Anon gets scammed

(midwest.social)

Hey we said you get 30 minutes we never said consecutive… I bet you have like a bank of stored minutes and they continue expiring while you’re not listening. So legally you get the full 30 minutes…. Just not when you expected to.

is self-hosted streaming a thing?

use the Arr stack, AAARRR sail the seas.

Now that's interesting. Gotta look into Arr.

If you don't have a particularly large collection, use yt-dl to get audio files and store them locally on your devices (or possibly on an SD card if your phone still supports one)

so the old-school way is still The Way. Good to know. Thx. Gotta dust off my MP3 player.

Jellyfin is how I host it. You can connect with Navidrome, the Jellyfin app, or just with a browser.

thanks. Gotta check it out.

Ads take up those "30 minutes of ad-free listening"

In retrospect, it could be hilariously worth it to buy an ad spot and just play that "enjoy 30 minutes of ad free listening" blurb.

Or buy ad space to play a short song.

You can sue them. If is not specified that must be in a row you CAN sue, or at least you can report them with the competent organization. It's in normal language, not legal language. People using spotify are not lawyers, are normal people. If the thing says "30 minutes free" it do must mean that, no "ooohhh you mean, 30 minutes, like, in row??" bullshit.

Fuck Spotify. Also, I can't hear the music that I want in their free plan, because I choose some song and the platform plays whatever they want. Again, fuck them.

You can sue them.

Excited to collect $.26 in damages after six years in court.

They probably have a forced arbitration clause. Using an arbitrator of their choice, of course.

There's 30 minutes ad free spread over the duration of your subscription. I thought everybody had figured it out.

So, over the course of a year I get 30 minutes that aren't ads?

Yup. And sometime last year they made getting a cracked version of Spotify an incredible pain in the ass and the guy updating the crack stopped supporting it and instead is choosing to focus on YouTube ReVanced.

My library on Spotify is over 6k songs. Been trying to slowly get them downloaded onto my phone.

damn you’re so mad, you should demand a refund for all $0 you’re paying them

I don't know if you can do something similar in the USA or any other country, but in México, we have PROFECO. You can call them and tell them that some company is providing products or services using false advertising, even if those are "free". It is called "protect the consumer".

Real radio be like: 30 minutes of music free ads. I literally stopped listening to FM radio because I would drive to another town 45 minutes away and not hear a single fucking song.

At least real radio doesn't collect your information

More of a technical limitation than an intentional choice, but sure.

I prefer to call it a 'mechanical failsafe'.

Until you dial in to one of those give-away events, sure.

but that's a very consensual action, they literally have to ask you for those information not just start harvesting in the background

Almost like downloading an app...

you don't fill out the information the apps are harvesting directly, it's way less consensual there than verbally filling a form

I'm a school bus driver and in the mornings the kids beg me to play music on the radio. So I turn it on, set it to "SCAN" and then I don't hear one fucking actual song the entire rest of the ride. Even the local classical station is somehow just people babbling.

Music streaming makes this worse. Radio has become a race to the bottom. If you're listening to radio you probably prefer the bullshit gossip.

Oof. Your bus doesn't happen to have a way of using one of those Bluetooth FM blaster things does it? Just play something off your phone through that tuned to the right station on the radio. The one I drove didn't havr nothing for that, but mine was old as shit. Tho I guess not old enough to have a cigarette lighter port for the kids that smoked.

Our buses have an aux input jack. I just don't ever feel like messing around with an aux cable and USB-C adapter just for 15 minutes of music. Although i would really enjoy making my elementary school kids listen to Shpongle.

Play them incomprehensible jazz prog and metal. The stuff only the music prodigy will even be able to identify as music.

Angine de Poitrine it is!

What do you do when you're not driving a school bus?

When I was 19 I was in a band with this really strange kid. He was super charismatic though, and just seemed to make friends with anybody he met. One of those people happened to be this 40 year old bus driver. We went over his place one time to smoke a joint, and he showed us his grow room. This was in like 2005 or so, so all very illegal. He got in my face about not telling anybody and how I better not be a narc. Anyway... Then we ate some pot brownies and watched a movie. The brownie I ate wasn't doing anything so I ate another and learned a very important life lesson about edibles. If you're not feeling the first one, don't eat the second one. I was high as fuck. Banished to the shadow realm, some might say. Took a few hours to regain my composure and walked home. It was a weird fuckin night.

So yeah. Probably anecdotal but "what do school bus drivers do when not driving a school bus?" - grow weed, and eat pot brownies with teenage punk rockers and watch movies.

Not a bus driver but I've seen enough of them to answer this question.

When they aren't driving the bus, they are either waiting for kids to get on or off the bus or they are briefly investigating who threw the stray projectile that hit them before they pulled over but usually settle for the complete silence as each kid pretends to not remember what throwing even is, let alone admit who threw anything. That silence never lasts more than a minute after they start driving again, though sometimes it will only be whispers for a while if the bus driver screamed in rage or broke down in tears.

Ride my bicycle. I'm a retired software engineer.

May I introduce you to our lord and savior Groove Salad on SomaFM?

That's supposed to be a comma - "Enjoy 30 minutes of ad, free listening"

No, money down!

I’m more bothered by there being ads inserted in podcasts when I’m a paying customer tbh

https://www.audiobookshelf.org/ For your podcasts

https://www.navidrome.org/ for your music

https://symfonium.app/ for playback of both

https://github.com/spotbye/SpotiFLAC for stealing raw FLACs from fucking Tidal using Spotify metadata because I guess their shit is about as secure as a picnic basket held closed with an anti-bear ziptie.

https://symfonium.app/ for playback of both

Does this have a 10/15sec skip button?

I don't think so. I use audiobookshelf's companion app on my phone, which does. audiobookshelf manages all the subscriptions and pulling and whatnot, it seems to do a decent job keeping me sane on the commute.

Yeah it's very customizable too. The audiobookshelf support is in an early experimental stage though, but it does work

Thanks, Gonna check this one out then, having multiple play queues sounds awesome. Currently I'm having to use VLC and blackplayer so I can go back and forth between podcasts and music without losing my place.

It's definitely worth at least checking out the free trial, it's the best music player I've ever used on any platform. The dev is also very active and there are new features dropping constantly

Wait what. I know some platforms for managing podcasts like Anchor shove in ads, sometimes even mid sentence, but this is the first I hear of Spotify itself inserting them

This is what made a lot of people I know stop using Spotify for podcasts.

My coworker told me they were listening to a podcast, and while the podcasts host were mid ad read for their sponsor, Spotify put an ad in. So he got an ad during an ad.

Thanks, Xzibit.

Can confirm. I got annoyed with it and moved away from Spotify for podcasts a year or two ago. #NoRegrets

Yeah even on free I never got a Spotify add on a podcast. Those were the podcasts themselves putting ads in.

Podcasters that upload to Spotify have the option of inserting ads and making money from this

Most of my podcasts don't but some do, actually I think the ABC is the only one that does, and it says if you don't want to hear advertising use their podcast app, so maybe it's a way of punishing us for not using their app

Then again besides the ABC's If you're listening all my other podcasts are french language learning ones...

Did they stop just grabbing podcasts from the free web and playing them in Spotify? I remember from a few years ago that some podcasts were complaining and willing to sue Spotify for stealing their content.

I can't find anything on this at all

That was some discourse in the podcasts, in Germany at the time which has a pretty big community

Why not just use antennapod?

I don't care for podcasts at all, it's just because they're adjacent to the app I use the most that I stumbled upon them, the ones I listen to don't have ads except the abc's if you're listening and it's what, 30 seconds for something I listen to maybe once a month?

Oh I gotcha that makes sense.

That's why i quit spotify.

Are they inserted ads or ad reads by the podcast themselves?

Inserted ads, although in my experience they’re placed by the podcast network rather than Spotify.

And you're sponsoring fascists..

obligatory fuck spotify. the worst streaming service ever https://youtu.be/x6x5t0cj1sM

Also the only one with a Linux client

It's unofficially done by some Devs in their free time. I low key hate that it's publicised as having a Linux client, other devices also have unofficial clients.

Tidal also has Tidal-HiFi, an electron wrapper of the web client that enables HiFi music, which is pretty much all I care for a desktop client. It also pays artists much better so... Yeah.

It also pays artists much better so… Yeah.

https://tidal.com/pricing

I can't see any free tier, does this mean you're telling the OP and all free users of Spotify to get fucked?

It’s unofficially done by some Devs in their free time

For all intents and purposes it's the same client, I see no difference between the 'official' client on Windows and the Linux version

https://github.com/spotbye/SpotiFLAC Why use Tidal when you can just take the FLACs from Tidal for free?

Because the product is good and artists earn money that way. Idk.

I don't need the music industry using my money for forward anti-consumer practices, thanks. Its unethical to buy music from the industry. Go see a gig, buy a shirt.

I rather use the page directly and have ublock deal with ads

For Qobuz there is an unofficial native client, with DAC passthrough: https://github.com/vicrodh/qbz

Works very well.

i use web and android apps for yt music and bandcamp

There's an unofficial one for Pandora as well. I'm not claiming Pandora is a great service, it just comes ad free with my phone plan.

While it's got its faults, I'm a Pandora guy and find it vastly superior to Spotify, particularly when trying to find new music

i use the th-ch gitHub for youtube music on linux (also has ad blockers, themes, and plugins)

edit: i think its actually called pear desktop now?

30 minutes of ad free music. Not all in a row though.

Dispersed over a 10 year period.

You get 30 minutes of ad-free listening, but not all in a row. Sounds like you got 8 minutes worth already; after this ad, you can get another 8 minutes.

If this is the actual rationale, I will collect someone’s ankles

MY URETHRA IS SO WIDE I COULD BIRTH THE CHILD MYSELF!

Did they say thirty minutes in a row?

Man I haven’t gotten that “30 minutes of uninterrupted listening” shit in a few months. I swear, they’ve been slowly increasing the amount of ads per song, from like 1 ad per 4 songs to I shit you not, 2 ads per song. I usually have to restart the web page since it gets stuck on desktop, or close the app on mobile. They’re probably overcompensating since they’re salty they aren’t getting any revenue from me.

I'll never understand why people don't just make playlists of music and save it down locally.

I had no less than sixteen hours of music in CDs stuffed in my glove box back in college. Would cycle through that maybe once or twice a month. Maybe I'd throw on a little NPR if I was curious about the news. But why on God's Green Earth would you subject yourself to the garbage radio networks available in the modern era?

I for example like the fresh experience so i really enjoy spotify discover weekly to listen through and find something i can put into my playlist. So in a way i dont have fixed playlist just my liked list

But i also pay for spotify beacuse i listen to so much music with constant new additions to my playlist i legitematly think its one subscription thats worth the money and pretty much the only one i even use with the exception of a month of Netflix when new bogdan boner egzorcysta drops on Netflix roughly once a year ( not really possible to buy separately, but that man is a genius of polish cinematography so i will suffer through it so that he may get my support and continue his work ).

Sending files from one device to another has been made intentionally difficult by phone makers.

I hate the pay for ad-free subscription model. They use people's personal data to optimize the experience, making their ads as annoying and disorienting as possible.

When Reddit first unveiled their subscription, they began spamming my phone with obnoxious herpes advertisements. The ad just said "Herpes?" in big purple letters. Since this particular subject invoked a sense of fear and anxiety, it made me more likely to pay for their removal.

cough Calaboka cough

Back when I used spotify, it was exclusively via desktop browser with ublock, never had an ad load

Y'all are getting full tracks?

Usually you just redirect some host names to localhost and all your ad problems magically disappear.

The Pirate Bay doesn't have ads.

compares tpb to spotify 🤣 fark these boomers so out of touch

Well it does but only on the website where your ad blocker gets them gone for you.

Isn't this comment an ad for the pirate bay?

Damn, they let you get 2 whole songs in? Usually I get 3 ads right after "30 minutes of ad free listening" one

Cracked apks exist, people.

I don't understand how

remember when it was lame to pay for music?

It was LAME to ENCODE music.

It's not telling you that you will receive 30 minutes of ad-free listening. It's suggesting that you do that by upgrading to a more expensive tier. Or by other means 🏴‍☠️

I buy my music track by track on iTunes, I have never got an ad when listening, nor do I have to keep paying for the privilege.

Big fan of Bandcamp here. I assume it's a fairly different set of artists, though.

Also big fan of using adblocked YouTube, and yt-dlp.

Bandcamp for indie artists, though I am starting to see more bigger artists there.

Many bigger artists sell digital albums direct on their websites. If not they sell a CD you can easily rip.

Otherwise I use 7 Digital, then HD Tracks.

If not they sell a CD you can easily rip.

That's the issue... I think it's at least 10 years ago the last time I had a way to read a CD... Times change...

USB CD Drives are like $10-15.

True, it shouldn't be too much effort to read a CD. Though fortunately all my music so far has properly reached the 2020s (i.e. no CD drive needed...)

Sirius pulled that shit too, never understood how it could possibly be legal

Most people don't care enough to pursue it and any who do probably don't have the money.

Isn't Spotify so cheap, that there's no point in using the free version? I'm using Tidal and it is, in fact, so cheap that there is no point in using the free version.

Kind of a stretch to call it getting scammed when he didn't pay anything...

He was scammed of his time watching the long ad that promised ad free 30 min. The revenue Spotify gets from advertising companies is only there because users listen to those ads, so users are also providing a service to Spotify.

Not that big of a stretch.

It also comes down to whether or not it's reasonable to expect to be able to access streaming media for free. You are making a choice: listen to advertisements, or pay the subscription.

That they already agreed to when listening to the ad that promised 30min ad free. I agree with you conceptually though. The scam is not on ads showing up, it's on the subversion of expectations. They were told X and it didn't happen, it's normal to feel scammed.

Payment doesn't mean money. You can pay in labour, or in gold, or in your time.

Yes, exactly. And by not paying for the subscription you agree to pay with your time.

The artists are getting a tiny fraction of that 30¢ a day. It's almost more ethical to pirate the music and buy their merch.

they get 70% of it, 30% goes to spotify

same as steam store, apple store etc

I’m not sure what the percentage is that they claim, but it’s far less. I check weekly on mine, and will get fractions of a penny for plays.

On the flipside, Apple Music actually seems to adhere to their percentage.

Presumably because you are getting 70% of a tiny amount

It’s a bit complicated really. They distribute money all over the place, and then the artist gets paid.

It’s kind of the “industry standard,” which sucks, but Spotify pays out less than industry standard. I could go on a rant about how they suffocate indie artists to ensure major labels get their share, but I’ll spare you lol.

Do people who pay for spotify listen to so much that their £5 a month (or what the sub is) gets shared so widely that each artist gets almost nothing?

So basically, it’s like this…

Spotify gets their subscription money and ad fees, keeps 30%, then the remaining 70% gets split between all labels, songwriters, publishers, etc., and smaller artists (no label, self-release) get a percentage of your plays in your “market.”

So you end up getting fractions of a penny ($0.004) per play.

Lots of artists make millions, it's just that music is so easy to make these days that there is more artists and songs than ever, more music gets released in a day than in the entire year 1985, so you need to be somewhat vaguely popular to make decent money, you can't just make a few songs and expect to live off the royalties, there's 12 year olds releasing music these days

I'm not here to explain how spotify payouts work, you need to actually look that up for yourself

I know how it works. Been in this industry a while. I wasn’t expecting you explain — I just responded.

How long have you been in the industry loaf

Started in 1999 (local label, then Roadrunner), went solo (three labels, biggest I won’t mention), quit in 2014.

Started again in 2017, been doing it ever since as a hobby. Touring is incredibly expensive now. The only real way to break even is by selling advance tickets (for venue assurance), selling merch, and hoping people will by physical media.

In Europe, touring is harder because of venues taxing merch in my experience. Transportation is a bit cheaper, but still a grind, and you’re lucky to break even.

Spotify and other streaming services are a blessing and a curse: the biggest labels can push spins, and services get paid from that + ad revenue. Indie artists get pushed downward, unless they’re playlisted a lot.

Eyekaytee can you make me understand

it's complicated, it's based on what plan the person listening to you is on (people on the free ad supported plan pay the least, those on premium the most), what country you're in (poorer countries payout less), what % of total streams you're getting, what your label has negotiated with you, etcetc

https://dittomusic.com/en/blog/how-much-does-spotify-pay-per-stream

Getting rid of the ad supported plan would raise the average payouts quite a bit but Spotify has argued it is better to keep the plan and have people only pay for a little bit than return to the old days of music piracy where artists were getting nothing and had resorted to the RIAA suing people

Even if that would be true, steam offers a lot for devs and players. Spotify barely provides anything.

Even if that would be true

They're a public company, feel free to look up their financial reports

Today, Spotify accounts for roughly 30% of recorded music revenue.

Charlie Hellmann

Note the word roughly

holy shit 30%? fark me that's huge!

What was your point though?

Anon gets scammed

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