I have got to admit I canned Spotify subs years ago - but how are they managing to grow their subscriber base whn it is now going to be £11.99 in the UK? That is way, way too high for what it offers…
Let’s say it together: Enshittification
It’s been long underway for Spotify; raising prices is just the lastest step.
spotify lost me as a customer as soon as I learned that they gifted 150k to Trump for his inaugaration party
Just leaving this here from the excellent !PurchaseWithPurpose@lemmy.world
From that chart Qobuz seems to be the all round best deal. Is there any catch?
I use Qobuz! It works well most the time. And it has a huge library. Some things are not as polished as some of the bigger companies. And there’s a lot of Initial setup to get it working…
That said, I would say it’s a great option. I do wish it had better continuous play options, as sometimes I listen to a playlist, and then it just stops. But that may be part of the learning curve. I’m not really a big “playlists” guy… I’d like to start a radio and have it find similar artists (similar to Pandora 12 years ago) But that doesn’t really seem to be the way companies are going anymore.
I have several Google mini devices (I know, I know. I’m working on it, but that’s a whole other process) and they don’t really seem to get along with qobuz all the time.
Overall, I like it, but it still needs work.
I just switched from Tidal to Qobuz and when using Soundiiz like 1/4 of my songs didn’t transfer, and when I look songs up a lot of them aren’t there at all. The personalized playlist is also disappointing in my experience, so I’m considering switching back.
I have noticed that the search function is very unforgiving. Like, you have to search the exact title, because it will not find a partial name.
That sucks that a lot of songs didn’t come up. I’ve actually been pleasantly surprised with the content. Personally. A lot of my stuff that I thought was pretty niche I’ve been able to find.
Are you noticing any specific genres are more difficult than others?
The ones I’ve noticed so far were somewhere in between metal, hyperpop, and generally chaotic electronic music. Specifically:
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DEATHWISH by poutyface
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MONSTER ENERGY GUN! by KevinKempt
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PIN CUSHION by Siiickbrain
Also:
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Little Game by Benny
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mi tawa lon pimeja ni
There’s a bunch of others that I haven’t looked through yet. I downloaded a list of songs from my Tidal library with soundiiz so I should do the same with Qobuz then do a diff.
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Platform podcasters who spread misinformation
Lol just say Joe Rogan
Just saying; cancelling Spotify and changing to Qobuz takes five minutes. Sound quality is amazingly better, the curated recommendations are done by human beings that love music, and ‘just works’ with everything that Spotify does. (For us, anyway.) It’s French, rather than Norwegian-American like Tidal is, if you’re trying to stop spending money on everything US at the moment, too.
They don’t have any other recommendations apart from those human made ones though? Couldn’t find what I wanted.
The UI is awful and their artist pages are normally blank for indy artists.
The migration is pretty seamless though, and they apparently pay their artists way better.
They have the human made ones, they have the “artist radio” function that plays songs similar to a band you like, they have a weekly top 30 based on stuff you’ve been listening to. The headline ‘albums of the week’ are based on what they like, which I don’t think is unfair - I’ve really enjoyed some of them.
I listen to a lot of metal and electronic, and I’ve always found the descriptions excellent - usually several paragraphs even for the most obscure of bands. Was well impressed that they had Lambrini Girls as one of their ‘albums of the week’, and their album at studio quality. Not that that’s essential for punk. Admittedly I don’t listen to a lot of indy, but they’ve always had what I’ve wanted to listen to.
My main complaint about the UX is that it’s nearly identical to Spotify, but I suppose there’s not much else you can do. Something particular about it that you dislike?
Thanks for the long reply.
Did not know the radio function existed. On mobile at least I can’t find it on the artists page? I have to go into the … Menu on a track in a playlist?
I listen to a lot of instrumental stuff while working, so I may be going too indy? Someone like soundcriters should should have something on their page?
https://open.qobuz.com/artist/5003476
I dislike that you have to go to a playlists page to play it in shuffle, you can’t do it from the playlists menu.
Double clicking should play a track but doesn’t.
At my PC now, where the radio option doesn’t seem to exist at all!?!
Strange, it has the ‘autoplay more like this’ option on the web player (which does basically the same) but not the explicit ‘artist radio’ option. Huh.
Ah, I turned off auto play because it would randomly start playing other music instead of continuing my massive playlist…
“Go to Radio” on the app. Hmm…
Yeh, found it in the android app (on tracks, not artists). Not there on desktop though.
I can play the radio on the app to my desktop though… Guess that works. Not exactly great UX though.
Thanks for pointing out that it exists though!
I also just switched to Qobuz. I like to listen to albums and playlists. The UI is more minimal than Spotify which I enjoy. I like the fact it’s not constantly trying to push new things like podcasts, concerts etc. on me. I just want to listen to music and pay the artists for it!
As much I despise Spotify, I’m trying out Qobuz and it’s just not really it.
No folder organisation for playlists or albums.
No Linux application.
No lyrics.
No support for smart speakers.
No information linking to artist tours and merch.
No dedicated classical music app.
Generally lacking when it comes to non western artists.
Prides itself on providing high quality music, yet still only has lower quality masters for some artists compared to Apple Music, Tidal, and even Spotify.
I want to love it, like the way it loves and respects the music industry, with it’s special magazine etc, but it’s just not it.
I’m on Tidal right now and currently considering the switch to Qobuz. There’s no official (or unofficial) Linux client which is kind of a bummer. Tidal at least has a half-decent unofficial one…
Yeah, I could just use the web player or strawberry but I just prefer having a dedicated app.
Yeah, the web client works just fine on Linux. A good native client would be better, of course, but I’d rather use the web one than a half-assed native one.
For those using spofity connect: tidal has “tidal connect” as well, which is identical and exactly as supported.
Qobuz unfortunately lacks this feature, to my knowledge.Correction: Qobuz has released “Qobuz connect”! I don’t know how widely supported it is vs. Tidal connect, though; iFi and Cambridge audio most notably seem to be missing, according to this list.I personally also prefer the tidal algo to Spotify and qobuz, but that is a matter of preference.
It’s quite easy to download Tidal content on any device w/o the app as well—for educational purposes, of course.
For some, Tidal may be a better alternative. I’ve been quite happy with it. Others may prefer Qobuz.
Qobuz released Qobuz connect back in May
Thank you for the correction! I have updated the comment.
Do they have an API? I use a lot of third party recommendation services, to avoid Spotifys and would love to make sure I can create playlists into it
Im 90% sure they have an API, I’ve seen github projects that mention using it
might be possible to just build a TUI for it then. I’ll look into it.
Qobuz catalog is extremely lacking IME.
I’m glad to hear this! I’ve just cancelled our Spotify this past week and my partner is looking for a new service (I only listen to the same albums on repeat so I’m going to survive).
Third one in a little over two years. They say it’s to keep up with inflation as if they’re a retail store operating on razor thin margins and people accept that. Meanwhile, they’re donating to fascist political parties and shafting artists by leveraging loopholes to pay out fewer royalties.
Friendly reminder that your “legally acquired” library of FLAC files never raises its subscription prices!
I will never part from locally stored music. I do, however, would love to have my collection run through a recommendation algorithm for discovering new music.
Would scrobbling to e.g. ListenBrainz (or last fm) be an option for you for discovery?
Yep. Hooray for self hosting!
Spotify has a become a shit show lately. I don’t like that the CEO is supporting a genocidal state, the platform is full of fake AI artists and playlists. Artists aren’t getting paid enough. the prices hikes and the app just feels so bloated with unnecessary bullshit. Because of this, I switched to self hosting my own music server (Navidrome, and Lidarr) and I use the symphonium app on Android. Really happy with that solution
spotify pays me half a cent per stream, the profit margins for them must be fucking insane. and the music sounds like shit. I’d much rather people pirate it than support these leeches
if you want to support artists you like, buy the music, ideally on bandcamp. if you do have to steam it, Deezer at the very least won’t vandalize the audio
What do you think about Qobuz as a musician?
Meanwhile the new Seagate 26tb HDD is going for $270
I’ve been downloading my media for over 10 years now and I only have like 2 1/2 Terabytes filled, a 26tb drive could hold most people’s lifetime media collections.
Owning your own storage and files is the only way to ensure you keep access to the media you want.
Seagate
There is a ReVanced version of Spotify, for people who didn’t already know. Block ads and get premium features for free: https://revanced.app/
(There’s also YT Music ReVanced)
Can’t I just go with piracy
This is more convenient than piracy.
Having the files locally is more convenient though
How is having any song you want being one search away less convenient than having to curate and organize a music collection, and then go digging though folders to find the song you want?
Look, I’ve been collecting music since 1998 and even I admit that streaming is a lot more convenient. Only reason why I still collect music is because I am a DJ and don’t always have a reliable wifi or data connection at every gig. But even then I’ve culled the vast majority of 50k+ tunes down to about a 1000 of the best and most popular on the dance floor. Then swap songs in and out as needed. The modern era makes it easy to re-obtain a deleted track, and often in higher quality than I originally ripped it at (I use a spectrum analyzer on my collection to verify).
Often without internet access so having it local is pretty important.
On desktop install Spicetify in your Spotify client. It does many things, including block ads.
I heard the ReVanced patching stopped working recently. Is that not the case anymore?
Not sure cause I use YT Music ReVanced instead for the larger music selection.
Wow, thank you!
I used that for the longest time, but lately it stops working several days after I update it. I’m glad though, as now I have Navidrome set up.
If you are going to steal music you may as well just steal music
Blocking ads isn’t stealing
I’m quite unhappy with spotify. I don’t care about the price, but it keeps repeating the same and same music again, and the percentage of crappy AI music is increasing. You can clearly hear it. Their client isn’t open source, and it’s just a wrapped website. It sucks.
Also Daniel Ek is investing in AI war company:
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/17/spotifys-daniel-ek-leads-investment-in-defense-startup-helsing.html
And Trump!
So glad he didn’t get his grubby hands on Arsenal FC in the end.
When I got tired of Spotify’s shitty practices, I looked into other streaming services that could compare, and honestly I didn’t like any other offerings. So I said fuck it, I’ll just download everything and play it locally.
What made the jump easy was a service called Spotidown, I even paid for the ad free version it was so convenient. You literally copy the spotify link for songs and playlists and it let’s you download it. There’s a couple different services like this, that will make the switch easier.
I’ve settled for Qobuz. Its discovery features are terrible, but it’s basically a music storefront with a streaming library. High-quality, had basically my whole library and I can buy albums directly for download.
Oh I didn’t know you could buy music from Qobuz, is it a better system than bandcamp? I’ve never used either so Im at the perfect time to find a good one.
Both are great, and I think complement eachother nicely. Qobuz mostly focuses on label offered music catalogues, while Bandcamp has always catered to indies. If an artist offers their music through Bandcamp, I still prefer to make my purchases there, but if the artist is signed to a label then it’s a good shot Qobuz has it.
Either service offers the music in the highest quality provided, though lossless versions through Qobuz do tend to be priced a few dollars higher than the regular album.
Looks like I’ll be using both then lol, thanks for the input!
Does SpotiDown have a linux version? If not, do you know an alternative?
Nicotine+/soulseek. won’t copy your spotify lists but you can manually download everything. will take time obviously as you’ll have to search for everything.
You can use slsk-batchdl alongside a CSV of your Spotify Playlists to make quicker work of this.
I wrote a little python script to download all my YouTube music songs for my navidrome setup. I’m sure you could do something similar for spotify if you know python.
Not that im aware of, sorry. There is a Windows based spotidown software, but no Linux. Spotidown is a web based service normally, so you could definitely use it in Linux. I actually downloaded all my music from it using my phone!
For Linux you can use ZSpotify. It runs in the command line, just use a burner account to run as in zspotify because it’s against their TOS of course, and might get you kickbanned. It also requires premium, but you only need it for a day at most, in order to run the download. Then you can cancel.
I mean, you could just pay the artists for their music.
I do! I go to concerts and buy merch from the artists I listen to, which gives them exponentially more money than the fractions of a penny Spotify gives them. I’ve paid for Spotify long enough to justify downloading the music I had saved, any future music I want I’ll just purchase from Bandcamp or something similar.
My main beef with spotify is their attempt to privatize and monopolize podcasting.
Spotify offers audio hosting and a large userbase, but does not provide rss. A few people I like are trapped in this, and I have no way to listen to their shows apart from using spotify. They refuse to understand that this is an issue, just like youtubers are ok with lock-in.
Podcasting infrastructure is not monopolized yet, like video is. It is even bigger problem for me than underpayid artists.
So boycotting, and if you undersrand that, you should too.
The podcasters that you are referring to being “trapped in this” chose to be “trapped”. So don’t just be upset with Spotify over it.
I choose to blame platforms for vile intents rather than users for ignorance. I don’t see awareness of politics of technology as obligatory for all authors (even less for users), but creators of those platforms know damn well what they are doing.
Meh, their attempts at privatizing podcasting is why I’m mad at spotify, but same token there’s been a few podcasters that definitely go to the spotify platform for reasons, some in the monopolized format…
Since I don’t have a spotify, I don’t listen to those. I agree with above don’t just be upset with spotify, I blame the platform yes, but I also blame the people who got in bed with them.
Podcasting infrastructure is not monopolized yet, like video is. It is even bigger problem for me than underpayid artists.
It helps a lot that audio hosting is so much cheaper than video hosting
