We made them this way by swallowing their shit for decades. No wonder they think it'll work again this time.

Im just realizing that Youtube music pushing so many remixes in the discovery was just enshitfication or IP shrinkflation.

I dont even understand why music labels would want to work with these platforms at all if they are actively doing everything to cut them out and rip off their IP. Who needs enemies with friends like that...

Yep. Also switched to Qobuz. I may leave at some point in the future, but I'll least I'll be able to take the music I bought with me!

What alternative do you propose?

Homer_so-far.jpg

Same, it's nice throwing on a whole album too, something that gets lost in the shuffle streaming.

Usually either try to buy from the bands directly or on Bandcamp. For older stuff, I'll check out local record stores or Discogs.

This is why I buy cds from the artists I like .

I have a 50GB MP3 collection that I have curated since I was a teenager. Every time I hear news about streaming services, I watch from the sidelines and grab some popcorn.

Yeah, I buy a ton of digital and vinyls. Mostly for this reason.

Digital priority

Artist's website

Bandcamp

7digital

HD Tracks

Amazon Music

There are probably more middlemen to get it from a CD. The least middlemen would probably be downloading from the musicians' official website.

and now AI music, because roegan wasnt enough apparently.

Same. Past behaviour is so often a good indicator of future behaviour.

Now either you're on Bandcamp, or you sell downloads directly on your website, or I'm off to bittorrent.

After the Helsing controversy I dropped them. I miss being able to play local files and better Japanese music coverage but I'm glad my streams are supporting the artists a little more.

There's already an audiobook subscription add-on. It's going to be like that probably. But at least that had extra content that cost Spotify money. Paying more for royalty free robot covers doesn't make sense.

That's coming up next for an extra $20.

Because execs have no clue what users want and live in a parallel world in which people want what execs wish people wanted.

Then they'll be baffled by the low take on their offer and their next step will be to force-enroll existing users on a free trial that won't stop by itself, hoping some of them will just let it run and get milked.

The article lays it out pretty clearly on why if you read it.

It is unclear how these AI-generated songs will affect the royalties Spotify pays to artists. The company is reportedly already negotiating with record labels, but how high or low the payments to artists will ultimately be is not yet known. Spotify is also reportedly struggling to persuade some artists to agree to the use of their music by AI. According to an analyst quoted by the Financial Times, around 8 percent of all Spotify subscribers could be paying this surcharge for AI-generated songs by the end of 2028.

Money, it's always money. That's roughly 25 million subscribers that would be predicted to sign up for AI slop at 5 bucks a month. Combine that with what I'm sure would be looking to pay the artists a lot less and only having to pay for computing resources instead of people, that's still a fuck ton of money for them.

"Ai efficiencies will be passed on to the customer!"

Remember this next time billionaires say they'll happily pay onto UBI or whatever.

They have to. This is actually good news. It shows they are losing revenue and are desperate. If you still use Spotify that's on you.

Because a lot of people don’t care or even like this stuff.

This is how I acquire music since a few years back too. More actively seeking out new music instead of eating the algorithm also made music much more fun again.

That is just awful and I would never, ever do that to a poor corporation. In fact, I would love if you could share the steps to do this so that I can avoid accidentally downloading my Spotify library to my own hard drive outside their app.

Yaharrr 🏴‍☠️

Exactly. I'm using a fork, which is AI-generated, but still way better and lighter than the original client: https://spotifast.rocks/

Welcome to the club, there are dozens of us in here already! The water is warm and the sausages are mostly coocked through

Exactly, I would have thought you might have some AI only free/cheaper tier. At least that kinda makes sense as a use case, not that I could see myself ever paying for it

Well, gotta make all the AI cost back somehow. Most people are too comfortable to actually change anything, so they'll just pay more

because for some time spotify was cheap, easy and useful so people were happy to pay

it's fast become less of each of these and relies more on playlist lockin

We don't have good options for local music discoverability, and the major labels don't have any incentive to even sell music to individuals in the first place anymore. I unfortunately pay for music streaming just because I don't like listening to the same songs over and over. So to me the variety of new songs you can get from the algorithms on streaming services is worth paying for to me. Luckily, I don't need to use Spotify, and just because they're choosing to bundle an AI subscription in to their plans doesn't mean all their competitors will too.

"Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem."

When they first came onto the scene, streaming services offered a fairly cheap and convenient way for people to listen to whatever music they want whenever they want. Prior to this music piracy was widespread because the alternative was paying $10 at tower records for each album or, a little later, $1 per song on iTunes. People didn't pirate music because they cared about owning a copy for themselves, they just didn't want to deal with the expensive and inconvenient alternatives.

Rising subscription costs, increased AI slop, etc may usher in a new Renaissance of music piracy similar to what we're seeing with TV/Movies.

Because too many people don't respect their own time and corporations used this + ZIRP to turn the internet into a ad hellscape of conveniences.

Too much work and waste of storage space.

And also, it takes ages to skip between songs, because I have to wait for the stream to load. On my local music player, I can flick between them almost instantly until I hear one I like. And shuffle doesn't repeat the same 20 songs, apparently YouTube Music and Spotify cannot implement proper shuffle, it's too intense of an engineering task.

Loads of takeaways and cheaper restaurants use Spotify. Often free accounts, as you can hear it play ads.

Also buying on bandcamp. I'd never pirate music from an artist who I know is struggling to make the numbers work - I need them to keep making music.