTube if alternate means aren't an option.
And that's trusting that whoever uploaded the track had a good quality source. And it's still double encoded.
Any official uploads from recent years are going to be just fine. And if not then maybe their spotify upload is broken too
I haven't noticed any quality issues and I only listen to mp3s from youtube
You can download relatively good sounding audio from YouTube but you need to be using the right format in YouTube-DL, which not all downloaders do
What about NewPipe?
Then you probably don't know any better because the vast majority of YT uploads are terrible quality. If you have anywhere near decent headphones/earbuds you can hear the difference immediately.
Well I've used spotify with and without headphones on popular phones, I can't tell the difference from youtube. I usually download the music directly from the original uploader.
I was big into downloading before streaming services were a thing. Music streaming is one of the few services that's totally worth my money: no hassle and I rarely have to resort to other platforms to find what I want (very different from video streaming, which totally sucks when it comes to that).
100% this. Paying $12 a month for basically all music I’ll ever want to listen to, is just an amazing deal. It’s so convenient. Felt the same when Netflix came about. But now when I need like 6 services, and there’s still lots not on them. Piracy is just so much more convenient.
Felt the same when Netflix came about. But now when I need like 6 services, and there’s still lots not on them. Piracy is just so much more convenient.
Yep, that's the step they forgot: be more convenient than the pirates.
Can I use any of those at the same time I am playing a game on ps3/ps4/ps5 they way they have integrated spotify? I use spotify because it is available on the devices I use. I would use bandcamp on them if it were an option as I love my collection there but, it is not available on many of the devices I use.
personally I don't find that convinience worth it for the money/ads and other inconveniences, but that varies from person to person
That is what I do, however it is very tedious when you want to listen to full albums, and add info to the file such as the album art and artist. Services like Spotify also sync your Library and playlist automatically across devices.
I made myself a python script to automatically tag and download entire albums from youtube at a time. I use syncthing to automatically sync it all. Quality isn't the best but I can't tell anyway so
Fwiw, some youtube to mp3 converters will let you convert full playlists (don't remember which, but there are a few).
4k Video Downloader is one example, but I believe you need to pay for playlist downloading?
I don't get why anyone would use the free tier - not being able to choose songs would actually drive me insane, let alone the ads - but $11 monthly for essentially all the music anyone could ever want, plus solid playlists and recommendations, is a perfectly good value for me. Admittedly, I listen to music all the time and it's a pretty big part of my life, so it's an easy sell.
I guess the free tier is still an improvement over radio, but regardless, producing and distributing music has costs, and I'm more than happy to pay for it. Given that Spotify isn't even profitable, having lost about a billion dollars last year, I'm not sure how long this situation will last, but for the time being, I really don't mind it.
11$/month is 132$/yr. That's a significant anount ofmoney - about the same as my car insurance, broadband or phone bill. Putting a bunch of good music in a playlist and letting it roll is nice enough, especially with a 3rd party app to mute ads automatically. Besides, I don't feel sorry for Spotify. The reason they're hemorrhaging money isn't a lack of profitability, but due to the massive royalties going to record companies.
For the median American that works full-time, who earns around $56,000, the cost of Spotify is 0.2% of their income.
Obviously everyone is in their own financial situation and for some people that will still be a burden. But for sake of comparison, in 1989, the average cost of cable TV was $18, and that's of course in 1989 dollars. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that $11 for unlimited access to basically all music at any time is a pretty good value for the money.
That said, if it is still onerous to someone, they're obviously not in ideal circumstances and I'm really not gonna fault them for just pirating.
Spotify isn't the only company offering a monthly fee though.
Momentum is the driving force behind all enshitification.
xManager
What's that?
I dont know
thx
You nailed it. People’ve been using it for so long they don’t want to use any number of paid or free services to automatically move all their playlists and whatnot over to a different service.
What would you suggest as an alternative?
I love their algorithm
The random algorithm needs to be polished though.
Random usually sucks for everything that I've used.
They should have two... True random and one that 'radioifies' your library.
If you have an eclectic music taste and don't spend your life next to a computer, there's practically no other option
Tidal, Deezer, Qobuz, Funkwhale, Apple Music, Youtube Music, just to name a few. Spotify has no shortage of competition.
My point is there’s little actual difference between them. Identical services provided by greedy corporations with shitty track records
You said there's no other option, I just listed some options. Also Funkwhale is decentralised, there's no corporation backing it. Ofc, you can also just download the music you like.
😂 practically no other option, my friend. Haven't heard of Funkwhale though, sounds interesting. And no, as I mentioned in my first comment, downloading isn't feasible for people with eclectic tastes cuz I just can't keep up with my spontaneous "need" to listen to that one album that hasn't even crossed my mind in 20 years
Apple music, Tidal, etc.
Spotify is funding military AI tech. That's enough for me. I'm on android but I'd still rather use Apple Music, plus they pay artists slightly more, and tidal more than that.
I hate to tell you but everyone is funding scary military tech, even if you’re not an American tax payer. If you’ve flown on a Boeing plane, used Microsoft software, worn Oakley sunglasses… all that revenue goes to companies who do or support that research
I wouldn't pay a recurring fee to any of them either.
Soulseek is still around ;)
slsk forever
Still working for me with just the basic bitch plan on the web.
That being said: Fuck you Spotify lol
Does anybody know of an alternative app that can do live lyrics?
It's all about having the .lrc file, it gets read automatically (as long as it's named like the song file) by mpv player and many android players.
It's a simple text file containing the lyrics with timestamps. You can get them from deezer for example with certain downloaders. Or look for them on Soulseek.
Yup. Recently let a foobar extension run through my music library and download .lrc's. Now I can read them with Poweramp on my phone.
Spotube.
Note that it's not really a Spotify streaming app, rather it uses your (free) Spotify account for playlists, search, recommendations, etc. and then goes and find the song you want to play on YouTube, and the lyrics from scraping websites I think. Pretty clever.
The lyrics source that Spotify uses is free with a few caveats, like ads. The normal synced lyrics are free though.
The source is musixmatch and they have a floating lyrics window on Android which is neat.
Googles YouTube music just got updated for live lyrics.
It's out of sync and I don't know how to scroll manually when it happens.
ViMusic
Solid business decision by Spotify here, I support this move. I’ll probably switch over to them from YouTube music.
I know right. What's Spotify's goal with this move
Recently ditched subscription services because of non-stop price hikes. Now I'm on Navidrome with a VPS and using Ultrasonic on my Android for mobile and Android Auto listening. For music, I turn to good old Soulseek and Telegram bots.
Never going back. The control and savings make it all worth it.
Is there an easy way to download tons of music without paying for a shit ton of albums?
Lidarr
Deemix, yt-dlp
You can probably whip up a .bat file to download entire albums worth of music from YouTube and other sites
Jokes on you, I already memorized them all
Look for QMMP, a Winamp clone.
Yeah, but does it whip the llamas ass?
Why don't you guys torrent ? I am back to torrenting and its the best.
Because direct downloads are better and faster.
https://slavart.gamesdrive.net/
https://free-mp3-download.net/(don't use apostrophes in the search for this one)
You're welcome.
Edit: Also, Real-Debrid if you want to directly download any torrent instantly at your connection's maximum bandwidth (up to 1Gbps) without having to wait for seeds. But this one costs money. (It's worth it, though, especially if you're downloading a lot of 50GB+ AAA games like I am.)
How do we use real-debrid ? I don't understand it.
Simple, you replace your torrent client with it. Instead of opening a torrent file in QBittorrent or whatever, you go to the "torrents" section and paste the magnet link/open your torrent file there. Then select "convert" and then you can download the torrent directly from their servers. It's kind of like a seedbox that everyone shares, so that you don't have to wait for seeds so long as at least one person has added the file to Debrid before.
Select the "premium offers" link to get started.
Cheers mate
I've been using Qobuz. Sure it's still paid, but I can buy downloads for any of the music on there. Same with Bandcamp. I've been buying one album every paycheck and putting them on my storage blocks, then putting them on my media player and phone. I support my favorite bands, and get to keep something in return. On top of all this, I hunt down CDs. I've got a massive physical music collection, and it's nice.
Free on vimusic.
But do you? I can still see them, using xManager.
I've seen xManager and couldn't convince myself to install it. Do you need a Spotify account? Does it let you create playlists as you wish?
I pay them for other reasons.
Lol you guys pay for premium?
Make the record labels rich so that they can sue and bully people thank you!
BRUH
They're still visible with the current xmanager version
Yeah but the change is server sided so it will stop working soon I suppose.
No. Xmanager patch unlocks premium features. So literally you're a premium user.
It depends on whether the feature is server-side restricted. For example, xManager can't set audio quality to very high.
Could someone kindly ELI5 how to lidarr-ize my liked tracks from Spotify, please?
My collection there is quite static and I think I'm a good candidate to go MP3/AAC/whatever 🏴☠️ plus Spotify free just to keep up to date with newly released singles/albums from time to time.
Thanks!
P.S. also what comes after would be great, i.e. how I can batch transfer all those files from my home server running lidarr to my Android phone/PC and keep them in sync after the initial transfer. Plus also a nice feature rich Android app, either free (no ads) or even better open source with an accessible price.
Also, if you're up for the self-hosted life, what comes next is a music server. If you have good access to WiFi or unlimited data, this eliminates storage as a bottle neck. I recommend Navidrome. But something like Jellyfin or Plex can do Movies and TV, if you want a 1 size fits all.
If you're not, look into Syncthing. You chose a folder on your computer and one on your phone and this app keeps them in sync. After that, my favorite player was GoneMad. It's offline, with real support for music tags. This allowed song ratings and real smart playlists