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.

  • Lanthanae@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    68·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org
      29·
      1 year ago

      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.

    • EveningPancakes@lemm.ee
      13·
      1 year ago

      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.

        • EveningPancakes@lemm.ee
          3·
          1 year ago

          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.

          • Limeade@beehaw.org
            2·
            1 year ago

            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.

    • garrett@infosec.pub
      9·
      1 year ago

      You just gotta stop listening to podcasts in Spotify. They’re hands down the worst listening experience for them.

    • oshitwaddup@lemmy.antemeridiem.xyz
      7·
      1 year ago

      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

            • oshitwaddup@lemmy.antemeridiem.xyz
              1·
              1 year ago

              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

                • oshitwaddup@lemmy.antemeridiem.xyz
                  5·
                  1 year ago

                  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

      • Pietson@beehaw.org
        3·
        1 year ago

        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.

    • gkpy@feddit.de
      4·
      1 year ago

      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

    • Big P@feddit.uk
      2·
      1 year ago

      Tbf Spotify produced podcasts don’t have the ads baked in so you can skip them almost immediately.

  • idle@158436977.xyz
    14·
    1 year ago

    Pretty much inevitable I’ve been amazed they went this long. $10 just does not seem sustainable.

    • uberrice@feddit.de
      8·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • bamboo@lemm.ee
        2·
        1 year ago

        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.

      • idle@158436977.xyz
        1·
        1 year ago

        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.

  • som@beehaw.org
    10·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • Auzy@beehaw.org
      4·
      1 year ago

      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

      • doona@aussie.zone
        2·
        1 year ago

        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.

      • jcarax@beehaw.org
        1·
        1 year ago

        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.

        • Auzy@beehaw.org
          1·
          1 year ago

          You seem to be able to do it for each playlist, but not all… But someone else has a solution it seems

          • jcarax@beehaw.org
            1·
            1 year ago

            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.

    • Mustafa Albazy@programming.devOP
      3·
      1 year ago

      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.

    • ozoned@beehaw.org
      3·
      1 year ago

      Pandora has amazing stations that randomize like music. I’ve found lots of new artists this way and love it.

    • snowe@programming.dev
      3·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • som@beehaw.org
        2·
        1 year ago

        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.

    • jcarax@beehaw.org
      2·
      1 year ago

      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:

      • It still gets redundant within the given mode
      • Managing stations grows to be a pain in the ass
      • I don’t want to listen to all new, more loosely related, or popular tracks; and it won’t let me set mode preferences for the standard station
      • I really dislike Sirius XM as a company, and don’t want to support them.

      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.

      • som@beehaw.org
        1·
        1 year ago

        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.

  • katy ✨@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    5·
    1 year ago

    I’ve started using Youtube Premium more since I get music, podcasts, and ad-free Youtube for 5 people. Much better deal. :)

    • Chozo@kbin.social
      6·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • elauso@feddit.de
        4·
        1 year ago

        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.

        • stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca
          3·
          1 year ago

          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.

        • Chozo@kbin.social
          2·
          1 year ago

          Yup, that’s another feature I get extensive use out of, too. I’ll sometimes queue up some music from my phone to play on my Nest speakers, and switch tracks from my watch. It’s just not as seamless of a process on YTM as it is on Spotify, unfortunately. Which is a shame, because Google could really be a serious contender in the music streaming space if they just invested a bit into the product.

    • EremesZorn@beehaw.org
      1·
      1 year ago

      I cannot imagine life without music. I’ve met people that have told me “I don’t really listen to music at all,” and I never really understood that frame of mind.