Spotify has resisted increasing its monthly subscription price for as long as possible. According to the Wall Street Journal, the...
According to the report, Spotify will raise its standard subscription rate by $1 next week, bringing the monthly cost from $9.99 to $10.99.
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I’m all for bashing corporations, but y’all, this is a $1 increase for the first time in years. Not only is that reasonable, If anything, the rate of inflation is such that this is still effectively cheaper than it has been just a couple years ago.
Idk I said the same about Netflix years ago
Does the calculation showing that it’s cheaper when accounting for inflation also account for wage stagnation? ~Strawberry
Oh good I get to pay a dollar more every month to have unremovable ads for podcasts shoved in my face
The idea that podcasts still have ads on the premium version of Spotify is absurd to me. They claim it’s because the audio gets submitted with the ads as part of the file but Spotify could very easily ask for a version without ads to play as part of the contract.
It drives me up the wall to hear Geico ads and other shit when I’m paying them actual cash money not to listen to ads.
Ads are so ubiquitous that I feel many of us don’t even recognize we’re being advertised to anymore
Or you use a good adblocker and then get extremely irritated when you once in a while have to listen to an ad ;)
Yep. Between ad blockers/sponsorblock and my content choices it’s actually extremely rare that I encounter any traditional advertising. I don’t even know how I used to sit through the old cable TV ads. Now I’m already searching for something else to do 5 seconds in
Yeah, same :D
If the ads are baked in, just hit the 15s jump button a couple of times until you get back into the podcast. The ones I listen to usually play music during the ads, so when I hear the music is over I know I’m back in the podcast.
This is a completely different topic than what I’m talking about in my comment. I’m referring to the ads for podcasts that appear on the homescreen and can’t be blocked disabled.
I don’t listen to podcasts, and if I did I’d simply not listen to those with ads, including sponsorships. Regardless, I thought the whole point of podcasts is you can listen to them hands-free, so your skipping forward solution doesn’t seem very practical.
Sorry, didn’t realize you were referring to promos that Spotify runs for their content. Yeah I guess they don’t have a way to turn that off, but it’s a simple button to get past.
Also, fast forwarding really is not a big deal. While I’m out walking my dog and kiddo I just tap my ear buds twice and it fast forwards 15 seconds past the baked in ads in the podcast.
Oh god, I hate gesture-based earbuds. I painted over mine with clear nail polish because I’ve never once had them respond in such a way that I find helpful. Someone will invariably start yakking at me, then I have to remove an earbud, and they’ll skip tracks, power down, or do all kinds of crazy shit.
Regardless, it actually is a big deal to me that I’m having unwanted ads shoved in my face the moment I launch the app. That is not acceptable, and it’s disturbing that you seem to think it’s normal. I pay their supposedly “ad-free” plan to get ads? Fuck that.
I listen to things in my car a lot where the only forward button on that interface is a skip to the next episode button. I’d have to pull out my phone and open the app on my phone to find the skip forward 15s button.
You just gotta stop listening to podcasts in Spotify. They’re hands down the worst listening experience for them.
You might want to re-read my comment. The operative term there is “for.”
Ads for podcasts, not in podcasts
I don’t listen to podcasts, and if I did, I certainly wouldn’t listen to any with sponsorships or other ads
Pretty sure the only ads on spotify podcasts are the ones built in to the podcast recording, like the audio file includes the ads
At least i never get any ads from spotify listening to podcasts, unless the people doing the podcast have ads
I don’t listen to podcasts, although you are correct that many podcasters are paid to promote products, which is itself a form of advertising.
I’m talking about the shelf that appears on my homescreen that is used to promote podcasts, which is also a form of advertising , aka an ad
Ah i see. Idk if i’d call that an ad any more than any other recommended playlist or album on the home page being called an ad
You may not call it an ad, but that’s what it is
They are using it to promote a product
I wish I could turn off all the algorithmic recommendations tbh. It’s all an intrusive form of advertising, but I especially resent having podcasts shoved at me in my music app.
Well yeah, reflecting on what you’re saying i think any recommendation on the home page is an ad. But I agree the podcasts are more intrusive, especially if you never listen to them.
Why don’t you just stick to the search or library tab if you don’t want the recommendations on the home page? Ideally they’d have an option to set the default tab, but if you don’t want any recommendations they’re pretty easy to avoid
Oh my gods, are you joking? When I launch the app on my android device, it defaults to the homepage. I’ve actually contacted Spotify about this and there is no way to change this, so in what fictional fantasy world are you living that I can “just stick to the search or library tab” when literally launching the app defaults to the homescreen? Am I talking to a bot?
Oh sure, let me use uBlock Origin to just zap all these shelves. Oh wait, now I can’t see any albums.
I’m not talking out my ass here, so I’d appreciate it if you just let me vent about how shitty Spotify is with their crappy features that are unable to be customized in any way. Why not? BECAUSE THEY ARE USING IT TO ADVERTISE, EVEN THOUGH I’M PAYING A SUBSCRIPTION. I DO NOT want ads, no shelves, no recommendations, no algorithm, and honestly? Maybe I just don’t want Spotify. They don’t even pay artists that much anyway, so I could just as well pirate like I do for movies and shows ever since Netflix went wack.
Sorry, I didn’t realize you were just trying to vent. I agree that they should have some kind of option to default to a different tab, or some better solution. They do a lot of shitty and annoying stuff as a company. But also, it’s not really a fictional world to just stick to those tabs, it’s more like an extra tap once the app opens. You might even be able to set up a tasker thing or something like smart autoclicker on fdroid to immediately switch tabs as soon as the app opens
Yeah sorry for coming on strong, but I’ve got a lot of resentment for Spotify. It was good, but it’s becoming enshittified along with everything else.
Honestly, there are alternatives that don’t require a subscription at all. Most of them don’t allow local downloading, which used to be inconvenient, but now we have unlimited mobile data, so it would be so easy to switch.
For the record, I like supporting artists, which is why I do buy physical media from independent record labels and the like, which is a much better way to support them than Spotify.
The tasker idea is worth researching, though. I’ll look into it. At the end of the day, it would be really nice if I didn’t feel compelled to switch. I’ve put a lot of time and effort into my playlists.
Do you have any recommendations for alternatives? I remember looking into it a bit ago and not really finding one I liked, but would be interested in making a switch. EDIT: on iOS, if that matters
I think iOS has significantly fewer alternatives than Android since (correct me if I’m wrong but) I think you are limited to the Apple Store. You could look into some of these.
Android has apps like Spotube, which has all the essential features of Spotify for free, or even LibreTube or NewPipe can be used as music apps.
I saw someone comment on reddit a couple months ago that Apple may start allowing side-loading apps. That would open up a lot of doors, and I hope it’s accurate, though who knows if the user was correct.
Thanks for the reply! Yeah I do a lot of listening on my work phone (the iOS one), might just need to settle for doing more media playing on my old Android.
Y’know what? That’s actually something I should do as well. I have a Galaxy S8 that is no longer in service but would work perfect well as a dedicated media player, and then I wouldn’t have my listening interrupted by email and text notifications.
afaik, podcasts can choose to have ads (I don’t mean sponsorships) enabled. most podcasts I listen to have sponsorships, but for example the lateral podcast from tom scott actually has ‘real’ ads in it, even with premium.
couldn’t agree with you more. it can’t be that hard to give us an opt-out of podcasts altogether. there’s been an item for that on their feature request forum for as long as podcasts in spotify are a thing
they just don’t want to
They’ve got to be getting paid to show it. I can’t see any other reason to force it, considering how many people are unhappy with it.
Tbf Spotify produced podcasts don’t have the ads baked in so you can skip them almost immediately.
For. It’s a shelf that appears on your homescreen that is used to advertise podcasts. Even in a browser, you can’t remove it with uBlock without disrupting the site’s functionality because it is too baked in.
I don’t listen to podcasts.
Pretty much inevitable I’ve been amazed they went this long. $10 just does not seem sustainable.
Im fairly sure they manage because they have so many subscriptions from people that barely use it.
They basically pay out per song played - and server costs are also largely dependent on active users. So they balance out a very active person that might incur 15$ in cost with 5 inactive people that incur not even a dollar.
Then there are people like me who do use Spotify a lot, but I’m mostly listening to the same stuff most of the time. Unless I’m trying to find new things or listen to a podcast, it’s most likely all cached on my device.
Well, they pay artists 0.03¢ every 1000 play or something…
I guess I don’t really know exactly how their model works, but I’m guessing that is only for independent artists. I bet they paid big bucks to the major record labels.
To record label yes, to artists, no
Yes and thats my point. The $10 a month is likely not sustainable because of their contracts with record labels.
They were the last to do this. Can’t even be mad about it.
the reason i used spotify was their reccomendation system and now it is the worst of any other platform. Even if they make it free I won’t use it ever again. I don’t want to listen to Unholy after every fucking song.
Pandora has amazing stations that randomize like music. I’ve found lots of new artists this way and love it.
Wow I completely disagree. Are you actually liking and disliking songs? And AI DJ is fantastic. I just recently learned about it and have been loving it. I use Apple Music some, but it’s for curation, not recommendation.
yes i have like 5000 liked songs now. Been on spotify for 8 years already. It was way more amazing before. I use to play a song then the next song will be something that other people listened but also liked the song I played.
Fast forward now. No matter what I pkay the next song is always a song I have heard before ESPECIALLY unholy by sam smith. I use to love that song but I loathe it now. I am playing a japanese song. Next song is unholy. I mean what the hell. Then I searched why is this happening.
The cause came out to be cache management. Of they have a song cached in your device spotify will play that. Guck the recommendations. So I thought lets remoce the cache. That does not work because their CDN has that songs cached now and I still get that god forsaken song instead of a true song.
I use to pay spotify yearly basis thats how much I used to use it. Now I have 4 months remaining but don’t use spotify on my android. Only on desktop.
hm. very strange. I’ve never seen the same. Wonder if it’s an iOS vs Android thing? I can completely understand not using it if that happened though. That sounds terrible.
https://piunikaweb.com/2023/01/05/spotify-repeating-same-songs-even-with-shuffle-enabled/
Damn. I’m sorry. Well good luck with trying out other services. I hope you like one of them as much as you liked Spotify.
I have both ios and android, also tried this on desktop and web player
What do you recommend for playing deeper tracks from artists I follow? I don’t like to like songs, I either want to like entire artists or just listen. I’m also relying pretty heavily on daily and weekly mixes synced to my phone, for the car, since I don’t have cell service around where I liv nowe. Like, at all, and spotty for hundreds of miles.
I used Google Play Music back in the day, and they were great about this, but YT Music took a major step back. Even if it’s better now, I’m trying to extricate my life from Google.
Pandora has this concept of modes, where you can choose to listen to Deep Cuts, Crowd Faves, New Releases or Discovery for a given station. The problem is:
I used Apple Music for maybe 18 months between Spotify stints, after YT Music. I was trying to switch over to the Apple ecosystem, but am moving back to AOSP Android and Linux. I do like that the depth played from a given artist is a good bit better than Spotify, but I dislike that I can’t either follow artists instead of liking songs, and can’t easily get a list of liked songs to unlike in the future.
There is not a single app for this. For recommendations I now sometimes use last.fm and for songs I use blackhole (even though i have 4 months of spotify premium remaining). Blackhole luckly has a song download option and I can use it with any of my media player and I can’t believe I am saying this but it has a better song recommendation then spotify.
But if you want to spam 1 artist I would say just search on spotify. you will get a playlist like "this is (artist name) ". That has good songs and you can download that playlist too. But What i do is just search it on blackhole and go to town. Download what I like and jam all the way.
You mean it repeats a lot of stuff? Thats what I found :( A lot of the liked music lists it generated just seems to be stuff I already liked ages ago
I’m trialing Apple Music, but, only thing is it doesn’t let you download all of your liked songs on your phone it seems
I’m sure it did on my iPhone, I relied on it to play music in the car since I don’t have cell coverage for the most part. I’m not sure about the Android app, and my subscription is lapsed now so I can’t check.
You seem to be able to do it for each playlist, but not all… But someone else has a solution it seems
I’m fairly certain there was a setting to just download all songs you’ve added to your library. Then from the songs section of your library, you can shuffle play all. No need for a playlist.
What I ended up doing was making a smart playlist on desktop, that contains all of the songs in your library. Then it’s a single button tap to download everything.
Just tested it. Seems to be downloading. Thanks
Thanks, I’ll take a look at that
Same, i used to sub with Spotify, in the last 2 years i’ve been on Apple music, they even have better collection and playlists of non-english music. Spotify is full of rap music and so hard to discover anything else unless you know what you are searching for.
Is it just the single account or is the family account also increasing?
I’ve started using Youtube Premium more since I get music, podcasts, and ad-free Youtube for 5 people. Much better deal. :)
I just wish YouTube Music would get better integration with more services. I really enjoy being able to seamlessly play Spotify on my PS5 while I’m playing games, and listening along with friends on Discord is also way easier on Spotify. If YouTube Music could get similar integrations, I’d probably drop Spotify, since I’m already paying for YouTube Premium as it is.
I subscribed to YouTube Premium a few days ago, after being a long-time Spotify subscriber. It really does seem like a viable alternative… except for the lack of something like Spotify connect. I can’t even control the playback on my computer or TV from my phone. It’s like every YouTube Music device is on their own, knowing nothing about the others. With Spotify I could seamlessly continue the playback of the song I was listening to in my car on my phone and later on the smart speaker in my apartment.
I’ve tried out YouTube Premium a few weeks ago with the intention of replacing Spotify, but it just doesn’t do the job. I have a use case where I have one computer playing music, but I want to control it with another computer. I’ve yet to find another service that does what I need other than Spotify.
Same! And a decent API similar to Spotify, would be nice!
Where can I find podcasts in YT music?
It’s mostly part of Youtube but you can find it here: https://music.youtube.com/podcasts
Seems like it’s only available in the US
Sorry! I didn’t know :(
Well. Even more of a reason for me to keep not listening to music anymore.
Here is a report about spotify cost: https://ja.musicfab.org/spotify-price-plan-introduce