Fuck Subscriptions
Naming and shaming all "recurring spending models" where a one-time fee (or none at all) would be appropriate and logical.
Expect use of strong language.
Follow the basic rules of lemmy.world and common sense, and try to have fun if possible.
No flamewars or attacking other users, unless they're spineless corporate shills.
Note that not all subscriptions are awful. Supporting your favorite ~~camgirl~~ creator or Lemmy server on Patreon is fine. An airbag with subscription is irl Idiocracy-level dystopian bullshit.
New community rule: Shilling for cunty corporations, their subscriptions and other anti-customer practices may result in a 1-day ban. It's so you can think about what it's like when someone can randomly decide what you can and can't use, based on some arbitrary rules. Oh what, you didn't read this fine print? You should read what you're agreeing to.
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Some other groovy communities for those who wish to own their products, their data and their life:
Some other useful links:
Louis Rossman's YouTube channel
Look at content hosted at Big Tech without most of the nonsense:
view the rest of the comments
why the FUCK does anyone still use spotify, it's a fucking joke. Unusable without paying for it.
paying $15 a month to listen to anything I want instantly is worth it
They don't have everything. I have plenty of tracks on my drive at home that aren't available. ALSO, sometimes you'll find a track you like and save it locally in Spotify, then Spotify decides they don't like that track anymore and you no longer have access to it. It still shows up in your library but it's grayed out.
Also their shuffle button is hot garbage, at least on Android. It's been garbage for years and it recently got even worse.
They have most of what I want. And what they don't have, I'll get myself :p
i have everything because i download what spotify doesnr have. ezpz
I've never used Spotify could you give a quick run down on why their shuffle sucks? Shouldn't it just be random songs?
It doesn't seem very random to me. What user "vodka" said might be true. Whatever, I can deal with that. What really grinds my gears is that Spotify frequenty turns on shuffle when I want it off, and it frequently switches to "smart shuffle" when I want regular shuffle. "Smart shuffle" will mix in songs that it thinks you might want to hear. I can't tell you how many times I've turned off shuffle without having turned it on. I assume they have some competent people working at Spotify so I can't imagine how they could have let it get to this state.
The simple answer is smart shuffle enables them to put songs in your shuffle that record companies paid them to push to you. In other words, Payola.
I heard they've fixed it, but it used to be limited to 100 songs, and it was a simple re-order and not actually random. It'd always put tracks in the same order (unless you've changed something in the first 100 tracks since last time)
You'd have a 300 song playlist, hit shuffle, and it'd "shuffle" the same 100 songs in the same order, but start at a different point every time.
Algorithms for randomness on things like spotify cant actually be true random because true random will sometimes do weird shit that makes users think its broken. Like if you put 10 songs from 10 artists on a 100 song playlist and hit random there is a not 0% chance that it will put all 10 songs from 1 artist in a row.
For sure, but I'd still prefer that over getting the same order of songs every time.
I pay $0 a month for that
BlockTheSpot + Spicetify esentially gives you spotify premium for free. No lyrics, and no downloads, but otherwise most premium features are completely free.
That said, I'm considering switching to Deezer, but they do have some missing songs, which is unfortunate.
Family plan is insanely good value especially if you fill it with friends (20$ for 6). If I were paying $15 for myself, never.
Yep, same. And it's a good service, and pretty cheap all things considered. Have found a ton of new artists, have played their songs, bought merch from their bandcamps or merch buckets, or whatever, and all because spotify's stupid algorithm does get it right some time.
But fuck them, I guess, for not giving enough away in their free to use tier.
Pretty good audio quality too, I have Sennheiser hd600 (300$) and have tuned the heck out of them. They sound amazing and I still cannot tell the difference between flac (uncompressed) and high bitrate mp3 (what Spotify uses).
Yeah, the only time I've ever heard the difference in audio quality between flac and 320mp3 is when I've been trying to sample parts of songs in Ableton, adjusting the bpm and doing some warping, and you get artifacts. When I listen to music, I have a nice system at home, and I cannot tell the difference. And maybe it's me, but beyond 20khz basically doesn't exist.
I agree with you completely but I am also one of those weirdos who just never stopped using Pandora so I have no room to talk, but 90% of my music listening is via my own music collection. IMO it's such a better experience than anything else.
I only use it in a desktop browser with ublock. It's tolerable, but they keep taking things away...
Yeah, there's a farmers market nearby with the same fucking problem. If you don't pay, suddenly they don't give you the fruits of their labor! Bastards...
Ive had good luck using a VPN that blocks ads. So far havent gotten a single ad on the free version.
you can just crack the APK to use it for free.
I'll just get right on that thanks. So simple
it's incredibly simple. you use the revanced manager, check the boxes you want, and it does it for you. I don't know how to write a patch, they've all been written for me. here's their website, and here's their GitHub. only works on Android. I personally used it to crack YouTube music instead, but you can do Spotify
Thank you, much appreciated