Meanwhile in a meeting room in Stockholm:
Remember how we reduced music piracy to an insignificant amount by making the legal choice convenient and relatively affordable? I forgot! So let’s torpedo our business.
Those who fail to scan the address verification QR code within seven days will see their account demoted to the free tier and be barred from joining any other Duo or Family plan for 12 months.
Well that’s pretty crummy. That’s a very long ban, and a lot of extra money.
I have to give location permission to a music app?!
I wonder if you can you log in on a new phone once you got the notification
On android Bluetooth is tied to the location permission, because scanning for Bluetooth devices can be used to narrow down the device location.
location permission
It doesn’t really say that, I don’t think? It only says you need to be “in the same place”, because you need to scan a QR code, right?
Nothing really preventing you both from just sending the QR code via message either… 🤷♂️
spotify single-handedly increasing music piracy rates back to napster levels
There is a certain poetry to them recreating the problem they solved.
i just hope this means people will start buying music again. 1-10 dollars for an album containing 5-20 DRM free music files is probably better value in the long run than spotify’s subscription ever was. and with navidrome, mpd, and its clients, managing them was never easier; plus artists get way more of that profit. everyone wins.
Don’t forget the warmongering Spotify do. Their profits pays to create tech that’s aimed at killing you.
I cut them out and canceled my subscription when they gave rogan that contract, fuck spotify
This is why I deleted my account. Fuck spotify and its bloodthirsty ceo
If they want it to be a household plan, they should call it that instead of falsely advertising it as a family plan.
Exactly. Families are extremely varied in logistics and presentation… Businesses in their ivory towers imagine a stereotypical nuclear family where everybody lives in the same house. Out of 5 families I personally know; only one fits that description.
Using a different music service is so easy. You can’t even use the excuse that your friends are all on there. Stop giving them your money.
Navidrome.
“We’ll heave and haul and roar o’er the dark blue wave!”
I’m still learning how to set it up to meet the easy of YouTube music. But storing more content is getting troublesome with price of drives. What do you use for mobile access? I use Symfonium
If they do this to me, I have zero reason to stay with them. My ex pays for it. If they kick me off because my physical address is no longer the same, I won’t use them. I’m sure he will stop paying for the daily plan and go back to free or, use a different app altogether. Good luck spotify. Did you learn nothing from Netflix?
Netflix actually ended up with an increase in subscribers from their crackdown. Maybe Spotify did learn from Netflix.
Netflix tweeted in March of 2017 that “Love is sharing a password” before launching its own enforcement policies in May of 2023. Later that year, Netflix raised prices up to 17 percent, and by April of 2024, the company saw the policy pay off with 9.3 million added subscriptions and a 54 percent bump in operating income.
Their stock is down 40% YoY and they are cutting thousands of staff including their director of content. Looks like it bought them 24 months of bluster and then their watchtimes plumetted.
There’s no reason to believe that that’s related to the family plan enforcement, so it’s really not relevant to this discussion
It is relevant to the stock price discussion, which was the dfense of the family plan enforecement.
The metric of interest in the context is the effects on churn/subscriber conversion, in which Netflix significantly overperformed following the enforcement of family plan rules.
And has since underperformed. Their watch times have not followed their subscriptions and investors are concerned.
So the enforcement resulting in more subscribers could be seen as short lived given the results for netflix.
A drop in consumption could be equally well explained by lacking content quality, leading to disinterest in consumption.
Arguably better explained, given that they laid off the director of content.
capitalism machine prioritizing short term over everything else, working as intended.
Wow I missed that part, thank you.
No, they didn’t. Please, let’s not interrupt… I want them to torch their subscriber numbers
Or Joe Rogan?
If you’re going to pay for music, buy it DRM free on bandcamp etc, or CDs and rip them, you can make multiple copies and anyone in your family can play them at any time. Shitify is a joke.
https://thegrimejournalist.bandcamp.com/track/bandcamp-feat-jammz The bandcamp anthem!
Soulseek, people. Just pirate things and send money directly to artists (or buy merch). Fuck all these streaming companies
I have 8k albums in my personal collection, but I’ve been building it for years, most everything is pirated or shared between friends or purchased on bandcamp. I stream it while via plexamp when I’m working or not at home, it’s very nice.
I can also connect to my friends Plex servers. My one friend has 35k albums.
in case someone doesn’t believe me hahaEdit: damn he’s up to 39k
“analysts are confident that music streaming services such as Spotify can enforce strict account policies, raise prices, and still make more money.”
They looked at Netflix and Disney and they are right. This is a no brainer if you’re a business. There’s literally no downside other than angry comments online.
Normies are getting into Stremio and normies will eventually get into a music pirating app if this continues.
What is this Stremio you speak so freely of?
Stremio + torrentio + real debrid into your favorite search engine or ai and you will find the way.
Iptv is another option but it’s a bit less user friendly on getting an account.
Stremio is basically Netflix if it had any movie or show you could ever dream of once set up correctly.
Thank you. I was asking for a friend and they are very happy now.
Ever go on old drug forums where everyone led with “SWIM” lol
‘Burn baby burn’ is possibly the most appropriate song for them
And people have scoffed at me for buying individual songs on iTunes instead of just jumping in bed with Spotify…
No matter how bad my financial situation becomes, as long as I can still charge my iPhone I will have access to not only my full music library, ad free, I also have access to the 50+ audio books I have bought on Apple Books completely ad free.
I just need a way to download the audio books without DRM and save them on my home server to feel fully at ease.
You know what would be better? Have the audio files, in
flac, or at least high-resmp3to listen whenever you want, from any device you want, without the need of an Apple account.Which is why I have downloaded my music from iTunes as normal non-DRM files.
whats a good way to find new music based on a curated library/playlist/settings? i’m on apple for now but yeah… this has always been rough finding new tunes or artists.
Bandcamp radio. Every other day a show for each major genre: hip hop, indie, electronic, metal, experimental, jazz. Every two weeks? best of music overall with bandcamp selects. Lots of good stuff. Fun insightful interviews. Made by humans for humans.
Pitchfork. Articles about new music. Tons of recommendations for every genre, from Olivio Rodriga (an obscure artist) to Olivia Rodrigo.
There’s Tidal, which is what I’m planning on moving to once Spotify kicks me off
I haven’t used it in a while since I don’t have an active account there, but I really liked the randomizer in Deezer. It always showed me interesting songs that I hadn’t heard before.
Deezer is also pretty lenient with its family plan so far. However so is YouTube. YouTube family, which includes YouTube music, isn’t even excessively expensive if you actually share it between 6 people.
They did something like that once a few years ago. I didn‘t see their email and my account was swiftly permanently blocked from the program. No chance to appeal. I was pretty upset for a moment, then made a new account and connected it to the family account. If they kick me out again I‘m gone for good.
I‘m not paying the kind of money they‘re asking for to listen to some music and podcasts that run ads and sponsor segments. Discoverability became insanely bad years ago. Most of their recommendations are obvious product placements that they‘re not declaring properly.
So yeah, looks like Spotify is about to extract some more money from customers with dubious methods short term and losing a lot of us long term. But I am prepared.
Why not just use Qobuz instead?
It’s a temporary solution. they’re bound to enshittify if they ever come close to spotify’s popularity. or they’ll just get bought out before getting there
Even if a temporary solution, it’s better than sticking with spotify in the mean time.
Qobuz also advertise their family and duo plans as being among friends that aren’t living in the same house. So it’s not just something they don’t police, they actively allow it.
atp, if you’re already moving services why not jump to one that guarantees that you will own your media, for free, instead of paying a subscription for something that may actively get worse down the line
You can do both. I do. I’m never going to own absolutely everything I want to listen to because I’m not that rich, so i only buy my favourites as flacs or vinyls. But there’s still 1000s of songs I love and will want to listen to on the reg. And then there’s the songs i don’t yet know about too.
any media that requires a permission from an external party to play can and will eventually be taken from you. at least qobuz seems to be drm-free (i don’t use the service, so don’t quote me on that) so you should be able to make a copy of what you listen to. at least before they enshittify.
still, i’d personally not feel comfortable entrusting a streaming service with being the gatekeeper of the media i want long-term access to.
Their purchased songs are drm free, obviously if you just stream them you’re just borrowing them. Personally i use qobuz for streaming for discovering new music and to listen to stuff i don’t yet or may never own, and on the side i buy albums of my favourites either as flacs from various drm free stores, or as vinyls, or both.
