Welcome to the era of only Spotify Plays matter - let's take a look at the underbelly of streaming scams affecting independent artists.
What in the tech world isn’t broken? Besides older consoles and computers disconnected from the internet.
It's Not Just You: Music Streaming Is Broken Now
Submitted 3 weeks ago by BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.de to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plleJ0Zv0Ww
Comments
tidderuuf@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
My GOG games aren’t, my Steam library’s still chugging along after 11 years, my Linux installs haven’t failed or started spying on me and my offline, modular 3d printer still works.
It’s all about understanding what you’re buying and what’s the incentives for those on the other end. We shouldn’t have to think about that all the time, but on the bright side there are cool things happening outside of enshittification by publicly traded corpos.
baines@lemmy.cafe 2 weeks ago
steam will go to shit soon as we lose gaben
sic_semper_tyrannis@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
Steam will do a rug pull one day. You purchase a license to their games, you do not own them.
chunkystyles@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
My Internet-connected Linux computers are pretty fucking rad.
aesthelete@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Eh, I switched back to running my own server like five years ago. Sure, technically I’m not giving individual artists their $0.0005 a stream, but nowadays I discover more music, attend more shows, and buy more merch.
During the couple of years I spent streaming, I discovered like Alvvays and Yumi Zouma. Nowadays, I discover new bands monthly if not weekly.
Like AI, streaming recommendation engines are mediocrity machines. All they can do is find you things that sound like the things you already listen to. Sometimes, if you’re adventurous, you find things that sound unlike anything else you listen to. If you find a great thing like that, it can change you. Unlike recommendation engine music, which will try to keep you the same forever.
Coldcell@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
What’s your discovery means now? How do you get exposed to things not currently in your wheelhouse? And once you find that thing, how do you integrate that into your library for listening on an often enough basis?
I find that I binge explore, grab 12 new artists like an old mix CD and see what sticks, but then feel like a hoarder when it sits unplayed in my library for a year.
aesthelete@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I use www.albumoftheyear.org and I subscribe to pitchfork and the rolling stone in my RSS feed.
Jack_Burton@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Not who you asked, but I can tell you where I’m at with that. My primary listening is on an mp3 player, and I also use a home server for listening on speakers/tv. Switching to a separate device used only for music has made my listening far more deliberate. When I pick up the player, I’m making a point to listen to music, not just have it on in the background like I used to. It’s also a pain in the ass (comparitively) to make playlists on it (I purposely chose a scroll-wheel style and no touch screen) so I’m listening to a lot of full albums now, which I never really did before, exposing me to a lot more than I used to since I don’t just throw the song or two I like on a playlist and leave the rest.
There’s been an interesting side effect that I didn’t expect: Being more deliberate with my listening has sharpened my ear to music, I hear music in movies and shows in a way I never used to, I’m beginning to recognize voices and band styles by ear, I actually focus on music now instead of it just being part of the background. As such, I find a lot of new music these days by looking up songs from movies and tv. For example, the most recent:
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I completely devoured the Sinners soundtrack. (Ludwig Göransson is a fave and I’ve always been a fan of Buddy Guy)
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Watching Dope Thief, I realized I never skipped the intro. Got me hooked on Little Simz
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James Gunn has some great taste. Beyond season 1 of Peacemaker, Season 2 has already got me absolutely loving Foxy Shazam, and after the latest ep I’ve been getting into Hardcore Superstar.
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Strangely enough, Rick and Morty has some bangers in the later seasons, and got me listening to stuff I never would have like Kishi Bashi.
Not only has my listening become more deliberate, but my sourcing of new music has as well. No longer relying on an algorithm to do the work for me has allowed me to hone a new skill and learn how to find new music myself.
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rozodru@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
can't speak for OP but for me, surprisingly, youtube shorts. Once that damn thing gets your algo figured out for you suddenly you can start finding bands that are in your wheelhouse. Start by looking for shorts on your current favourite bands and eventually new stuff will start popping up that should be similar to your taste.
Honestly for all the crap that's on youtube, shorts has been one of if not the best tool for me to find new music/bands. Once I find something I like then it's off to SoulSeek/Nicotine+ to add it to my server.
HeyJoe@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I love seeing this. As someone who has kept his own library of music since 2004 and went through the peak of local libraries to it almost being dead after like 2012, this is a day I never saw coming! When it started declining, home hosting solutions were already sparse, but then some more threw in the towel as well. Right now, I use Navidrome as my server and Symfonium for the app and has been an incredible 2 years using it. If people start coming back, I feel like it will only drive more creativity and new features as it will be worked on more than it is.
BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.de 3 weeks ago
I also use Symfonium, it is just awesome
HeyJoe@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yeah! I’ve been using it since the first month, and it has been released and has come a long way in only 2 years. Funny enough, I used to use his other app, Yatse, way back in like 2010 for a while, and I also have nothing but high praise for it as well. It was a remote control app for Kodi, and the things he added to it were impressive. Who knew you needed tons of features in a remote control app!
null@lemmy.nullspace.lol 2 weeks ago
Navidrome + ListenBrainz + Bandcamp (and a little Soulseek) = unshittification
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
I used Navidrome and Symfonium with Picard for metadata and relied on a combination of Bandcamp, Rutracker and yt-dlp with a YTM free trial, along with the Spotify data export and manual python scripting elbow grease to fetch, tag all the music from my Spotify and recreate every playlist as m3u8.
Despite Symfonium constantly losing its silly always online DRM license check and locking me out of both my cached and remote (via PiVPN to Nginx on home server to navigate) songs due to me having multiple Google accounts on my phone and the app freaking out because it would check the wrong account, forcing me to log out of all accounts and reset the app - losing all my customization, I had a fairly functional setup, even with playlist cover art and everything on Symfonium (despite it not being a feature in Navidrome itself). My playlists were just as they were on Spotify down to each specific song title, album cover and most importantly of course metadata correctness and song order (I have never used shuffle in my life).
Unfortunately I went back to Spotify in the end because most music i listen to is niche and fairly Indie and thus either a pain in the ass to pirate or simply outright unavailable externally, and to maintain consistent proper metadata for what is there was like a full-time job even with Picard. I eventually simply gave up downloading more music and listened to the same few thousand songs in my transferred playlists on repeat which for me led to a feeling of stagnancy and eventually depression in life, after I begrudgingly came back to Spotify I immediately discovered several hundred new songs and created multiple new playlists just during my walks to and from the grocery store alone.
My ultimate problem is that on Spotify if I look something up I can just listen to it right away and immediately add it to my library or to a playlist of my choosing.
In contrast, when self-hosting I would have to first look up the music on Google, go to YouTube to listen to it, look up album/artist on Rutracker, filter out albums/songs I don’t want from the discography torrent add it to my qbittorrent if available, mount the NFS share on windows with my staging folder, add metadata with musicbrainz Picard and have it move to the correct folder, then rescan on Navidrome webui, rescan on Symfonium local cache, then add to a playlist, then listen.
This is like, 2-3 hours just for me to skip to the middle of the song, listen for 30 seconds, decide I don’t like the song and delete it later. It’s way too much.
The unfortunate truth is that despite feeling good about whatever miniscule amount of effect I might have on stopping this wealth transfer from artists and listeners to Spotify and our corporate overlords while those same overlords win elections and take away my human rights while I can’t even find a fitting song to listen when attempting to find some peace in that mess, the alternatives just aren’t worth it for me.
Yes I could just accept to have less, to just make do with the music I have, but that requires motivation that’s frankly hard to maintain if you look around and see how the rest of society behaves. Feels like I’m cutting off my nose to spite my face tbqh, and I am still angry at the combativeness musicbrainz picard users show when you point out just how often the metadata is total ass and how it would be much better and easier to make a metadata scraper off Spotify instead, which is the target platform for music now for anyone who independently distributes via the likes of cdbaby or Distrokid etc., which accounts for roughly all music I listen to and also my own.
I would love for it to work as it does with Jellyfin and Immich, I have replaced GDrive, Netflix, Google Photos and damn near everything, Spotify is my only subscription left, but it just hasn’t worked for me. I’d love suggestions on how this problem can be fixed though.
HeyJoe@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I dont go into depth that much, but i do a lot of manual labor getting everything in place when I get new music. Maybe I never spent a good amount of time figuring it out, but preset id tags done automatically never worked out for me. I check them all and edit a few things on some, and then I run it through music Picard using someone’s script to only update genre tags and give up to 5 per track. After that, I add them in. My biggest complaint about Spotify was that I didn’t feel anything when it recommended me stuff, and it always felt off as to what I heard. Something about looking it up, finding what’s new, and wanting to hear it is why I keep coming back. Spotify, I didn’t learn anything about who came on unless I looked. Weirdly enough, I feel like I discovered way more myself than with the algorithm.
mariusafa@lemmy.sdf.org 2 weeks ago
Nah bro, device storage is cheap nowadays.
WolfLink@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
You can also just buy digital downloads from sites like Bandcamp and Quobuz, and even iTunes if you click past the Apple Music streaming part.
NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Why would you not stream that to yourself? No need to buy hardware to get in the way.
mariusafa@lemmy.sdf.org 2 weeks ago
I mean most phones have +64gb of memory, no? With that space I can have hundreds of songs that I can listen at any time without having internet connection or not. Why would I stream it to my self (which requires internet connection) if I can just have it in my phone or computer?
Honytawk@feddit.nl 2 weeks ago
Because there is no need to send music over the internet when you can just save it locally and have it everywhere and always with you.
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Optical drives are no longer in production
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BafMgVvHTIkieron115@startrek.website 2 weeks ago
Shit. I’m glad I’ve been babying my asus bw-16d1ht with libredrive mode enabled. You know, for backing up my home movies.
ICastFist@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
Sorry, I can’t hear it over the sound of all these downloaded MP3s I still keep around
idefix@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
That’s typically the kind of videos I will never watch. The thumbnail is ridiculous (as per YouTube’s guidelines), the title is vague and clickbait. For those who did, what made you click?
CtrlAltDyeet@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
I refuse to use YouTube without sponsorblock and dearrow. I use Firefox on android with extensions and make a YouTube PWA because thumbnails in the official app are ridiculous.
Even good channels like Veritasium have completely irrelevant titles make me skip videos I would’ve watched
BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.de 2 weeks ago
I clicked on it because I knew a lot of things with Spotify are broken and I am interested in it. I have a lot of friends on there and I like having good arguments against it. Also I just like this channel and my mood did very much fit the "we're fucked" part of the title 😅
MedicPigBabySaver@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Fuck streaming. I’ve had my local mp3s for decades.
SugarCatDestroyer@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Damn, I’m jealous, I just started collecting.
MedicPigBabySaver@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I ripped 100s of CDs back at least 2004.
Xed@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
Same. I’ve got most of my downloads on my phone with VLC to play them
MedicPigBabySaver@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
If you can get Poweramp player I highly recommend.
Great custom options like: crossfade control, replay gain… so many options.
sturmblast@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
As much as I know Spotify isn’t great for artists, I do find it to be the best streaming option for how I enjoy music. Next to Winamp of course.
glorkon@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Spotify’s streaming quality is, regrettably, rather low, even if you pay for a monthly subscription.
I switched to Tidal when I bought a dedicated DAC and a pair of very highend headphones and have not regretted it - you can hear the difference on good gear.
Dozzi92@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I have great gear, I have FLACs, I have 180g records, and I have Spotify, and they all sound fine. Perhaps I come from a time when 192 mp3s were what you downloaded, but IMO if it’s a 320 mp3 or above it sounds the same. Only time I ever noticed and appreciated a difference was when sampling or mixing, and then higher quality can be appreciated, but if I’m just cranking tunes, Spotify, FLAC, or vinyl, really makes no difference, they all drown out the ringing in my ears just fine.
Iamaquantummechanic@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I listen to punk music recorded on crappy gear, so I prefer not to hear it hi-fi.
sturmblast@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yeah but Spotify does now offer 24-bit/44.1 kHz FLAC as their highest now, which is fine for most any system. And they have 30+ million more songs. Using both is probably the best option in many ways, but for my tastes Spotify hasn’t been beat. I can find things on Spotify I can get on other platforms and that’s important to me.
Mister_Hangman@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It really whips the llamas ass.
sturmblast@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
You are goddamn right it does.
Kolanaki@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
I wish Winamp was on Android so I could use it on my phone, too. Especially if it had Milkdrop Visualizer.
tal@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
Especially if it had Milkdrop Visualizer.
I wouldn’t be suprised if there’s a ProjectM port. It’s in Debian.
checks
Yup. Not on F-Droid, though.
play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.psperl.…
github.com/projectM-visualizer/projectm
projectM is an open-source project that reimplements the esteemed Winamp Milkdrop by Geiss in a more modern, cross-platform reusable library.
pezhore@infosec.pub 2 weeks ago
That’s what I did for my wedding - shoutcast with a requests plugin so the wedding party and guests could choose what songs to play.
mechoman444@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I stopped using Spotify over a decade ago. Now I just use Pandora which is actually still pretty good. And occasionally I’ll use YouTube music if I want to check out a new band or something. But Spotify is pretty usless.
m33@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Pandora is unavailable in Europe, does anyone knows solid alternatives ?
fodor@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
The Pirate Bay is my favorite alternative. You should try it out. The library is enormous, and the monthly subscription charge is negligible. It even works on all major platforms!
bork@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I know it’s unpopular, but I have YT premium and use YT music since it’s included. It’s expensive for a streaming service, but it’s also the only streaming subscription I have.
elvis_depresley@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
You need ID to for adult sites like discord or twitter but you you did a cover with Drake? We trust you…
SugarCatDestroyer@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Do you want to buy bread? Show me your ID! I don’t get it, why isn’t your ID on your body like other people? You’re an outlaw!!!
Packet@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Just use nicotine(the soulseek client), and you will have 0 problems. If you want to support the artist, purchase their stuff on platforms made for that, get the .flac
PrinzKasper@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Noob question, should I use a VPN for Soulseek?
Samuelwankenobi@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
I just think we should all go back to physical media CDs for music and blu ray for films is what I am currently doing
tal@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
physical media CDs for music
My understanding is that the streaming services basically ended the loudness war by imposing volume normalition. I’m not sure that I want to restart it.
Jack_Burton@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Last year I put my music collection on an SD card and slapped it into a hifiman walker mp3 player. I quickly discovered that having a device solely for music has made my listening much more deliberate, and I’ve listened to more music more often than I ever have because of it. I even plug it in my car instead of using bluetooth
NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
My server says streaming is working great. My radio station list says streaming is working great. SomaFM is working great, and the archive fills the rest.
A_norny_mousse@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
This is from the artist’s pov, but of course it makes every Spotify user’s experience worse.
And what I hate most is that they don’t even understand what I’m talking about. That they’re being duped, and that I have more freedom in choosing and discovering music than them.
So many people think solely in genres nowadays, instead of artists. And they don’t even care if more and more generic or AI generated stuff finds its way into their playlists. They “adapt”. After all, they only put stuff they like into their playlists, right? But unknowingly, gently, they keep getting pulled towards a trodden path and if this goes on long enough we’ll have like 10 genres to choose from and that’s it. No individual artists anymore, no experimentation, no challenging your listening habits etc.
angstylittlecatboy@reddthat.com 2 weeks ago
But unknowingly, gently, they keep getting pulled towards a trodden path and if this goes on long enough we’ll have like 10 genres to choose from and that’s it.
Usually when people think in genres instead of artists, genres get more granular, so we end up with hundreds of more new words that describe minute differences. Like, look at EDM, a genre that has never really cared about individual artists. They’ll consider a 5BPM difference to be a different genre.
Given all the different “microgenres” that are popping up now, usually by younger artists, I think that tracks with music today.
mesamunefire@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
I really want to get a https://www.crowdsupply.com/cool-tech-zone/tangara at some point.
Although I have an old ipod with a new battery and linux installed...so theres no real need.
yesman@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
A long time ago, you could go to a special store and trade government paper for music disks and tape that you got to keep forever.
Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Well hey old man, go to bandcamp and pay a quarter or an eighth of the price of that frisbee to get lossless audio files that you can download and backup to your heart’s content.
Spotify was always for chumps.
threeonefour@piefed.ca 2 weeks ago
Alright, I got an eighth. How do I trade it for music?
FenrirIII@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
This one time at band camp…
Grimy@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I remember that time and it was kind of shit. It was brutal in terms of packaging, and lugging around all those cds sucked. It was way more expensive and the money still all went to record companies, not to mention how terrible it felt to pay full price for a mostly garbage cd just for one song (single existed though but jot for everything).
Records companies also had final say on who we listened too and completely controlled the whole scene essentially.
I get the nostalgia but it was 100% worse both for artists and consumers. Well it has always been rough for artists tbh, but I don’t know if it’s harder right now or not.
yesman@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The contracts that steal music from artists haven’t changed one iota. Unless you’ve got juice like Paul McCarty, Beyonce, or Taylor Swift, and even then it can be a fight that takes years.
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
This 100%.
Soggy@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
They want fuckin 40 bucks for a vinyl these days and they don’t even throw in a digital download for that price, and the radio is owned by like three companies unless you live near a college station.
cosmo@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
When I discovered that it was possible to buy and download drm free lossless flac-files i went back to buying music again. Never looked back tbh.
UnbrokenTaco@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Where do you buy them from?
Localhorst86@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
honestly, most of my CDs have been used once: Put in a PC and ripped (to 96kbps MP3s, of course!)
pfr@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
I'm starting (a little late) to build my music library this way too. I self host jellyfin , for which there are some nice music players. But, I still have my Spotify account currently while I gradually build my personal library. I'll admit tho, I will miss the algorithm and artist suggestions
GraniteM@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Image
aesthelete@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Same but I have a huge collection of digital media.
blitzen@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
I find it funny that I have those examples in my “huge library of physical media.”
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
<glances at shelf in corner>
Can confirm.