Spotify’s 2nd price hike in a year raises prices in July by up to $3
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I joined Spotify because of their excellent suggestion algorithms and how the app generally stayed out of the way of me listening to what I wanted to listen to. Some of their more recent features, though, like an AI disc jockey or unnecessary and obnoxious playlist announcements that you can't turn off, seem like those of a company unsure of what to do to keep itself busy. It makes me wonder if the 1500 layoffs was enough...or if it's time for a new pilot to steer the ship.
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macchinario
Smack-Fu Master, in training
It's a shame Tidal doesn't have an Wear OS app, it's the only thing keeping me from switching - I rely too much on offline mode so I can leave my phone at home when working out. Spotify started to enshittify the app when podcasts became a thing, and it's all downhill from there.
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I don't want podcasts in my music app. I don't want audiobooks in music app. I don't want TikTok in my music app. I definitely don't want to pay more to support all the stuff I don't want.
I'm also guessing it's safe to assume Spotify HiFi is never going to happen at this point.
I'm also guessing it's safe to assume Spotify HiFi is never going to happen at this point.
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I tried Tidal and I really liked it but their effectively-nonexistent support for AppleTV and CarPlay apps makes it not feasible.
Tidal’s music and algorithms (I.e. track radio) are 1000x better than Spotify, but if I can’t use it conveniently, it’s just not worth it.
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Their biggest podcaster's stance that vaccines need a debate or aren't needed for "healthy" people or whatever he's yammering about at the moment tells me all I need to know about what price Spotify is worth.
(spoiler: it's not worth it)
(spoiler: it's not worth it)
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Went Apple One Family Plan last year when Spotify shoveled another dump truck of money to Joe Rogan. No fucking thank you. Actually ended up saving money!
Really like Apple Music, especially lossless music.
Really like Apple Music, especially lossless music.
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Yeah I guess all I'm missing out on is the superior(?) algorithm in Spotify but I never used it so I don't know what I'm missing. I like Apple Music well enough, I find everything I want, and creating radio stations creates a good enough mix for what I want.
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I had an account with Spotify going back to when it was an invite-only beta. I kept it for almost a decade, had over a hundred playlists, thousands of albums and songs saved, friends going back years. I was about as locked into their service as you could get and did not want to deal with the hassle of leaving. Spotify had to work hard to lose my money, and they did by:
I don't miss Spotify even remotely and neither do the rest of my family (regardless of permanent address).
My advice: Join any other service (some are better with family plans than other if you're in a similar situation), suffer through migrating your Spotify playlists, and learn to avoid getting too locked in to any service in the future.
- Engaging in payola, degrading the quality of stations and playlists by heavily rotating artists that even a freshman college DJ would know didn’t fit with my musical tastes or the specific music the station or playlist was based on.
- Launching a podcasts platform I didn’t want, didn’t use, and had no interest in.
- Using my subscription fees to subsidize payments to completely noxious assholes and their podcasts.
- Not getting the traction they wanted for podcasts, so they continually overhauled their UI to push the podcasting service.
- Including making the CarPlay app almost useless, and impossible to use while driving, because so much of the app was devoted to forcing you to navigate around podcasts.
- Repeatedly raising subscription fees to make up for all the money they were losing by paying noxious assholes and their podcasts.
- Limiting the family plan to people at the same address, in order to make up for all the money they were losing by paying noxious assholes and their podcasts.
I don't miss Spotify even remotely and neither do the rest of my family (regardless of permanent address).
My advice: Join any other service (some are better with family plans than other if you're in a similar situation), suffer through migrating your Spotify playlists, and learn to avoid getting too locked in to any service in the future.
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Yeah, they're in a weird spot. They make investments to make announcements so that stock line goes up. They want to promote their investments. But their investments and the promotion annoy a lot of their core users.
I switched from Spotify a couple of years ago and part of the reason wasn't just that they were dumping a ton of money into Rogan, it was that they were then shoving Rogan in my face with no option to not have it in my face.
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I don't like paying more but it hurts extra when the new features are more or less junk across the board. My latest annoyance is having to fight with the app to turn off smart shuffle every single time I want to shuffle a playlist.
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I did the same thing. Apple music is pretty good but Spotify definitely had a better app
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Can one get a “No Rogaine” subscription - just music? It ought to be inexpensive since Spotify pays musicians very little while paying Bro Rogaine quite a lot. Let his fans pay his salary, and let the rest of us enjoy music.
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The goals of publicly-traded service companies (profit-seeking) do not mesh with the goals of the consumers of said service (affordability, usability, stability).
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Spotify Connect is also a pretty great product. It's built into a ton of stuff, and you can run it (via unsupported-but-also-not-blocked Librespot) on basically anything; I have a Raspberry Pi Zero connected to an older receiver in our home for it. Basically, your phone becomes a remote controlling Spotify on the other device---no Bluetooth garbage or other streaming stuff to worry about. It's pretty nice.
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The weird TikTok thing on the home screen is terrible. No one wants that.
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How so? If they were spending money on artists, sure, but instead they’re spending it on spreading alt-right fascism instead.
I have every right to be angry that they’re going to start charging more to support people who want to destroy the world.
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I have been interested in Tidal, but last time I checked their library just wasn't that great outside of the hip-hop and pop genres.
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I dropped them when I realized my subscription was (in some infinitesimally small way) funding conspiracy theory content from the likes of Joe Rogan. No thanks.
Moved to Tidal after and was again left very underwhelmed. I loved the high fidelity, did not like the less mature UI and integrations. Plus bigger holes in the library of available content. I came to the realization that: assuming you are quality sensitive, price sensitive, and listen to genres beyond only new, popular music - you are better off buying and/or digitizing your own collection. The trade off here is having to run a media server or carry your collection (aka “iPod” approach), but the rewards are well worth it if you are particular about your music.
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I don't feel it is. Now, there's definitely some bias towards whatever service you're switching to, because the differences in the algorithm make it fresher to your ears. But I went from Google Play Music, to Pandora, to Spotify, to Apple Music, back to Spotify, and finally now Tidal when they dropped the prices of the premium plan.
To this day, I still miss GPM's "I'm feeling Lucky" radio, because it just kind of played everything I like. But both Pandora and Spotify have a bad habit of playing tracks that I presume make them more money, because they just play the same 2-3 tracks per artists, over and over. Pandora has some ability to control that, but you're choosing deep tracks OR popular, not a balance between them.
I think Apple Music is probably the best at branching out to additional artists and deeper tracks, when playing artist/album/track radios. Tidal isn't hugely far behind, but I do find their library lacking in a few areas.
What Spotify has, and I miss since I don't have cell signal for many miles after I leave the house, is better handling of dynamic daily playlist downloads. It just downloads them in the background, updates the description with the new first few artists, and has no problem loading them when I'm offline. Tidal downloads them, sometimes, but doesn't update the description with the first few artists, and has a bad habit of not loading them once I'm offline. They also refresh right around the time I tend to leave the house, so I tend to find myself waiting around, clearing downloads, clearing cache, waiting for downloads, loading the playlists, going offline, and then making sure they still load. Sometimes I'd find songs in Spotify playlists that skipped over, because they weren't downloaded, but Tidal is just a PITA in this regard.
I'm probably just going to use a Tidal downloader and load a large library to a Hiby R3. When I was using Apple Music, I just downloaded a few hundred of my favorite albums, and I can take that to an extreme if I go this route.
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It seems to me streaming music is just not profitable. Apple, google and Amazon have other revenue streams they can tap into to compensate for low streaming revenue.
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Statistical
Ars Legatus Legionis
I wouldn't mind a price increase if they were improving the core product to include high bitrate audio and offline audio. However another price increase so they can just waste money funding anti-vaxxer and raw milk idiots and the dumbest 1% of American yammering endlessly in talk radio 2.0 and then still not turn a profit and have to raise prices again is too much. I was considering dropping it and should have a while ago but this seals the deal.
"Oh crap we pissed away $1B on podcasts with essentially nothing to show for it what should we do? Double down on the core product to retain and grow our core customer base? No jack rates again so we can piss away $2B on podcasts. I am sure it will work better the second time."
"Oh crap we pissed away $1B on podcasts with essentially nothing to show for it what should we do? Double down on the core product to retain and grow our core customer base? No jack rates again so we can piss away $2B on podcasts. I am sure it will work better the second time."
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I've been using Spotify for 10 years (Premium for five). I like the convenience, and have discovered so much music and I love making playlists for different moods and settings. But this second price hike, plus the focus on podcasts and audiobooks that I never listen to, have me looking for other music providers.
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The only thing keeping me on Spotify is the family plan I have with my wife and my siblings and librespot.
Around a year and a half ago, spotify added a feature short lived feature that turned the home page into a tiktok esqe, play the middle of a song from whatever artist you are currently scrolling past, sort of thing.
If it wasn't for the ncspot client on desktops and being able to download my spotify library to my plex server to use the apps I want for mobile listening, I would have jumped ship entirely with that scroll and play feature. Its the only way I've kept spotify 'just about the music' for myself.
Around a year and a half ago, spotify added a feature short lived feature that turned the home page into a tiktok esqe, play the middle of a song from whatever artist you are currently scrolling past, sort of thing.
If it wasn't for the ncspot client on desktops and being able to download my spotify library to my plex server to use the apps I want for mobile listening, I would have jumped ship entirely with that scroll and play feature. Its the only way I've kept spotify 'just about the music' for myself.
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This. No problems with Apple Music as it stands. They also pay artists more than Spotify though all streaming services underpay.
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YouTube Music or Apple Music are probably the viable choices. Tidal exists, but it has nowhere near the same music
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Never mind the price hike (it's still low enough for the value imo) but the user experience has been steadily degrading with every passing year as they shovel in junk like audiobook recommendations and tiktok autoplaying videos in between you and the playlist you want to play.
I'd like to see a good run down of alternatives to Spotify. What other service has a large selection of music, halfway decent recommendations, the ability to do offline listening with a phone app, a browser based client for listening while on a locked down corporate PC, and no advertising?
I'd like to see a good run down of alternatives to Spotify. What other service has a large selection of music, halfway decent recommendations, the ability to do offline listening with a phone app, a browser based client for listening while on a locked down corporate PC, and no advertising?
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I can't speak about AppleTV, but CarPlay for Tidal is just as good as Spotify's. Unsure when you've lasted looked at Tidal but in my experience since ditching Spotify not long ago it's a very nice move. Also cheaper.
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Tidal claims to have "110 million tracks." Spotify claims to have "Over 100 million." So maybe that's changed? How long has it been since you checked?
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So a $2 price hike a month within a year? That's huge. So that's $24 a year extra for each subscriber. They gonna be making bank now, so now they can stop their bitching about not making a profit. Let's see if July 2025 brings another $1 increase.
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