[mystraline]

So the better solution is to set up Navidrome, "acquire" 1TB of music. Look for discographies, top 10k, stuff you like. Use a reverse proxy to a cheap VPS or Cloudflare. (Ssh port forward from Navidrome to VPS 127.0.0.1, and have nginx handle reverse proxy. Put it in systemd unit to autoreconnect)

Then you can listen to whatever you want.

Im all for paying for good content or service. But I quit paying for companies to abuse me.

[ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7]

> But I quit paying for companies to abuse me.

Seems like a stretch, no? How are streaming music companies abusing users?

[loveiswork]

I have abandoned spotify - but I agree in that I think the experience is still pretty great for users.

There are other warts though:

- They're paying out the lowest to artists by far when it comes to streams

- Artist impersonation issues

- Botted playlists

- Daniel Ek investing his fortune into AI drone military defense company Helsing

- The nascent issue of AI music / artists (see The Velvet Sundown)

For me it is moreso that all of this adds up to artists getting the squeeze, and I'd rather try to find ways to better support them.

[ummzokbro]

Maybe not abusing strictly speaking but...

- The entire SOTA ML algo is 'how to min(cost) while just avoiding churn' - not play what you actually want. Just don't annoy you enough that you quit

- This means serving endless covers of hit (real) songs that cost them pennies on the dollar given cover artists don't get custom negotiated deals

- This means producing their own drivel in key categories[1] to avoid royalty payments outright

- It is not a huge leap from producing drivel to producing genAI drivel if it satisfies the equation above

[1] - https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/spotify-is-creating-i...

[mystraline]

Raising rates.

AI slop music.

Reducing library.

Removing artists.

Its the standard enshittification playbook.

[ryanisnan]

I am not affiliated with Spotify, but I pay for their services.

They very infrequently raise their rates, and I feel like I'm paying an acceptable rate.

I have yet to notice AI generated music infiltrating my feeds.

I rarely encounter them removing an artist I can't listen to.

I may be rare, but I just don't see the problems you're raising.

[frfl]

Big chunk of artists don't earn enough to make a living as artists from Spotify or streaming services. You can search this online, it's well known and reported.

[fckgw]

Yeah or I could just use Apple Music or Tidal or any other competing services