Last year's price hike worked out very well for the company, so why not do it again? Spotify is preparing a revamp of its plans and prices, according to a...
As apparently, this move is made to target audiobook listeners and podcast listeners, can I recommend https://audiobookshelf.org
btw I've set up my own audiobookshelf server a few months ago for my audiobooks and podcasts.
Being able to start something on my phone and keep tracking of my listening then switch on my computer to continue is pure gold. It's what I was looking for for ages.
I tried setting up Audiobookshelf in Podman on my ancient Mac mini recently (now running Fedora x KDE), and turns out I don't know the first thing about running "dockered" servers/apps and absolutely couldn't get it to work 😅
Just a heads up to everyone, quitting Spotify and buying / "procuring" your own music and playing it via a music player makes reading this quite cathartic. Do it for the moral superiority and self esteem boost for no effort you come to the internet for anyways.
You are clearly not aware of the windfall profits corporations are making, and that they are then passing exactly none of it on to the workers generating that profit
I always try to buy my music first, digital only though. I don't have space for CDs or the like. If the option is not available (not common), the tricorn goes on. And normally I would go through any loophole I can find to get it legally. But damn, the Japanese really don't like doing business with foreigners.
I'd take a lower-priced plan with limited listening time. They're getting too expensive for the few hours a month I use it. If they bump it up more I will quit for sure.
The only reason I still use them is the qt-spotify third party client. None of the other services work on my OS (they all need DRM on the browser or other nastiness I don't have).
Why? Streaming has become a scam and everyone seems okay with it. Like everything online. Everything is an expensive subscription to rent entertainment. My suggestion? Buy CDs. Buy directly from the artists. Or pirate it, at least Spotify won't make any money from it.
Especially if you are a musician. Musicians need to boycott it. 99.9999% of musicians wouldn't even notice if they weren't on it but it would destroy Spotify.
Navidrome + Feishin (Web) - Tempo (Android) - Jellyfin (Android TV) here! I wish there was a solution for casting though, sometimes Jellyfin doesn't work properly
I can't recommend Navidrome to people who aren't necessarily big on self-hosting, it's simply far too big of a project. Gonic is very narrow in scope and it's a drop-in binary; just works.
Doesn't seem so bad, if you don't want the price hike just change your plan to not include audiobooks. A little scummy that you need to opt out but not the worst.
If the raise prices too much I'm going to finalise my plan to move to YouTube Music family plan. Additional bonus will be no more adds on YouTube.
Don't fall for this self hosting stuff. It's well meant and great for single tech enthusiasts, but with family, you won't have enough time to do the required upkeep and the whinning you will here from dependents when stuff goes wrong isn't worth it.
They're all pretty straight forward and Tidal has a better record of crediting and paying artists than Spotify. But ultimately, I would suggest self hosting.
Works fine on Android as well (which is weird considering how bad Apple software can be on non-Apple devices). Just need to create an Apple ID and you're set.
Testing out the trial right now and it's pretty great so far.
UI is way better than Spotify as well (IMO), plus lossless for the same price as current Spotify Premium. (And it also has a max cache size limit option, so even playing a shit ton of lossless isn't going to eat up more space than what you select.)
Getting my fucking Spotify library and playlists I've built over the years on here is going to be a long nightmare, though.
The Music client for Mac is still an excellent music manager and player and beats Spotify by a mile despite how visibly much they've let it bitrot* since it was iTunes. It's a shame neither the mobile app nor the web client has anywhere near the capabilities.
* for example, what the fuck is that stupid unresizable header that takes up half the window with mostly empty space and doesn't scroll off the screen anymore if you set a playlist view to "as Songs"
Hmm, I use Spotify to stream a wake up mix (approved by my SO,) to an Amazon Echo via Home Assistant. Currently, I know of no way to stream arbitrary music files to an Echo. And I know of no consumer grade device that can accept the command to "Shut your cake hole" when we're tired of listening to stuff while being compatible with HA. This is ... inconvenient.
Hope I don't have to pay for audiobooks I don't listen to because that's a waste. Spotify should just stick to what they do OK which is music. I'll stick to music only.