Technology

Meanwhile in a meeting room in Stockholm:

Remember how we reduced music piracy to an insignificant amount by making the legal choice convenient and relatively affordable? I forgot! So let's torpedo our business.

Those who fail to scan the address verification QR code within seven days will see their account demoted to the free tier and be barred from joining any other Duo or Family plan for 12 months.

Well that's pretty crummy. That's a very long ban, and a lot of extra money.

spotify single-handedly increasing music piracy rates back to napster levels

Don’t forget the warmongering Spotify do. Their profits pays to create tech that’s aimed at killing you.

If they want it to be a household plan, they should call it that instead of falsely advertising it as a family plan.

Using a different music service is so easy. You can't even use the excuse that your friends are all on there. Stop giving them your money.

If they do this to me, I have zero reason to stay with them. My ex pays for it. If they kick me off because my physical address is no longer the same, I won't use them. I'm sure he will stop paying for the daily plan and go back to free or, use a different app altogether. Good luck spotify. Did you learn nothing from Netflix?

Navidrome.

“We'll heave and haul and roar o'er the dark blue wave!”

If you're going to pay for music, buy it DRM free on bandcamp etc, or CDs and rip them, you can make multiple copies and anyone in your family can play them at any time. Shitify is a joke.

Soulseek, people. Just pirate things and send money directly to artists (or buy merch). Fuck all these streaming companies

"analysts are confident that music streaming services such as Spotify can enforce strict account policies, raise prices, and still make more money."

They looked at Netflix and Disney and they are right. This is a no brainer if you're a business. There's literally no downside other than angry comments online.

'Burn baby burn' is possibly the most appropriate song for them

And people have scoffed at me for buying individual songs on iTunes instead of just jumping in bed with Spotify....

No matter how bad my financial situation becomes, as long as I can still charge my iPhone I will have access to not only my full music library, ad free, I also have access to the 50+ audio books I have bought on Apple Books completely ad free.

I just need a way to download the audio books without DRM and save them on my home server to feel fully at ease.

They did something like that once a few years ago. I didn‘t see their email and my account was swiftly permanently blocked from the program. No chance to appeal. I was pretty upset for a moment, then made a new account and connected it to the family account. If they kick me out again I‘m gone for good.

I‘m not paying the kind of money they‘re asking for to listen to some music and podcasts that run ads and sponsor segments. Discoverability became insanely bad years ago. Most of their recommendations are obvious product placements that they‘re not declaring properly.

So yeah, looks like Spotify is about to extract some more money from customers with dubious methods short term and losing a lot of us long term. But I am prepared.

whats a good way to find new music based on a curated library/playlist/settings? i’m on apple for now but yeah.. this has always been rough finding new tunes or artists.

And of course, this happens at the same time as they're announcing a price increase

Ive spent all day working on a way to move my family off Spotify.

Ive settled on navidrome behind wireguard and a signal chat where they can request music. The requests are filtered through AI to format it before they are fed into sksld to be downloaded and moved into the respective family members navidrome library.

Will it work, I'm not sure but ive spent so much effort and I'm gonna be sad if they dont even try it out.

Take picture of QR on primary phone. Send photo with QR to people on the family plan

I need to get a RED account, ugh, the entrance test seems annoying but I want to selfhost my own music.

This is desperation just like the disney ad thing.

TIL that there are dozens of websites to find strangers to put on their own family plan to get some extra cash, meanwhile they will manage the payments

I wouldn't have imagined that there would be that many.

Paying a third party service to get into a stranger's family plan is against the ToS, so at that point, if you're willing to go against the ToS you can do it for free