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Spotify is raising the cost of Premium subscriptions, again

Spotify is officially raising its Premium subscription rates in the US come July, following reports of the move in April. The platform is increasing its Individual plan from $11 to $12 monthly and its Duo plan from $15 to $17 monthly — the same jump as last year's $1 and $2 price hikes, respectively. However, its Family plan is going up by a whopping $3, increasing from $17 to $20 monthly. The only subscribers getting a break are students, who will continue to pay $6 monthly.

Spotify announced the price hikes less than a year after its previous one last July. Before that, Spotify hadn't raised its fees since launching a decade and a half ago. I guess it was too optimistic to hope the next increase would also take that long, especially with Spotify's continued focus (and money dump) on audiobooks.

Premium subscribers should receive an email from Spotify in the next month detailing the price hike and providing a link to cancel their plan if they would prefer to do so. Users currently on a trial period for Spotify will get one month at $11 after it ends before being moved up to a $12 monthly fee.

anthony ,
@anthony@lemmy.cif.su avatar

Who else is still using YouTube Music ReVanced?

jjjalljs ,

Still happily buying music on Bandcamp. Their discovery stuff is pretty good, too.

vividspecter ,

I'll add the old school method of scrobbling to last.fm for discovery still works pretty well too, and you can play music directly there now using Youtube (probably been there for years I assume). Just found some pretty obscure stuff that isn't even available on the mainstream streaming services, so that's a win.

jjjalljs ,

I forgot last.fm existed. I sort of used them years ago.

They did not handle separate artists with the same name gracefully at all. The page for a riot-grrl adjacent band and an Australian rapper (?) got merged and the fans were going at it on the page.

Looks like it's still kind of a problem

BarbecueCowboy ,

I'm all for going sailing but if there are features you want that that can't quite replicate, it's also a great time to look at a VPN service with a server in Turkey... Sign up on a Turkish IP and the exchange rate puts you under $2/month USD. This works for a lot of other things too.

lickmygiggle ,

I love you.

BarbecueCowboy ,

I know.

Nommer ,

I believe a dude on YouTube for a very popular streamer used an IP from Argentina to get 50 subs for YouTube premium to giveaway for only a couple bucks.

archomrade ,

https://midwest.social/pictrs/image/14a80d6d-0e4a-4eda-806f-481ada1f3c6d.jpeg

Appoxo ,

Spotify locks music is new to me? And for the few Podcasts I personally couldnt care less

archomrade ,

Platform agnostic = you own the mp3/FLACC/ect file, and can play it through whatever client you want

Platform Locked = you do not own the files, and they are DRM locked to their proprietary media player (see: spotify, kindle, ect)

Of course there are ways around those locks, but it's illegal to remove DRM protections (in the us)

Appoxo , (edited )

Gotcha.
Thought of it in a more of a Exclusive-To-Platform kind of way.

archomrade ,

Yea I figured, no worries

lud ,

You can switch to another service any time you want though.

archomrade ,

You'll own nothing and you'll like it

lud ,

It's way cheaper though.

archomrade ,

Idk if I owned as many cds as I've spent on music subscriptions I'd own more high fidelity music than I'd know what to do with

where_am_i ,

BS. One new CD is at least 10$. A good band collection is then a year worth of subscription fees. So, do you only listen to a few bands?

Before Spotify I pirated everything. In lossless, ofc. I had 200GB of music, it wouldn't fit on my ipod classic, and I still was limited.

I pirated at least a lifetime worth of Spotify premium and yet when I switched to Spotify I discovered so many more artists like the ones I already liked. If I now tried to buy all the songs I've listened to more than once in the last 5 years, I'd go bankrupt.

Spotify is way cheaper.

(now add ease of discovering new music, listening to whatever your friends want to listen to in a car, collaborative playlists, etc etc)

archomrade ,

Hey if you find value in paying a subscription go nuts, I won't throw shade

but i used spotify for almost 15 years. Averaged out to $8 a month that's more than $1400, and how much of that music do you think I own?

You can do what you want with your money but I'm not paying another dime to subscription streamers. For discovery there's still radio and youtube and ad-supported streamers, and I still find new artists at music festivals and local venue concerts all the time.

Spotify is a solution in search of a problem.

Emoba ,

You'll own nothing and you'll like it

I won't throw shade

Danquebec ,

There's Bandcamp, also, for discovery.

Lexam ,

It is worth the extra features, like not being able to remove an unwanted podcast from your play list. Why Spotify, why!?

Fogle ,

Wonder what it will go to in Canada. Glad I dropped Spotify for YouTube

cyberpunk007 OP ,

I am the reverse. After the Google play music killing, ytm was worse. Ytm might be killed any time.

Fogle ,

Yeah I never used Google Play music and I only started Spotify because my car had integration for it. I used prime music for a while just cause it was free.

If YouTube premium becomes shit I'll have to look into options

homesweethomeMrL ,

What’s “spotify”?

EpicFailGuy ,
@EpicFailGuy@lemmy.world avatar

It's a paid alternative to "Spot-X" and "BlockTheSpot" 🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️

cordlesslamp ,

Tell me more.

BorgDrone ,

It’s the “we have Apple Music” at home of streaming services.

Basically: more expensive, shitty UI, no lossless or high-res audio. Oh, and they pay the least to artists of all streaming services.

modifier ,

There are literally two albums that I love that I can't find on Bandcamp or piracy, but they are literally the only thing keeping my Spotify subscription alive right now.

I think I'm just going to have to stream them into my DAW and do a poor man's rip, then cancel this shit ass.

gccalvin ,

Are they on Deezer? If so, look into deemix-gui.

modifier ,

I'm not familiar with Deezer but will investigate. Thank you!

flappy ,

Has there been a new maintainer for deemix? Can you use it again without paying for a Deezer subscription?

gccalvin ,

No, development is still stalled. You need to pay if you want the really high bit rate flac downloads. I pay and can use Deezer as a backup to Jellyfin in the event there's a song I don't have and I'm driving. I was looking at music fab, but it's expensive, the Spotify downloader has worse quality, and doesn't grab the cover art, which is probably a deal breaker for me.

TransplantedSconie ,
@TransplantedSconie@lemm.ee avatar

What are the albums?

lucas ,
@lucas@fitt.au avatar

@modifier Now I'm curious what these magical albums are, that are not on the internet!

modifier ,

They are on the internet, but only streaming on the Big Bads. If you can find me a hookup I will be forever grateful.

The first Album, and the toughest case is an album by a band called Porter from Guadalajara. I have all of their albums except for my very favorite, Las Batallas.

The second album really should be on Bandcamp, and probably will eventually, since the band has a page there. It's the most recent and self-titled release from an awesome little band called Mo Lowda and The Humble.

All else aside, I highly recommend these bands to anyone who likes good rock music. Both albums are no-skip for me but two standout tracks for each: for Las Batallas you have got to check out "Himno Eterno" and "Hombre Maquina". For Mo Lowda, "O.O.Y.O" and "Dog At The Pound"

The irony of these being the two I haven't been able to add to my Plex library is that these are probably the two most prominently featured albums on Spotify Wrapped last year.

modifier ,

@TransplantedSconie answered above

young_broccoli ,

¡¡¡A huevo, Porter!!!
Ese ya lo tengo, namas deja lo subo a mediafire o algo.

young_broccoli ,

I just realized you dont speak spanish. Anyways, I got you with the porter album but for some reason I cant send you a DM so heres the "link".

/file/0i0zdiod15qq0uj/Porter-Las_Batallas.zip/file

Its on mediafire.

young_broccoli ,

And heres the molowda one:

/file/0axze87gwx3awif/Mo+Lowda+and+the+Humble.zip/file

Also mediafire c:

modifier ,

Amazing! Thank you so much. I said F you to Spotify earlier this afternoon with the help of you and another Lemmy user. I hope I can help someone else as much as you've helped me.

Appoxo ,

Going overseas makes so many albums disappear due to "muh licensing" and "technology and convience stinks" (*cough* japan)

So many musics are not available beyond catching limited sales and/or physical only.
Newer stuff isnt as bad but the <2010s are often pretty hard to find.

MorrisonMotel6 ,

Seriously? Like, finding and buying those two CDs used would be cheaper than maintaining a Spotify subscription.

modifier ,

No kidding. Consider the possibility that this was the first avenue I pursued and was nevertheless stymied in my efforts.

One of the bands only sells vinyl outside of Spotify (I have the record on Vinyl, but the process of digitizing it is similar to recording straight from Spotify but harder), and the other band is based in Mexico and doesn't have a digital marketplace. In both cases I've literally emailed the bands offering to overpay for raw digital files but haven't heard back yet. I am seriously considering flying to Guadalajara to catch them live and pick up a CD there. They don't really tour in the US north of Texas.

But I'll keep my eye out for CDs.

MorrisonMotel6 ,

That does seem like a pickle. There is a band that is (well, WAS) LOCAL to me and I still couldn't get digital files. I was bitching about on reddit a while back, and I got a DM from someone who sent me an email with the files. They're in 320mp3, but better than what I had before.

Good luck with that, and have fun in Guadalajara if you go!

modifier ,

Well you just hooked me up with the album I'd all but given up on, so thank you tremendously. Since I at least have the other album on Vinyl, I think I am going to pull the trigger and cancel my Spotify now. Now I don't exactly need to go to Guadalajara, though I hope to see Porter live one day.

Thanks again for your help!

MorrisonMotel6 ,

I hope you go to the show anyway.

I regret not going to shows of artists that just can't be seen anymore

modifier ,

I know I will eventually. I also just really want to support them, and will buy a copy of all of their albums whenever I am able to. I don't even speak spanish but their music just lights me up.

Amir ,
@Amir@lemmy.ml avatar

Check if they're on Tidal, Deezer or Qobuz, then your problem is solved

modifier ,

Thanks! I wrote off Tidal as an also-ran like a decade ago and haven't heard of the others so these were not on my radar at all. I will check them out. I didn't even know Tidal was still a thing!

Amir ,
@Amir@lemmy.ml avatar

The reason is that you can find lossless rippers for all of them, so you could archive the files and use them anywhere

BlindFrog ,

Zotify?

Appoxo ,

shirt-dev/zspotify will do fine actually downloading the audio.

Edit: The original repository got nuked and this seems to be a fork. Proceed at your own discretion (I used the original repo and a dummy account)

Nusm ,
@Nusm@yall.theatl.social avatar

I get Apple Music for “free” as part of my Verizon plan, so I’ll keep using it.

(Yes I know it’s not really free but worked into the cost of my plan, but I don’t pay a separate streaming music service, so there’s that.)

where_am_i ,

wow,lemmy hates corpos but upvotes this guy, jeez

PointyDorito ,
@PointyDorito@lemmy.world avatar

Already switched to Deezer and liking it way more

Cornpop ,

Just canceled my family plan. I like Apple Music more anyways.

Kongar ,

More money
More crap nobody wants like audio books
Still haven’t seen cd quality streaming yet

I used to happy with Spotify before the enshitificatuon happened…

FonsNihilo ,

[Thread, post or comment was deleted by the author]

    •
    radicalautonomy , (edited )

    I got Tidal for a month to try it out because I had gotten some XM4s and wanted to check out the 360 Reality Audio tracks, and I was disappointed to find just how few of them there actually are. 😕

    Edit: I see not that they did away with that ultra premium tier and folded those 360 Reality Audio tracks into the regular plans...they really did make it cheaper. Looks like I'm switching back to Tidal.

    Schal330 ,

    What annoys me is you still have to pay for audio books.

    https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/db6a0016-8eda-4b20-ab25-9d6113965524.png

    Manalith ,

    I have used Spotify's 15 free hours a month for shorter light novels, but beyond that, buying the rights to listen to a book, or buying more listening hours is very much not worth it through them.

    DrummXYBA ,

    Ahoy!

    Appoxo ,

    No, that's a youtube channel /s

    tigerjerusalem ,

    Are there any other music service that has a decent Wear OS app? Spotify allows me to download and listen to my music offline, and the app is not too bad.

    towerful ,

    Maybe tidal?
    Tidal is basically Spotify, but cheaper, pays more to the artists and is, imo, better.
    Googling for "tidal wearos" has some interesting bits, but I don't have a smart watch so I have no idea what I'm looking at

    tigerjerusalem ,

    Nope, I used to pay for Tidal and I liked that app but it has no Wear OS app. They do have one for Apple Watch but I dont like Apple much.

    CosmoNova ,

    Well considering the last price hike got us gems like the music 8-ball/magic crystal thing, I can barely wait to see what banger they'll come up with to bloat my music player with next.

    daddy32 ,

    It should be audiobooks this time, if I heard correctly.

    Appoxo ,

    And removal of much of Spotify curated playlists...
    So mad about that part >:(

    Every "Zusammengestellt für" playlist is a autogenerated playlist and probably not a single human touched that shit. So much less discoverability.
    https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/e93b6acf-c36a-4df8-b213-da0407b95774.png

    Oweneds ,

    I HATE these 'made for you' playlists, just repeats of my liked songs and songs it's always trying to shove down my throat. Some of them barely fit the genre/vibe of the playlist too.

    Part of the original appeal of Spotify for me years ago was the curated playlists.

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