Who taught you sex is a drug? As long as words mean their definitions, it’s categorically not. Plus it’s probably kinda harmful to pile on the stigma already surrounding sex by conflating it with drugs and all the stigma that comes with that.
Hopefully I’m wrong, but it’s kinda giving a nofap pseudoscience red flag to me.
Parents definitely should be teaching their kids about this stuff at the appropriate time, but they should stick to the facts.
valkyre09@lemmy.world
on 04 Aug 22:51
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First they came for the sex, then they came after the drugs. Now they’re trying to take my rock and roll
Whostosay@sh.itjust.works
on 04 Aug 23:04
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Did you know that rock and roll is actually a plate of spaghetti?
ivanafterall@lemmy.world
on 05 Aug 00:23
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Spaghetti = Carbs = Sugar = Addictive Drug
HubertManne@piefed.social
on 05 Aug 02:15
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yeah but I lost my poor meatball.
some_kind_of_guy@lemmy.world
on 05 Aug 02:54
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A fellow Bread Harrity super fan I see? I’d like to get all up in that beautiful man’s wet spaghetti 🍝
Lol I bet your comment confused them, that line is originally from that On Top of Spaghetti song and it was repurposed by Bread in his classic number The Meatballs the Meatballs the Meatballs the Meatballs the Meatballs the Meatballs of Liiiife. I love Bread. I’m a huge Breadhead and Bread can get all up in my guts any time.
I mean… it is a rush of dopamine and can become addictive. Same as a videogame or gambling though. Not a drug but can get unhealthy if it leads to maladaptive daily functioning.
PotatoLibre@feddit.it
on 04 Aug 21:50
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In Sweden pretty much anybody has Bank Id, an app which is connected to a bank account and which can function as a valid identification.
App belongs a private company, but it’s still trustworthy and everybody can sign government docs with that.
This is how you should do age verification, through a third party app, not like any site will get your id/picture to just end in their DBs ready to be stolen.
Every government should create an app for the online id, I don’t get why this seems so hard to achieve.
FalseTautology@lemmy.zip
on 04 Aug 21:51
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Well, actually anybody is trying to monitor your activity online in this moment. But thinking to what Trumo is doing right now probably I wouldn’t like to do it as well.
Like other medias before, internet probably has reached a need for some harder control. I’m not talking about porn, I’m talking about disinformation, bots and soon AI.
Not sure which is the best way but I’ll not give any id or credit card to any randim site in order to see their content.
I agree we need to get rid of all the bullshit you mentioned - but I don’t think giving up our anonymity or more gated communities (like facebook, twitter, instgram and all those fucked up places) are the solution.
Credit cards should roughly do the same, but both of those aren’t “great” for privacy and really exists to make profiles of adults while pretending to negate the need for parents to parent (the only real way to reduce/prevent harms of kids witnessing age inappropriate media). Your ability to do financial transactions shouldn’t be tied to your speech or content you view.
Bennyboybumberchums@lemmy.world
on 05 Aug 00:06
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The thing is, UK has had age restrictions for years on its mobile platforms. So if you want to look at porn on your phone, you have to unlock it on your subscription. And to do this, they use youre credit card. The thing that they already have. Its easy and swift. And more to the point, only one company has your data. As it stands now, you are supposed to give your personal details to every single company in the world.
Over the past 20 years, how many massive hacks have we seen that leak email addresses and passwords? Are how about all those woman that get their iclouds hacked and their nude photos uploaded? I can think of at least 10 instances in the past 10 years. And now its going to be all of our driving licences, passports, other photo IDs? And the law also requires that they scan ALL private messages. Thats end to end encryption fucked. And god forbid your girlfriend calls you “Daddy” in a sext, you get the cops knocking on your door treating you like Jimmy Saville.
The shit is insane, and people arent anywhere near outraged enough. Its coming to Europe next, if reports are to be believed. So you lot should ALL start kicking up fuck about it now.
*so that the government can say kids won’t watch porn.
Rule 1 of computers that everyone who has taught an ICT class learns - if little Timmy wants titties, he finds a way.
cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca
on 04 Aug 20:34
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Ha! Fuck. That.
ThePantser@sh.itjust.works
on 04 Aug 20:35
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Or you know you could punish parents for not parenting. Like if kids are watching porn and caught and if it’s actually against some law then go after the parents.
It’s not hard to teach parents how to implement a filtering DNS. But no, countries think they need to be the nanny.
“Protecting children” is just the pretext under which governments can sell increased surveillance. The fact that there are more effective ways they could act to protect children, yet governments everywhere continue to push for ID checks and monitoring online activity, shows that the aim isn’t what they say it is.
dactylotheca@suppo.fi
on 04 Aug 20:47
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Don’t forget trying to kill e2e encryption like what the EU wants to do, both to “catch criminals” and “protect the children”
BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world
on 04 Aug 22:07
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Protect from what? I mean seriously. Most of us (guys at least) probably saw porn way before we were old enough and most of us probably didn’t end up as rapists or pedophiles. It’s not a good thing by any means, but it really feels like we’re trying harder to keep sexual material from entering their brains than we are trying to keep them fed, clothed, educated, housed, healthy, loved, and physically safe. Of all the things I mentioned the last seven have a monumentally greater affect on their success and well-being as an adult.
WhatGodIsMadeOf@feddit.org
on 04 Aug 22:15
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I’m convinced sex is used as a leveraging tool to control society.
AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@sh.itjust.works
on 04 Aug 20:40
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Going against the parents is impopular and would make the parents vote against you in the next elections.
halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
on 04 Aug 20:58
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That’s just the pretext they give to justify it. The real reason is surveillance. Now they have a way to confidently tie your accounts to your individual identity. And most of these solutions use third parties which will then sell that data as well, so now anyone can tie your account to you without you ever knowing.
Even if the government is barred from surveilling citizens in these ways, third parties aren’t, and the government can just buy that information, no warrant needed anymore.
And these laws never stop at porn, it’s drugs, LGBTQ information, etc. and they can always easily add additional things later with little fanfare.
This is it. Theyve been going after encrypted messaging apps for a long time, ig they realized theyre not getting anywhere and figured to just hit it head on.
The internet has always circumvented this kind of shit, just look at TPB. The ones who are getting really beaten up by this is the older generations and the ones lacking technical know-how.
Yep. “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”
LOL, wrong on that last point! Gen X and Millennials are generally hot shit on tech. It’s the young folks who don’t have a clue if something doesn’t “just work”. Present company excluded of course. :)
FartMaster69@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 04 Aug 21:03
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It’s not about kids and never has been, it’s about surveillance of the internet and the death of anonymity.
Petter1@discuss.tchncs.de
on 05 Aug 01:17
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They could just offer a child protection browser where parents could set to child mode and require adult material offering sites to check if user has something like “attention not 18 year old user” in the headers.
Would be way cheaper, I think.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
on 05 Aug 03:32
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As a parent, that’s my take as well. If my kids break a law, I should be the one to fix it. Don’t do my parenting for me…
petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 05 Aug 05:08
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I feel like I’m standing between two really stupid positions here.
On the one hand, just let parents teach their kids is basically a state’s rights argument. A lot of parents won’t teach their kids, so… do we care? Does this matter? We should probably mount a stronger effort then.
On the other hand, we don’t need the government to get involved to stop 9 year olds from seeing titties—we just don’t! Websites the world over have implemented 2-factor-authentication more or less by themselves (and probably because they want to spy on you). And, no one says the word r----- anymore because if you ever do, a bunch of anti-bullying PSAs will be really annoying about it in your replies.
Not every social problem needs to be solved by swinging around Thor’s hammer. We do have other means.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
on 05 Aug 13:03
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is basically a state’s rights argument
No, it’s a privacy and individual rights argument. I don’t want local governments enforcing it any more than I want national arguments enforcing it.
Kids seeing stuff they shouldn’t isn’t itself a problem, but it can lead to problems. For example, kids learning to make bombs itself isn’t an issue, kids making bombs to hurt others is the issue. Hold parents legally accountable for the latter, not the former.
The furthest I’d be willing to go on this is requiring a payment method (which itself requires sufficient age) to be entered before accessing anything “adult oriented,” and even then I’m not completely sold. But this way the burden of verifying age is restricted to things consumers already need to trust, and parents would need to give or allow their kid access to a payment method.
petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 05 Aug 19:56
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I think you misunderstand. I’m not saying I’m in favor of this law.
By state’s rights, I’m referring to the way republicans pretend they want the freedom of choice where they are actually just looking for excuses to keep doing what they’re doing. In this way, letting parents choose is functionally identical: parents won’t choose, so it is equivalent to doing nothing.
There has to be a cultural shift for anything to change.
Kids seeing stuff they shouldn’t isn’t itself a problem,
If I’m being perfectly honest, I do not give a shit if 9-year-olds can see titties. Like, my other argument against this government overreach is that I don’t know what problem it’s supposedly solving that can’t just be solved with better sex-ed.
We turn various online educational contents (such as Wikipedia, for example) into ZIM files, and these can be opened by Kiwix even if you have no connectivity whatsoever.
The ZIM file format is an open file format that stores website content for offline usage.[1] The format is defined by the openZIM project, which also supports an open-source ZIM reader called Kiwix. The format is primarily used to store the contents of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, including articles, full-text search indices and auxiliary files.[2][3]
All content files are indexed and compressed in ZIM format, which makes them smaller, but leaves them easy to search and selectively decompress.
The ZIM files are then opened with Kiwix, which looks and behaves like a web browser, or with a suitably enabled conventional browser. Kiwix offers full text search, tabbed navigation, and the option to export articles to PDF and HTML.[8]
Well I don’t think Spotify wants to do it, but it’s probably a better option than abandoning their UK users.
I assume the other streaming options will do the same in the UK market, so probably better to look at self-hosted alternatives, if you’re into that
dinckelman@lemmy.world
on 04 Aug 21:10
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If something’s finally going to force the industry to curb its bullshit, this might just be it. Once you annoy normal people, it’s all over. They seriously underestimate how many people would just stop using Spotify, or Youtube, or whatever other platform it is
They won’t give a shit, but they’re also lazy and won’t bother setting up an account that requires ID and photo verification. Too much work. Maybe we’ll even see somewhat of a recurrence of brick and mortar stores that sells music, movies, porn, etc.
Ah the laziness to not even set up an account that needs it. I didn’t consider that. Was more thinking of current users meeting the resistance.
ElPsyKongroo@sh.itjust.works
on 05 Aug 08:05
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I tend to agree with you in that most people are too addicted to the convenience. But yeah, Balaquina does make a good point. After all, a commonly cited reason as for why the Fediverse won’t rival mainstream sites is that making an account is more complex. Even then, it’s just choosing an instance, which isn’t that hard, it’s just more complicated in comparison to, say, Reddit or Twitter. So following the same logic, it very well could backfire if Spotify raises the barrier of entry (or barrier of continuous entry, for those who already have accounts that they will have to verify).
Every company has learned that any friction to using your site is a bleed of customers. There are a lot of people who will just not use your site if it requires a lengthy validation process. If there was some kind of identity system that sites would integrate with like login.gov, then people would ignore this, but I don’t think the UK has such a thing that every site can use, so a lot of people will not use the site and over time fall to piracy or illegitimate sites.
Imagine if Spotify just opened the camera on your phone once a month when you first open the app that day. Just for like a split second.
Theoretically it would be legal, for age verification. 🤮
“Normal” people would put in their child’s social security number if it meant $2.99 off their subscription.
DirkMcCallahan@lemmy.world
on 04 Aug 22:07
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I’m not convinced. Look at how Netflix made bank on killing off “sharing is caring.”
People are lazy, and if they want their easy Spotify fix, I fear they’ll hand over their information and move on with their day.
blargh513@sh.itjust.works
on 04 Aug 22:30
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It would have to get pretty bad before people would be willing to forgo convenience.
That stuff is a nasty drug, very addictive and people will sell everything they got to keep it. They’d rather pay and arm and a leg instead of learning a little technology so they could help themselves.
People will slave themselves to the company that lets them be the most ignorant person possible but still enjoy the fun of technology.
Could you imagine if all mobile devices stopped using face recognition to unlock phones? I’d be willing to bet that a big chunk of people wouldn’t be able to use them at all. I’m surprised that google and apple haven’t started charging extra for that.
kibiz0r@midwest.social
on 04 Aug 21:28
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Spotify fans
“Fans”?
answersplease77@lemmy.world
on 04 Aug 21:31
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that’s like saying Amazon fans really lol
WhatGodIsMadeOf@feddit.org
on 04 Aug 22:17
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My favorite part is when the AI DJ plays some dumb song it’s previously served up repeatedly, and then tells me how much I like it because I listen to it so often. I’d never choose to listen to it on my own, and the only reason I hear it is because Spotify keeps cramming it down my throat.
lemmyknow@lemmy.today
on 04 Aug 23:35
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Spotify recommends based on your listening habits. You base your listening habits on Spotify recommendations. Ergo, Spotify recommends based on its own recommendation. Ourobouros achieved.
pressanykeynow@lemmy.world
on 05 Aug 00:35
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I used Spotify like 5 years ago and it was good. Tried to use it again this year and it’s recommendations and service were complete garbage.
BakerBagel@midwest.social
on 05 Aug 01:09
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Yeah, that was what finally pished me over the edge a few years back. Switched to Tidal and have been very content with with it. They pay artists better, the sound quality is better, and the dily discovery playlist throws some serious curve balls. I have wide ranging tastes so it blends a few genres for a few weeks before moving onto something else, and it has introduced me to some AWESOME music that i would have never encountered otherwise.
Why would you use the Ai dj to feed you songs, when the normal daily mixes, daylist, etc are giving you the same songs without the fake personality injected between them? I literally do not understand. I’m open to your thoughts - it’s just that it seems like an alien perspective.
It gives you a general mix and exposes you to new things that are unrelated to things you’ve listened to in the past. I listen to a lot of punk and ska, and the AI DJ serves up random pop and things I otherwise would never hear.
Antennapod with gPodderersync & Nextcloud?
There are podcast apps for Nextcloud to play in the browser.
surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
on 10 Aug 22:15
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Thanks, this did it. Opodsync (since I don’t have nextcloud) and antennapod.
Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world
on 04 Aug 22:14
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Let this be a reminder to never turn away from piracy. It needs to constantly be in the background and if any company gets like they always do, then it comes back out. But if we let the knowledge fade away then it’s impossible to rebuild it.
Petter1@discuss.tchncs.de
on 05 Aug 01:07
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Piracy preserves media.
Piracy preserves art.
Piracy makes sure, that future generations still have access to the creations of humanity.
Data hoarding is a service to the public.
FinalRemix@lemmy.world
on 05 Aug 02:11
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“Keep circulating the tapes!”
Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world
on 05 Aug 02:14
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It doesn’t take much for media though to parade out the “lil guy and change the opinion of people about how your basically attacking small time creators”
vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
on 05 Aug 10:23
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I initially perceived piracy similarly to how or perceive reading about archaeology and such, so the fact that someone is sincere in hating p2p copying and calling it immoral just felt preposterous.
Yet now it seems plenty of normies will agree. Then go listen to something they didn’t pay for on YouTube or Facebook or whatever, because “everybody uses that”. What “everybody uses” is fine, see. What they condemn me the pirate for is using ed2k, torrents and such other technologies. Even when I’m literally downloading public domain stuff or abandonware.
Not sure about all those political experiments in the internet. Maybe they just don’t like HTTP ? Maybe it’s time to make HTTP to join BBS ?
A_norny_mousse@feddit.org
on 04 Aug 22:46
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Back to Piracy! ✊🏴☠️
Really though? It isn’t necessary. Use Bandcamp, you probably have half your artists covered. The rest - one of those Spotify alternatives: Tidal? Qobuz?
Personally I do selfhost btw. Jellyfin, though I heard of a better alternative specifically for music recently - and forgot the name again 😥 Something lowercase, like a verb… “normalize” or some such. Navidrome! Thanks @0konomiyaki@aussie.zone
0konomiyaki@aussie.zone
on 04 Aug 23:15
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Navidrome maybe?
But I use jellyfin + symfonium myself. All my music is either bandcamp or used CDs. Started collecting music late last year and my entire collection is legally sourced now. No piracy required. Hardest part was starting very small and building the collection over time.
A_norny_mousse@feddit.org
on 04 Aug 23:22
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Yes! Navidrome!
used CDs
I get them dirt cheap or completely for free. It’s actually reverse piracy (no I’m not serious) since no doubt the previous owners ripped everything.
Petter1@discuss.tchncs.de
on 05 Aug 01:04
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Yea, it literally makes no difference for the artist, if you pirate or if you buy a used CD.
Damionsipher@lemmy.world
on 04 Aug 23:36
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Go to shows, buy the albums from the merch tables and use the events (to the best of your individual ability) as a means to connect with like minded anti-fascists.
A_norny_mousse@feddit.org
on 05 Aug 11:59
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That is of course even better. Just wish any band I’m interested in would ever come to play this quiet corner *sigh*
I would suggest Qobuz (if available) or Tidal. Deezer’s CEO is a hard-core religious nutjob who finances anti-trans orgs and sexual conversion “therapies”.
Thanks for recommending Navidrome. It looks really interesting.
I was using Spotify, but switched to Spotube. After Spotube was crippled, I was kind of aimless. I really liked having my music available on my cellphone and desktop. It looks like Navidrome will fill the gap perfectly.
You’d mentioned ripping CDs. Would you have some software, you’d recommend (Windows or Linux)? Preferably in FLAC.
I haven’t looked at ripping software in a few years, but it was kind of tedious to set up and very manual to get the proper metadata, genres, and cover art. I’ve got a hundred CDs and that’ll take awhile…
DistrictSIX@lemmy.zip
on 05 Aug 09:34
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Don’t know if it’s still what’s recommended, but I use foobar2000 for ripping CDs to FLAC.
A_norny_mousse@feddit.org
on 05 Aug 11:57
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abcde for Linux. It’s in your repositories. Set it up once the way you want, then it’s just: insert CD, enter abcde, repeat ad nauseam. You could even tell your system to auto-trigger it on every CD insert.
more like 3% bandcamp availability. i know this is a linux/trans/selfhost/overpayeddev/westeu/foss echochamber, but im not wasting electricity and money on selfhost if a 1tb sd card in my phone can do the same thing offline.
One more reason if you’re still buying music, to start buying physical albums again while you still can.
CDs aren’t age-gated and you can rip them to FLAC yourself. Vinyl also isn’t age-gated because it’s analog, and although it’s a longer and more drawn-out process than just ripping a CD which will only take a few minutes as because vinyl is an analog format, you gotta record it in real-time, and then manually split the raw waveform up into separate tracks, manually input metadata, and manually generate a cuesheet from the split-up tracks before finally exporting*, you can still needle-drop LPs to FLAC as well.
*This isn’t as big an issue with 78s, 45s, and EPs (which are 33-1/3rpm singles last time I thought) as it is with LPs as there isn’t as much playback time on them, and at least 45s and EPs are singles rather than a full album like with LPs so you only have one song per side, and I assume 78s are singles as well, as 78s max out at 5min per side.
+1 for vinyl. The album art, inserts, etc. really adds something to the experience that I had long forgotten over the years of downloading and streaming music.
CDs still do that to some extent, especially with indie releases, and also higher-end physical formats like SACD and DVD-Audio tend to have a lot of extras packed in with them as they’re typically considered to be special editions of a given album, but both SACD and DVD-Audio are DRM-encumbered unlike normal CDs and of course analog formats where DRM doesn’t apply, so trying to get them on a PC will be harder if not impossible especially as the DSD codec that SACD uses has particularly nasty DRM shipped with it IIRC.
There’s also true novelty formats like MD, DCC, or even in the case of Jeremy Heiden’s Blue Wicked, Elcaset of all things, and Blue Wicked was legit the first album to ever be released on that format, 40+ years after it faded from public consciousness.
some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
on 04 Aug 23:32
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Bring it on! Sail the high seas. Yargh!
Bennyboybumberchums@lemmy.world
on 04 Aug 23:53
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Never had a Spotify account, and I never will. I have apple one, but Im kinda forced into that because of the other half. But if Apple pulls this shit, Im not paying for it. I VPN everything, but I still wont support any company that complies with this bullshit with my money.
billwashere@lemmy.world
on 05 Aug 00:37
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I’m confused. Is every app in the UK requiring face scanning? I thought it was just adult content.
However, the platform does have certain features that are aimed at mature users.
In Spotify’s case, you may be asked to verify your age if you try to “access some Spotify content and features, like Music videos that are labeled as 18+ by rightsholders”. This could also apply to podcasts that discuss mature content and songs with explicit lyrics.
Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world
on 05 Aug 06:08
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Bluesky app also seems to require this for some features.
goatinspace@feddit.org
on 05 Aug 00:37
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Arr!!! Me hearty
guyoverthere123@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 05 Aug 00:58
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The space it takes up is negligible in the modern era of cheap SSDs (and even cheaper hard drives).
The main benefit is not in being able to hear a difference from 320Kbps mp3 (I know I sure can’t), but knowing that you can re-encode the file as many times as you want, without any quality loss (assuming you’re going from lossless to lossless, of course). Or create an mp3 from the flac file at any time, with the same quality as a ripped CD.
So basically FLAC is great if you produce/edit/re-encode your music files often. If you don’t do any of that (and have no plans to future-proof your music collection), then 320Kbps MP3 is more than adequate for your needs.
My concerns with space mostly deals with my cell phone but you make a lot of great point of being able to convert Flac for any use case. Thank you for your input.
TBF, I was answering your question in its original context (is it worth it for audiophiles). Maybe it’s just my age, but I was assuming that the majority of audiophiles still keep the bulk of their music collection stored on a desktop PC. But IDK, I’m in my late 30s and out of touch.
It is better, but it depends on the audio for the difference. Also, it would probably be hard to hear the difference playing over a phones speakers. The weakest link in the chain is always the problem you notice the most. Having a good setup for amp/speakers and you can hear the difference. Using Bluetooth earbuds to mow the lawn, it doesn’t matter. Sitting in my living room on my nice stereo, I notice.
I have Sennheiser HD 25 I bought 15 years ago. I play music through my Pixel 5a with a headphone jack and my iMac.
Is this good enough to be able to tell? I have no idea what devices have a good DAC or not.
Thank you for your input.
some_kind_of_guy@lemmy.world
on 05 Aug 02:37
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Flac files contain orders of magnitude more data. As for the listening experience it’s only ever going to be as good as the speakers at the other end. You’ll also need a wired connection to said speakers in order to avoid some compression over Bluetooth. (Unless there’s some newfangled lossless BT protocol that I’m unaware of.)
FarraigePlaisteach@lemmy.world
on 05 Aug 03:51
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There are online test you can do to see if you can successfully identify the FLAC from the MP3. I did one and failed miserably.
They say that if you have a very good DAC, amplifier and speaker / headphone system (as well as a good ear for audio), that you can hear it. But I would do the test first to see if it applies to your situation.
I have Sennheiser HD 25 I bought 15 years ago. I play music through my Pixel 5a with a headphone jack and my iMac. I have no idea if this is good enough for the test but I will try it anyway.
I’m on my iMac and I chose 128 kbps four times… I chose 320 kbps once and Uncompressed WAV once.
I did so horribly. Lol.
This puts either my hearing limits or the limit of my tech. If I don’t get better equipment, I have my answer forever.
This is truly great. Thank you for this suggestion.
FarraigePlaisteach@lemmy.world
on 05 Aug 15:57
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I’m happy it helped. I was a musician and audiophile for most of my life so I was equally shocked to fail 😄 I also tested on my iMac too. I’m tempted sometimes to get an external DAC and maybe a nice amp, but I’m not sure I want the clutter.
I’m not an audiophile, but back-in-the-day I bought some analog “sennheiser studio monitors” as opposed to “just headphones”.
I actually returned the first one and exchanged them, because when I listened to a live recorded CD, I kept hearing loud “pops” that I didn’t hear with my “regular headphones”. I assumed they were defective.
The exchanged sennheiser had the same “pop” in this CD. It turns out, most “regular headphones” didn’t have the same depth in sound frequency as studio monitors and the “pops” were accidental artifacts that were mixed into the CD.
For other CD’s, I’d hear telephones ringing and sirens in the background.
Eventually, I got use to it. Then after a few years, I replaced my CD collection with mp3’s… and I could tell a different in songs/albums I was really familiar with. The base wasn’t as deep, the high sounds weren’t as high, I didn’t hear telephones ringing in the background.
I had the same sennheiser, it was just that the nature of mp3’s “flattened” the music.
Now, with Bluetooth and the disappearance of 3.5 mm jacks, there are too many layers of digital conversion happening. I’ve given up… and now just have some cheap ear buds I listen to.
Thanks for the suggestion but it would drive me nuts either to convert all my music or to have several different files. Getting MP3s is easier.
vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
on 05 Aug 14:47
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Yes, I meant in case you have a library of FLACs. In that case it wouldn’t be too problematic cause, well, it’s just a script recursing your library, encoding from FLAC to Opus and if succeeded, removing FLAC files.
Our brains shouldn’t have to work harder to listen to lossy music, which is what happens even if you can’t reliably perceive it.
Listening to music on acid (a lot) has really shaped my views of it and how even the most minor things can have a major impact on the final experience.
I’m not an audiophile though and can enjoy music in a wide range of formats and quality; I just prefer FLAC almost anywhere.*
*some songs sound ‘better,’ or at least more iconic in a lower quality
swelter_spark@reddthat.com
on 05 Aug 20:29
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I’m curious. How does acid change listening to music?
You get to notice things you didn’t notice before. It’s a lot easier for our brains to ‘zoom in’ and process minute details that we don’t perceive normally. Since lossless and lossy music is not the exact same audio vibrating the air, our brains are not going to interpret them exactly the same. This difference doesn’t matter to most and isn’t always perceivable, but it’s there.
One thing that stood out to me during an acid trip was how moving my phone affected the playback speed of my bluetooth speakers. Moving it farther away caused the song to slow down slightly for a moment, moving it closer caused the song to speed up slightly. You can imagine that this is because of some kind of ‘space invaders’ effect, where my phone is sending out signals at a constant rate and adjusting the distance to the receiver causes those signals to be received faster or slower, temporarily.
swelter_spark@reddthat.com
on 09 Aug 02:14
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Idk man. Show someone some cymbals on a 128kbps track and it sounds like someone crumpling a plastic bag via a tin can connected to a string. In contrast flac is going to sound much more natural.
I’d agree with you regarding 320 and flac - most people are gonna have a hard time differentiating.
vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
on 05 Aug 06:23
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most people are gonna have a hard time differentiating.
With the usual psychoacoustic model of MP3 if you can hear the difference between 320 MP3 and FLAC you are either lying or there’s something wrong with your speakers. It’s certain with long odds.
SidewaysHighways@lemmy.world
on 05 Aug 02:35
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i didn’t care about just grabbing the 720p 600mb video file back when i was watching on a little laptop screen.
it does not hold up on the big stuff.
kinda same applies to audio?
crap sounds like crap on a phone speaker, but so does hi quality stuff.
noise and low dynamics are more noticeable on more powerful, louder gear.
just spitballing here, not an expert!
some_kind_of_guy@lemmy.world
on 05 Aug 02:42
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most people
Many people are ok with hearing music out of a phone speaker. Audiophiles don’t necessarily care about how “most people” perceive sound quality.
That was my point. The comment I was replying to was suggesting that people switching from Spotify will be blown away by better quality audio. Most wouldn’t notice a difference.
Why is it the people that are ok listening to music out of a phone speaker are also the people ok polluting public spaces with music from phone speakers?
vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
on 05 Aug 05:45
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Because they are dumb assholes? I grew up around folks who jury rigged speakers into the back of their trucks for camping and the worst they got was blaring freebird on the highway, it used to take work to be that guy now someone can just play some obnoxious trash in the restaurant with no work whatsoever.
Lemminary@lemmy.world
on 05 Aug 06:11
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Can’t confirm, I can’t tell.
vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
on 05 Aug 06:20
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How about 48 kbit MP3? And more than that, for plenty of recordings that’s sufficient.
For now yt music is what new Spotify was , but when one goes down the other cums and dominate
Electricd@lemmybefree.net
on 05 Aug 16:39
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😳
TwinTitans@lemmy.world
on 05 Aug 03:09
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Never stopped. Get your own mp3s kids.
sad_detective_man@leminal.space
on 05 Aug 03:55
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I know so many people who are so ride-or-die for never having to manage the file space for their own music library and they don’t seem particularly less stressed.
I think they just cannot live without an algorithm to recommend new music to them
vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
on 05 Aug 06:16
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An algorithm for them:
set rand [clock microseconds]
set len [mpc_pl_len]
set to [expr {$rand%$len}]
mpc_pl_jmp $to
sad_detective_man@leminal.space
on 05 Aug 07:34
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mpc, is that shuffling media player cassic with the system clock? isn’t that what shuffle already does ?
vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
on 05 Aug 07:45
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mpc as in mpd CLI client, where mpc_pl_len and mpc_pl_jmp procedures are not listed, but just call it with some other Unix commands to get playlist length and jump to a playlist position.
I think they just cannot live without an algorithm to recommend new music to them
Oh, piss off. I just want to financially support artists for making something beautiful I enjoy. Streaming is the easiest because of space constraints. I still buy the CDs of my most favourite albums, but I cannot stress enough how great it is to NOT have to rip the MP3s every time, make sure the tags are good, etc.
It’s convenient.
If you don’t like Spotify’s new ID check, kill your Spotify account and use an alternative - Tidal and Qobuz are both excellent.
sad_detective_man@leminal.space
on 05 Aug 06:56
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woah woah woah, chill bro goddamn. let’s sit and think about this. Record labels take pretty much all of the cut for streaming. Here is the chart showing what each service pays artists per song played. I used to think Napster was the best and subscribed to them for years, which is ironic considering their history
<img alt="" src="https://leminal.space/pictrs/image/81b99767-0bba-4c31-9e25-5bbf9ad42e63.jpeg">
obviously the payout is going to vary widely but it’s common knowledge that for even the most played artists, the pay from this avenue sucks. they simply use these services to get their music to potential concert goers since that’s the income that record labels actually let artists keep. vinyls, merch, and usually tickets unless they REALLY get fucked over like child musician groups tend to.
If You have an interest in discovering just how shady that industry is, you should watch this essay about payola and how it’s literally more profitable for a musician to die than it is to release a certain number of future albums. I’m going to stick to pirating albums and using my cash to actually see the artists I love
Of course I’d prefer to buy directly from the artist (hence: Bandcamp), but that’s not the world we live in. Flat out piracy is just the worst of all the available options.
woah woah woah, chill bro goddamn
Then stop saying stupid shit like “they just cannot live without an algorithm” when talking about people who use streaming services.
sad_detective_man@leminal.space
on 05 Aug 07:23
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it really isn’t though. I don’t really know where you live or how your local economy is organized but where I’m at people in my tax bracket are extracted for every ounce of raw money we can generate, both now but even speculatively in the future. it really doesn’t make sense to consider theft as a taboo against corporations since we are literally a resource that’s being exploited in real time for far much more than whatever artists would lose if we all stole.
.sopuli is a Finnish board right? my understanding is that you guys have way stronger social ethics and consumer protection, so yeah. in your world I probably would sign up for that Napster subscription again. or even better, a service actually from Finland. Bandcamp is good too.
here, though in the present we have far worse things to worry about than theft. being tricked into defending the feelings of billionaires is a big one. letting corporations curate our education and media is another. but I hope you continue to have the life where you can engage with your economy in such a good intentioned way. I miss back when I felt I could do that too.
people in my tax bracket are extracted for every ounce of raw money we can generate, both now but even speculatively in the future. it really doesn’t make sense to consider theft as a taboo against corporations
This is such an “I’m 12 and a rebel” position to take…
Sure, corporate greed is a cancer, there’s zero doubt about that.
But these corporation also create jobs, make it possible for many people to survive. In terms of media streaming corpos SO MANY people/bands were allowed to have a career thanks to people just stumbling upon them.
Should they be getting paid more? Absolutely. Should the corpos handling the hardware, infrastructure, AND software be also paid? If you don’t believe that, you’re just naive or ignorant. Or both.
sopuli is a Finnish board right? my understanding is that you guys have way stronger social ethics and consumer protection, so yeah. in your world I probably would sign up for that Napster subscription again. or even better, a service actually from Finland. Bandcamp is good too
Or the French Qobuz.
here, though in the present we have far worse things to worry about than theft. being tricked into defending the feelings of billionaires is a big one. letting corporations curate our education and media is another
Be the change you want to see. Instead of going stomping feet and stealing candy, go to the store that you feel you can morally support. Hard to do IRL, but online - sky is the limit. Use European services, those that pay artists (Qobuz pays around 5 times more than Spotify to rights holders), buy directly from artists on Bandcamp, etc., etc.
Piracy is literally the worst solution here because you’re taking without giving. Any “fight the corpo!” banner here is just extreme naivete because the artist will starve MUCH quicker than the corp.
sad_detective_man@leminal.space
on 05 Aug 09:03
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yeeesh. I realize now that getting artists paid is obviously way less important to you than having somebody to verbally spar with. this is reductive and overall pretty naive to the actual experience of being in the workforce or trying to consume ethically.
instead of shouldering the responsibility of being your debate partner, I’m going to bow out and bid you a good life 👍 perhaps somebody else here would like to take turns quote tweeting and making character assessments with you.
“I want to have my publicly stated opinion, but it’s not allowed to be challenged or questioned in any way” 🙄
sad_detective_man@leminal.space
on 05 Aug 09:14
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you’re right. not by a certain type of internet person. nothing personal, but the shame of being a fragile baby is actually worth that boundary and there are other better interactions for us both to go have
I realize now that getting artists paid is obviously way less important to you
That’s a very interesting take considering I’m against piracy and pro direct purchases from bands. Please, do explain how you ended up at that conclusion.
sad_detective_man@leminal.space
on 05 Aug 09:32
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nah we’re done. I already said but you don’t listen. have a good night ✌️
yesukwunt@thelemmy.club
on 05 Aug 08:38
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You’re mostly supporting the industry that encouraged your favorite artists to kill themselves once they’re not profitable anymore. Why do you think they keep blowing thelself up? The music industry is inherently exploitative.
Not to even mention all the corruption (payolas) going on.
I have honestly no clue what you mean. Could you explain?
You’re mostly supporting the industry that encouraged your favorite artists to kill themselves once they’re not profitable anymore
Which is why I’m actively searching for the best possible options.
When I learned that Spotify is fleecing artists, I moved to Tidal.
Then I learned about the French Qobuz, which pays artists even more, and I switched.
I support artists on Bandcamp. I buy physical CDs and will soon fire up a vinyl collection.
I’m aware that 100% of the money I spent on art doesn’t go to the artist, but even if it’s 10%, it’s going to be 100% more than if I resorted to piracy.
Supporting piracy to show corpos the finger is the equivalent of stealing CDs from a music store, because the store price includes the store’s margin, transport costs, manufacturing costs, and only a (relatively) small percentage goes to the artists.
Usually when someone still use mp3s it’s for the ubiquity of the format. Every device that has a USB port handle mp3s. I personally use opus and it’s not common at all.
tiramichu@sh.itjust.works
on 05 Aug 07:52
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It’s really interesting when you think about that.
In the video world, we’ve had an arms race all throughout the last 25 years for the lowest possible file size at the best possible quality, with new codecs and containers constantly coming in and out of favour. Hardware playback has always been spotty at best, with little guarantee you’ll get a file to play on any device in particular.
Meanwhile I could rip a CD and put it on even my first-generation MP3 player from the year 1999, and it would work. A blessing we rather take for granted.
I guess there just hasn’t been sufficient pressure to toss MP3 out completely. From an evolutionary perspective, just like the horseshoe crab, it is “good enough” and so it endures.
Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de
on 05 Aug 08:39
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You just reminded me: A while back there was this slew of articles coming out of the tech press saying MP3 was now dead.
And why did they say that? Because the last Fraunhofer Patent on an MP3 related invention ran out.
Instead of reporting the format was now fully free, those idiots thought that meant it was now dead 😂
vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
on 05 Aug 08:59
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Opus is far better, but with MP3’s there’s been plenty of hardware players only working with that format. Also Opus is new, before it was Vorbis which was kinda as good as MP3 but far less popular.
And yes, MP3 is very “good enough”, like JPEG.
StupidBrotherInLaw@lemmy.world
on 05 Aug 03:51
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Soulseek (and I recommend the Nicotine+ client over the official one) is a fantastic source for all music in all formats, and particularly obscure off-label shit you won’t get anywhere else. You’ll even have some success finding audiobooks there, although this is very hit-and-miss. I wish audiobook pirates would use it more heavily. It’s P2P, like Napster used to be. You’ll have to share something or you’ll get auto-ignored by most users.
RuTracker is a great non-private/non-ratio-monitoring torrent site for music (does require a free account though). I’ve never had a single torrent from there that wasn’t seemingly seeded by a Godzilla’s dick. Obviously it’s in Russian, but there’s really no difficulty navigating around. The only thing you might struggle with is signing up for an account, but just have your favourite translation tool open in another tab 👍
If you don’t mind slow download speeds (from the likes of RapidGator), I enjoy Exystence. It’s a blog that shares link to the latest albums and offers both lossy and lossless versions. Nice RSS subscription to have.
If you do find yourself using RapidGator a lot, don’t waste money buying a sub directly from them, it’s insanely pricey. Instead, get a reseller like Real Debrid, which costs like 10% as much and also covers you for about two-dozen other file hosters. I highly recommend putting as much distance between your credit card and the company as possible, just for safety reasons. Using PaySafeCard is fine, as Real Debrid will never see your details in that case. I don’t have any specific reason to be weary of them, I just don’t trust random/small/hitherto unheard of companies as a rule.
drasglaf@sh.itjust.works
on 05 Aug 05:57
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I’ve been using RuTracker for years and it usually has all the music I need. And it has more than music, great site.
vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
on 05 Aug 06:12
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It’s P2P, like Napster used to be. You’ll have to share something or you’ll get auto-ignored by most users.
Oh, reminds me, you should also sort your share. I once got march-horny, added some German marches to my download queue (no judging pls), and then got a PM from the guy sharing them that I should keep my collection in order. And yes, the jerk ignored me.
Also not really p2p, there is a central server. The downloads are p2p.
RuTracker is a great non-private/non-ratio-monitoring torrent site for music
It was ratio-monitoring, that’s how it became great. Just after being banned in Russia they decided that those who try hard enough to even reach there can be trusted to behave.
It’s not only for music, it’s for everything.
haloduder@thelemmy.club
on 05 Aug 14:58
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Remember to donate to them tough - and btw. they are actually running their services for radical left activists, not filesharing… so I guess it would be cool to please not strain their servers too much.
All good advice. I used to find a lot of stuff by entering “site:rutracker.org” behind my query in my favorite search engine - don’t know if that still works but I never needed an account there…
darkreader2636@lemmy.zip
on 05 Aug 05:07
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Jokes on them. My m4a library reaches 1000’s easily
Date of birth (with some other details) is kind of a sensitive information in the right hands
iAvicenna@lemmy.world
on 05 Aug 06:47
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given that governments are now starting to make certain protests illegal, definitely not as bad as having your face in a database and your behaviour being mapped for suspicious illegal activity like criticising genocide.
Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de
on 05 Aug 08:34
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You’re right and I’d go a bit further: It’s none of their business what your age even is, they need to know only one bit for their legal duties, over or under age of majority.
Basically what is really needed is a certificate of majority digitally signed by the government bound to some identifier, email address or full name. All this uploading faces or ID card scans is ridiculous.
OneWomanCreamTeam@sh.itjust.works
on 05 Aug 08:56
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The invasiveness is the point. Age gating explicit content is just the excuse.
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works
on 05 Aug 07:03
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deleted by creator
iAvicenna@lemmy.world
on 05 Aug 07:49
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fair point but given the direction US and UK are headed, something legal you do online can be illegal in a couple years with a face attached to that activity. What you mention is also bad (your face being in a face recognition database) but not as bad as that being attached to tons of behavioural data collected about you.
Besides that, credit cards (and chipless debit cards) are unsecure? That receiving credit cards payments costs more in terms of administration costs?
That credit cards are a system designed for consumerism (you see this especially in the US) and that people who grew up with credit cards being the default/more common payment method are often worse with money?
There is a reason why you can only own credit cards if you are an adult, but you can own chipped debit cards earlier.
A normal modern bank card (with 2FA) through a payment provider which obfuscates everything besides the name on your bank account and your bank account number (this will also share the country of your bank if you are in a SEPA region).
And since people younger than 18 can use that system, they cannot use that for verification.
Plus, you won’t be at risk of spending money you don’t have, and it doesn’t negatively impact your credit score like even having a credit card does in some countries.
We live in a rural part of Canada that has been left behind by modern times. Mostly by the choice of the residents. I grew up during satanic panic. It was crazy here. My wife and I let our kids listen to anything they want. They always have. They’re 10 and 12.
Their friends often comment about swear words and “sex, drugs and rock and roll” themes of the music they listen too. As an old man I get to regale them with stories of how crazy the Christians were over heavy metal and punk rock when I was a kid, including their grandma.
Now I yell “you’re gonna go to hell!” As a joke to them every time their friends bring it up and I am around.
You’re parenting the right way. Let our kids know about our past and how it compares to theirs, live it. And joking with my kids and their friends without immediately jumping to “that’s bullying”, you can tell my kids are a bit happier than the rest because everything is a joke to them. I applaud you.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
on 05 Aug 13:35
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“you’re gonna go to hell!”
if where all the “christians” go is heaven, then i’d rather go to hell
I’ve been cursing a lot lately, and I blame what I listened to in Spotify. By no means was it because I was playing my pirated Eminem music all weekend 🤣🤣
swelter_spark@reddthat.com
on 05 Aug 20:16
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My parents only let me listen to Spanish language music when I was little, so I wouldn’t understand the cursing. 😂
Apocalypteroid@lemmy.world
on 05 Aug 08:22
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I mean, the Spotify CEO invests in AI weaponry being used to murder kids in Gaza so the morally correct thing to do would be to leave Spotify over that.
Electricd@lemmybefree.net
on 05 Aug 08:28
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Do you have any other good alternative to recommend? Nice quality, not too much tracking, low/fair price, nice recommendation algorithm, has lots of musics…
megopie@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 05 Aug 08:38
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You can probably get a pirate hat online for a few bucks. And there are plenty of discoverability systems not based on integration with a subscription service.
Electricd@lemmybefree.net
on 05 Aug 09:26
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I’ve been on tidal for a few months now. It’s not as feature rich as far as integrations and sharing a link to a track for your pals is hit or miss but it seems to have all the music i listen to and sounds a little better than spotify for the artists that upload max quality.
I did the import from spotify using their suggested vendor and only like 20 out of 8000 or so songs didn’t transfer because they didn’t have the artist on tidal.
davidagain@lemmy.world
on 05 Aug 09:20
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Soundcloud lets you play any song you want at any time, even on the free tier, and when you ask it to play a playlist, it only plays songs on the playlist.
You can have recommendations from an algorithm if you choose, but it’s encouraged rather than enforced.
There are a lot more independent artists on it, and fewer big labels, or at least it feels that way because it doesn’t seem to prioritise big labels over some person I’ve never heard of.
Spotify has an annoy-users-until-they-pay model. If you deliberately piss me off, you’re not getting any of my money. Soundcloud just has ads.
Electricd@lemmybefree.net
on 05 Aug 09:28
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I like the random recommendations from time to time
I’m a bit afraid that their algorithm is shit
to be fair at this point I’m mostly on youtube music because it allows playing youtube videos as well, which sometimes is the only way of playing some musics
YouTube music won’t play in the background though, so it’s a pain whilst driving and navigating traffic or routes. Some of my friends make playlists on there and share them, so I do use it sometimes.
But absolutely use the service that brings you joy, not the ones that I prefer!
Electricd@lemmybefree.net
on 06 Aug 08:33
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YouTube music won’t play in the background though
It does for me though? Unless you don’t pay I guess? On android you can patch this with revanced, or use custom players
davidagain@lemmy.world
on 06 Aug 17:02
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I don’t pay for music unless I buy the track or album.
What’s revanced? I’m not especially keen to give Google my money either. They fall into the category of businesses that have way too much money and power already.
Electricd@lemmybefree.net
on 06 Aug 17:18
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It’s basically a patcher app to apply some FOSS changes to your regular apps (ex: modify the YouTube app to add custom features, remove ads, add background play, bypass some other…)
I believe they have patches for YouTube music to remove ads and add background playback for non subscribers
Apocalypteroid@lemmy.world
on 05 Aug 14:28
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Unfortunately most of the major players are involved in some sort of evilness as far as I am aware. Spotify/Google/Apple are all pretty unethical companies. Personally, I have made the decision to cut out the middle man and sail the seven seas while also supporting the artists I like by being a vinyl wanker and going to gigs.
As for streaming services (I am very happy to be corrected here because I am not certain) AFAIK both tidal and qobuz are good alternatives. Qobuz is based in France so your data will be safer but Tidal is a bit cheaper.
Buy and store your own music. HDTracks and 7Digital both sell high quality DRM free downloads, or you can just swing by your local Walmart or Dollar Store and grab some CDs to rip.
Or you could go sailing, that’s always an option…
madcaesar@lemmy.world
on 05 Aug 10:55
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That I don’t know. I mean you could always just use something to record the sound played by your PC, but at that point A) You’re not getting as good of quality as you would from an actual download of the source material and you’d have to manually assign metadata, make sure no notifications or other sounds played, make sure your recording settings were optimum, etc. It’s easier, right now at least, to just buy what you want on CD or from a store that sells digital downloads legitimately.
The sound isolation could be fixed by using a separate audio channel for Spotify, but no way it’s gonna be worth the effort as it’s not gonna be as good quality and if you’re considering doing all that you would be better off sailing the high seas (on one of the big music trackers)
As much as I’d like to do that, I have listened to over 7000 artists on Spotify.
I simply don’t have the time (or money) to look those up individually.
So I can either choose to have worse experience, or stick with Spotify for now.
There is a cost to convenience ratio. Each individual has to decide based on their own ethics and preferences whether they’re willing to sacrifice their own personal experience for the right of ownership. I personally chose to cancel my Spotify subscription some time ago and start buying digital downloads and CDs again.
I guess that’s why I didn’t say that, or agree with that framing.
ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk
on 05 Aug 09:51
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If I am paying for my account personally, with a card in my name, what more do they need?
ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online
on 05 Aug 10:07
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They want to scan your face to get as many images of people of stated ages to feed into their facial recognition system. Do not for one moment think it is for anything else.
Edit: it is like how Facebook had a 10 years ago you looked like this! Post a new comparison photo today!’ Specifically because they want to know how people age for their AI shit.
ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk
on 05 Aug 10:21
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Well sure, the real reason is always data harvesting.
Yeah, they want to be able to ‘People that look like This listen to This’ so that advertisers have more options when they are locking down commercials.
SethTaylor@lemmy.world
on 05 Aug 09:52
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I’m having a pretty good time with Qobuz. Their curated collections are actually really good and I’ve found a lot of new stuff in there; it’s not the “here’s what the record label is shoveling this week” like on Spotify. Also, the high bitrate stuff… I hate to admit it, but it really does sound better.
We switched to Deezer about a month ago and are liking it. Flow seems to find music I like way better than Spotify’s DJ or “for you” playlists.
JokeDeity@sh.itjust.works
on 05 Aug 10:39
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Personally I could never get into the whole Spotify and Pandora thing. I want to listen to what I want to listen to and when I want to listen to it, without ridiculous restrictions and rules. YouTube has honestly been the far better choice for music for me.
Having a collection of music in files that I own has been my go-to for years. Currently VLC says I have 701 hours of music in files on my phone. That’s only 29.2 days worth.
JokeDeity@sh.itjust.works
on 05 Aug 11:17
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I used to do that and I do still have a lot of music from that time on my computer, but somewhere along the line I stopped downloading music and just started listening to it on YouTube whenever I thought of something in particular.
Man, I had around 10 gigs of vintage mp3s that is created since the days of Limewire/Napster. Uploaded it all to Google Music and lost track of the external I’d had the collection stored on. Whatever, it’s all in the cloud now.
Then it wasn’t.
I really, Really, need to back up all of my Gdocs, just in case that service ceases to be.
(I wonder if ancient crunchy low bitrate mp3s will be an aesthetic, the way that dusty vinyl or worn out tapes are?)
enumerator4829@sh.itjust.works
on 05 Aug 12:05
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I wonder if ancient crunchy low bitrate mp3s will be an aesthetic, the way that dusty vinyl or worn out tapes are?
You might want to check music.youtube.com, I still have my (GMusic) uploaded collection available there, I cannot upload new, but what was there still is. Just mentioning it in case you are still looking for your music.
That said, yes, downloading (pirating or not) and setting a home music server seems to be the best option.
It’s not necessarily your music though, it’s the closest that they found in their library sometimes. I have tons of tracks that I uploaded the explicit copy of to gmusic but my library downloads only had the censored/radio version.
Found that out the hard way after a drive crash a few years back. Have spent a bit of time reacquiring the stuff I cared about.
Wow! You are right, I completely forgot about that. You can listen to your music still, but it is true that is not a good way for rebuilding your collection 😟
JustARaccoon@lemmy.world
on 05 Aug 12:51
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It’s mostly the discovery aspect, it’s easy to find new and emerging artists through these services, and they make playing that music very convenient. YouTube does have some of it with YouTube music but I’ve not found the algorithm to be as good as Spotify or Tidal
I used to use and praise Spotify and their algorithm, but I was starting to find that it would insist on playing the same 20 or 50 songs regardless of the playlist I was trying to generate music suggestions from. I read a rumor somewhere that it was a way to decrease the load on their servers and rely more on the cached songs already on the device, and got sick of that enough to switch to Pandora after over 10 years of Spotify
idefix@sh.itjust.works
on 05 Aug 14:07
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Same for me, I got tired of the same artists being played over and over. I’ve switched to Deezer who does a much better job. I will probably switch to Qobuz soon.
I tried Tidal, and now I’m on Pandora. The ‘radio’ feature of Pandora more closely matches the way I want to listen to music (I feel like playing this, stay in this mood, but vary the artists), but I’m disappointed by the android app.
I should also try Qobuz, maybe even Deezer, but the real pain point is that I have literally thousands of playlists on Spotify. I can pay TuneMyMusic again, I guess
JustARaccoon@lemmy.world
on 05 Aug 15:19
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On the now playing screen, I try to swipe the album image to skip (like Spotify) but it doesn’t. Yes, the skip button is right there, but when driving it’s needlessly distracting to have to find the small button.
There’s no obvious way to see your play history when it’s on auto play or radio.
You can start a station from a single song, and you can add song variety to a single-song station, and you can let a playlist end and it will autoplay songs, but you can’t create a station from a playlist directly. These seem like the same function but are treated differently.
You can ‘collect’ or ‘👍’ a song from radio/autoplay, and it’s implied that it influences the station to do the latter, but all the 👍 songs go to their own playlist and sometimes a ‘songs you liked from this station’ playlist separate from the station and sometimes in the station page. It can unintuitive.
There’s no API so there’s no way for TuneMyMusic to import my playlists from Spotify.
Adding a song to a playlist often fails the first time, I can mash it but it doesn’t go, but if I back out and add it again it works.
Some of these can be chalked up to user error, I haven’t gotten used to the paradigm change, but the app still feels rigid and “less polished”. Like I said, nitpicks.
Pandora is sadly not available in NL and if I saw it correctly Pandora is also America which does mean that it will turn to shit somewhere in the future.
phutatorius@lemmy.zip
on 05 Aug 11:26
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Seriously, fuck Spotify and another using that error-prone, intrusive, insecure bullshit.
cows_are_underrated@feddit.org
on 05 Aug 12:18
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Where is Spotify error prone? I dont use it that much, but I havent encountered a bug once.
I use it a lot, and have been for 10 years or so. I have never had any sort of error. It has simply always worked exactly like it’s supposed to.
I don’t know anything about it being intrusive or insecure, and definately need a source on that, but it’s possible those criticisms are valid, but again, need a damn source. As is, the person you commented on has lost all cridibilty, so I’m inclined to err on the side of caution, and assume they don’t know what they’re talking about.
blackwateropeth@lemmy.world
on 05 Aug 12:43
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When people get mad they get hyperbolic sometimes. Might be the case here. Same with not having it error on me as well. That said, fuck their CEO, they lost a sub from me after I heard about the drone investment.
You can say a lot of Spotify and of Apple, but the iOS app of Spotify is basically bug free and has been bug free for more than a decade now for me. The webclient has been buggy for me though.
Allemaniac@lemmy.world
on 05 Aug 11:52
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what are “spotify fans”? Spotify paid 150k $ for Trump’s inauguration party, f them. They do not deserve my money
I left Spotify for many reasons including this. They’ve only proven that they do not care about artists at all. I remember before I left, many of the tracks that came up “based on my playlist” were just random AI generated crap.
Considering how much Spotify pays artists per listens, piracy is barely any different in that regard.
dinckelman@lemmy.world
on 05 Aug 12:34
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This is the most upsetting part. If you’re a solo artist without a label, you need what’s essentially a million listens to break minimum wage. For bands, and anyone with a label, even that’s practically out of question. This shit is why everyone sells 75$ t-shirts at shows
I believe you so this is a genuine question: did you ever test your kbps threshold for being able to distinguish from lossless?
I remember in the MP3 and Winamp days, I was convinced I could detect anything below 192 kbps. Obviously depends on the content, and I’m implying 44 kHz minimum.
Never ran any tests here but the difference is so stark that I never really considered it a need.
Kinda like when I switched from SoundCloud to Apple Music. I couldn’t go back to listening to the songs I had in my SC library because it was just noticeably worse.
I’m sure there are ways to rip high fi YouTube audio but the basic options I used in the past yielded results worse than avg SoundCloud quality.
Will say it’s been a few years since trying and I never had any paid for YouTube subscription, don’t even have an account. So, while it may be acceptable, I just never had a need and if I wanted to rip music, I’d be torrenting .flac files, not ripping .mp3s from YouTube
I was impressed when iTunes added the option to get your album in .flac. And while I acknowledge there’s a lot of placebo effect with audiophillia, I still argue space is cheap and you never know how good your ears and sound system may get in the future.
null@lemmy.nullspace.lol
on 05 Aug 13:25
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Bandcamp, Soulseek, Navidrome, ListenBrainz.
Has been a pretty solid Spotify-replacement stack.
bitjunkie@lemmy.world
on 05 Aug 13:54
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The streaming services are run by shithead C-suites who think last quarter is the way it’s always been. They forget the only reason most of us use their services is someone more visionary than them made it more convenient than piracy half a generation ago. Let’s remind them there’s an alternative.
All my CD’s got ripped (and re-ripped) to mp3 in increasing bitrates as storage increased. Bandcamp is where almost all my musicians release anyway, and I’ve got over a thousand albums through them, happy in the knowledge I support the artists in a fairly direct way.
Sure, I’ve still got an Apple Music sub (which sucks at times because licensing means a compilation gets split into several albums when whatever deal happens in the background expires). But I’ll easily find new music, grab it and give it a go, and if I like it enough I’ll dig them out on bandcamp. At some point I’m gonna quit that platform.
Planning to get a modern mp3 player to go offline with my music at some point. Or maybe rebuild the old iPod and put Rockbox on it and hook it up to my linux desktop.
I found it was well worth ripping to flac securely using EAC (no idea what the modern setup is).
As then I knew I had a perfect copy to make whatever MP3 I wanted in the future from.
Nowadays, I convert everything to V0 for portable use, but who knows what the future may hold.
I mean, fuck Spotify and all that, but this one is really the UK government’s doing.
And soon, this shit will come to every country. They’re all drafting laws to mandate real age verification for adult content. The UK is just the first to implement it.
Quatlicopatlix@feddit.org
on 05 Aug 14:46
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Its not like every industrie can somehow lobby every consumer right away when someone wants to make a new law… oh wait they do…
Actually, I don’t think this is industry mandated. I don’t think it’s in the interest of tech and content companies to create more friction to access their services. This one seems to have more to do with the governments wanting to exert more control over online affairs, and of course, over its citizens.
Quatlicopatlix@feddit.org
on 05 Aug 15:06
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Yea my point was if people stopped using the apps then the big players will lobby the governemt to revert shit like that. But i also think that long term all big players would love to normalize taking your picture to open their app. Every bit of information they can sell is a win for them.
I guess that’s also why Google is going to use some kind of AI to determine whether or not a profile is underage. That way, existing adult users of their services are (most likely) not affected.
In my opinion, draconian government overreach in matters of civil liberties is one of the few instances where we should be on the side of big tech companies.
I think there are going to be a whole lot of phishing and blackmail scams in the future, preying on the stupid computer illiterate masses putting in their personal information into fake “age verifiers” to access porn or other adult content.
I just use Pandora for radio and youtube for specific songs.
Use Nicotine+ to download music for free.
haloduder@thelemmy.club
on 05 Aug 14:50
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This age-verification bullshit is a fine example of how governments represent their rulers, not their citizens.
chilicheeselies@lemmy.world
on 05 Aug 15:20
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I dont understand this take. This is a “think of the children” bs that panders to (certain) citizens. Also a thinly veiled attempt at data collection of its citizens en masse
Don’t threaten, just do it. Enshittification must end.
The only reason we have mainstream paid video streaming now is because early Netflix was genuinely better than dodgy, pop-up riddled mirrors on movie4k.to. The convenience was well worth 8 bucks a month. Same for Spotify.
Fast forward 10 years and Spotify wants me to pay 15 €, scan my face and listen to forced podcast ads AND pay extra for paywalled audiobooks that used to be free? Meet my good old friend youtube-downloader, then.
The news can’t easily report on users actually returning to piracy; who would admit to it? And how would you get data on it? Much easier to truthfully report on users who talk about returning to piracy.
HertzDentalBar@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 05 Aug 16:02
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Never understood Spotifys appeal. Youtube has always been better imo.
Dreaming_Novaling@lemmy.zip
on 05 Aug 16:28
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The few dumb artists who only release music there and nowhere else, the better streaming quality (I guess? I’ve read it somewhere), and slightly better at suggesting/categorizing music genres. I don’t use it because all the time I’d see people cry “I wish this was on Spotify!!!” in a YT comment section, and YT music had everything I wanted. Plus YT free is way more bearable that Spotify free, and I use ReVanced now anyway.
But yeah Spotify always sucked to me and I’m tired of those who shame others for not using it. The “Apple green bubble shaming” of the music world.
Newsteinleo@infosec.pub
on 05 Aug 16:16
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Its as if law makers don’t learn from history. Do they not know what happened in the 90s and early 2000s when stores wouldn’t sell M rated video games or CDs with mature content labels? We found ways to get around that. We would go to stores that didn’t check or care, got our older sibling or friend to buy it for us. We burned copies of our friends CDs, or downloaded stuff off line with Limewire and Napster.
Same shit when there was prohibition in the US. People drove cars across the great lakes to bring alcohol into the US. People brewed there own spirits in bathtubs with radiator coils.
If people want to anomalously watch their favorite weird kinky shit or listing to music they like, they’re going to find a way. And, if the easiest way to do that is through piracy, that is what they are going to do.
JimVanDeventer@lemmy.world
on 05 Aug 16:38
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Spotify fans?
Suavevillain@lemmy.world
on 05 Aug 18:34
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You’re way better off with your own music collection. That is what I have. I use Tauon music box it handles large playlists well.
dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world
on 05 Aug 19:56
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I’m just as mystified as you.
The only time I interact with the service is when I’m sent a link to a cool band/song and I wind up on the site. “Oh, this again.” I really have zero concept of fandom for something like this.
It’s a load of bullshit, for a start the ISP has my details and should be able to attest my connection is rented by someone of legal age and it should be up to me what I let my children (assuming I have any) see and not see on that connection. I already had to click the “yes just give me the porn damn it” agreement on my mobile phone which was less likely to be randomly shared unmonitored and now this overbearing crap. I’ll just avoid sites and services that require this.
The Online Safety Act 2023[1][2][3] (c. 50) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom to regulate online content. It was passed on 26 October 2023 and gives the relevant Secretary of State the power to designate, suppress, and record a wide range of online content that is deemed “illegal” or “harmful to children”.[4][5]
The Act creates a new duty of care for online platforms, requiring them to take action against illegal content, or legal content that could be “harmful” to children where children are likely to access it. Platforms failing this duty would be liable to fines of up to £18 million or 10% of their annual turnover, whichever is higher. It also empowers Ofcom to block access to particular websites. It obliges large social media platforms not to remove, and to preserve access to, journalistic or “democratically important” content such as user comments on political parties and issues.
I mean, you don’t have to go there if you want, but it’s probably Parliament you want to be irritated with, not websites following British laws.
abbiistabbii@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 05 Aug 20:57
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Ngl, right now I’m endevouring to acquire more music in digital file format rather than streaming right now. Spotify is great, especially when your looking for individual songs that you’ll only listen to a handful of times, and for discovering music, but once you lose access to it you’re pretty fucked.
At this point even the music discovery is being enshitified with AI bands taking up more and more space as low-cost filler.
The last 10 years of the internet are committing seppuku in front of us. Gird your musical loins, friend. We’ll need jams in MP3 format in the dystopian hellscape that’s rushing to meet us.
Victoriathecompact@sh.itjust.works
on 06 Aug 17:40
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I use Tidal, which pays artists even better
fading_person@lemmy.zip
on 05 Aug 21:41
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Don’t threaten, just do it!
I don’t get why people are so stubborn to move away from corporate products.
yonderbarn@lazysoci.al
on 05 Aug 22:26
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I don’t use any proprietary apps. Only FOSS apps installed on my phone.
Personally, the open source community’s aversion to algorithms is what’s holding me back. Say what you will about them, but I’ve found many great songs thanks to Spotify’s algo.
Glitterbomb@lemmy.world
on 06 Aug 01:07
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Soulseeks recommendation algorithm is top notch, almost organic. You click the ‘browse users files’ button.
If you’re just looking for an engine that recommends you music based off your likes, the FOSS community could utilize the Music Genomoe Project to build a tool too do that based one a folder or Playlist of music provided to it. I would be surprised if there already wasn’t a FOSS tool to do that.
blind3rdeye@aussie.zone
on 06 Aug 09:28
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It’s not so much an aversion to algorithms as it is a version to corporate controlled algorithms (which are often targeting highly questionable metrics).
I’ve found many juat streaming themed internet radio on Radiodroid.
burgerpocalyse@lemmy.world
on 06 Aug 00:50
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people like having their stuff.
fading_person@lemmy.zip
on 06 Aug 01:05
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Well… with streaming services people don’t actually have anything, because nothing in there is theirs to own ;)
burgerpocalyse@lemmy.world
on 06 Aug 05:57
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sure. though it would be easier to talk someone into jumping off a bridge than to convince them to give up something they mostly hate but enjoy one crucial feature of
infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net
on 06 Aug 17:34
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When you lease access to information, you literally don’t gave any stuff.
I hate Spotify and would like to stop paying them even 1/5th of a family subscription. But I have researched alternatives and haven’t found one that meets my need to manage offline files, playlists, and the current playback session across many (and I mean many) devices.
I was dragging my feet because I really liked the algorithmic features. As much as I hate “AI” being jammed into everything these days, I really liked their DJ feature, and the “crate a playlist from a prompt” was a lot of fun to play with!
My favorite generated playlist was “Determined music for poopwalking home from Taco Bell”
That being said, they’ve been corrupting their music exploration tools with corporate interest for a while, so it’s been becoming less desirable as a result
Same but I only keep what I really like and listen to, I put playlists on a thumb drive, almost like a cassette player, it just works.
MyNamesTotallyRobert@lemmynsfw.com
on 06 Aug 01:23
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I have never in my entire life paid for a streaming service. I didn’t stop pirating when Netflix was the only game in town and cost $8 / month. I didn’t pay for streaming even when every normie started getting internet access and “everyone was doing it”. Even during the high point of my life where I was not only gainfully employed but also able to accumulate savings I STILL never had a streaming service. You could count the self hosting spotify clone I made as a “streaming service” but I’m not paying extra money or probably supporting people with different ideological beliefs than me in order to use it so that really doesn’t count.
nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 06 Aug 01:23
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just buy releases from bands on Bandcamp
imetators@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 06 Aug 06:40
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Latest Spotify crackdowns on revanced apps and a very recent GrayJay plugin issues made me look into Spotify cracking scene. I found an app that works. But for how long?
After they killed spotube, people are going back to the old hacked Spotify, but since it’s not open it’s way more risky, and maybe that’s the intent, to make people scared of using them.
brown_guy45@lemmy.zip
on 06 Aug 09:19
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I already moved to piracy for music because these days Spotify isn’t even giving the normal shuffle option for free users
Yeah I know it’s cheap but I’m a student so…
caudatecoder@lemmy.world
on 06 Aug 10:03
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as an independent artist I just wanna add: the best thing you can do to support artists and bands is to buy directly / on bandcamp. spotify pays shit to artists, you need millions of listeners to get any meaningful amount of cash
of course that isn’t a sustainable option if you listen to a lot of different music. so piracy is an option that I wouldn’t mind. hell, if you like my stuff and just write to me I’ll send you mp3s for free
buddascrayon@lemmy.world
on 06 Aug 15:06
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This exactly. Pirating is still preventing the artists from getting paid for their work. Choose to buy albums from companies like Bandcamp over just simply stealing their work.
infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net
on 06 Aug 17:29
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Don’t forget to tell them to go to the shows!!
Musicians are real people who very often hold live performances in high-population locations, you can see them directly with your eyeballs, hear them directly with your hearholes, and physically hand them actual cash with your flesh and blood hands!
Edit - To the people complaining about ticket company charges: You need to get into your local music scene and the +95% of bands out there who aren’t big enough to play venues that have ticket company contracts. There is a world of music out there completely free of that system and you’re neglecting it.
caudatecoder@lemmy.world
on 06 Aug 19:51
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Man, I wish I could hand them cold, hard cash. Instead, I gotta pay Ticketmaster to skim off the top first before giving the artist and their team peanuts.
You should already be doing that anyways with the phantom artists scandal, thousands of fake artists made with AI so Spotify doesn’t have to pay real people.
MilitantAtheist@lemmy.world
on 06 Aug 17:13
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You aren’t wrong, it is the government’s ham fisted and poorly thought out legislation… I fact the last government’s that this one inexplicably pushed on with despite it not being anything like a priority for the electorate. I’m frankly shocked at how many unforced errors this government is making given how “not being as rubbish as the last lot” was not a high bar to clear.
threaded - newest
Age verification is a great success I see. I feel so much safer now with this shit in place so kids can’t watch porn…
God forbid people teach their kids sex/getting off is a drug and can be abused.
Who taught you sex is a drug? As long as words mean their definitions, it’s categorically not. Plus it’s probably kinda harmful to pile on the stigma already surrounding sex by conflating it with drugs and all the stigma that comes with that.
Hopefully I’m wrong, but it’s kinda giving a nofap pseudoscience red flag to me.
Parents definitely should be teaching their kids about this stuff at the appropriate time, but they should stick to the facts.
First they came for the sex, then they came after the drugs. Now they’re trying to take my rock and roll
Did you know that rock and roll is actually a plate of spaghetti?
Spaghetti = Carbs = Sugar = Addictive Drug
yeah but I lost my poor meatball.
A fellow Bread Harrity super fan I see? I’d like to get all up in that beautiful man’s wet spaghetti 🍝
Lol I bet your comment confused them, that line is originally from that On Top of Spaghetti song and it was repurposed by Bread in his classic number The Meatballs the Meatballs the Meatballs the Meatballs the Meatballs the Meatballs of Liiiife. I love Bread. I’m a huge Breadhead and Bread can get all up in my guts any time.
I’ve heard music is a drug, too. It was all drugs, all along. We probably should’ve known, honestly.
Life is a drug if you hit it right
I thought life was a highway?
Life is the highway you boof
“Life is a one way street, I’m doing doughnuts.” (Aw Man Oh Dear)
Sex on drugs is awesome…
Is being high without the approval of your partner okay?
I guess that depends very much on your partner and the relationship you have together…
and if it’s pretty much a stranger?
I would say, that that would be ok 🤔 at least in my personal opinion
I mean… it is a rush of dopamine and can become addictive. Same as a videogame or gambling though. Not a drug but can get unhealthy if it leads to maladaptive daily functioning.
…on major/regulated sites only.
The worst was watching porn on spotify…
.
In Sweden pretty much anybody has Bank Id, an app which is connected to a bank account and which can function as a valid identification.
App belongs a private company, but it’s still trustworthy and everybody can sign government docs with that.
This is how you should do age verification, through a third party app, not like any site will get your id/picture to just end in their DBs ready to be stolen.
Every government should create an app for the online id, I don’t get why this seems so hard to achieve.
It’s super trustworthy bro I swear
Do you prefer to give your personal id to any site in the world instead of using the same app which you pay your taxes with?
The effect is still the same these companies are given access to my personal information because the government wants to monitor our activity online
Well, actually anybody is trying to monitor your activity online in this moment. But thinking to what Trumo is doing right now probably I wouldn’t like to do it as well.
I’d prefer my internet free…
Like other medias before, internet probably has reached a need for some harder control. I’m not talking about porn, I’m talking about disinformation, bots and soon AI.
Not sure which is the best way but I’ll not give any id or credit card to any randim site in order to see their content.
I agree we need to get rid of all the bullshit you mentioned - but I don’t think giving up our anonymity or more gated communities (like facebook, twitter, instgram and all those fucked up places) are the solution.
Credit cards should roughly do the same, but both of those aren’t “great” for privacy and really exists to make profiles of adults while pretending to negate the need for parents to parent (the only real way to reduce/prevent harms of kids witnessing age inappropriate media). Your ability to do financial transactions shouldn’t be tied to your speech or content you view.
The thing is, UK has had age restrictions for years on its mobile platforms. So if you want to look at porn on your phone, you have to unlock it on your subscription. And to do this, they use youre credit card. The thing that they already have. Its easy and swift. And more to the point, only one company has your data. As it stands now, you are supposed to give your personal details to every single company in the world.
Over the past 20 years, how many massive hacks have we seen that leak email addresses and passwords? Are how about all those woman that get their iclouds hacked and their nude photos uploaded? I can think of at least 10 instances in the past 10 years. And now its going to be all of our driving licences, passports, other photo IDs? And the law also requires that they scan ALL private messages. Thats end to end encryption fucked. And god forbid your girlfriend calls you “Daddy” in a sext, you get the cops knocking on your door treating you like Jimmy Saville.
The shit is insane, and people arent anywhere near outraged enough. Its coming to Europe next, if reports are to be believed. So you lot should ALL start kicking up fuck about it now.
My point is you shouldn’t present any id to a random site, it should exists a government app that does it for you.
Same as the passport you show at the border and it should not even show name or picture, is should just say if you are over 18 or not.
People shouldn’t be in the need to show a credit card to watch porn.
It has absolutely nothing to do with kids watching porn.
Of course.
*so that the government can say kids won’t watch porn.
Rule 1 of computers that everyone who has taught an ICT class learns - if little Timmy wants titties, he finds a way.
Ha! Fuck. That.
Or you know you could punish parents for not parenting. Like if kids are watching porn and caught and if it’s actually against some law then go after the parents.
It’s not hard to teach parents how to implement a filtering DNS. But no, countries think they need to be the nanny.
“Protecting children” is just the pretext under which governments can sell increased surveillance. The fact that there are more effective ways they could act to protect children, yet governments everywhere continue to push for ID checks and monitoring online activity, shows that the aim isn’t what they say it is.
Don’t forget trying to kill e2e encryption like what the EU wants to do, both to “catch criminals” and “protect the children”
theparliamentmagazine.eu/…/the-end-of-encryption-…
Protect from what? I mean seriously. Most of us (guys at least) probably saw porn way before we were old enough and most of us probably didn’t end up as rapists or pedophiles. It’s not a good thing by any means, but it really feels like we’re trying harder to keep sexual material from entering their brains than we are trying to keep them fed, clothed, educated, housed, healthy, loved, and physically safe. Of all the things I mentioned the last seven have a monumentally greater affect on their success and well-being as an adult.
I’m convinced sex is used as a leveraging tool to control society.
🌏👨🚀🔫👨🚀
Going against the parents is impopular and would make the parents vote against you in the next elections.
That’s just the pretext they give to justify it. The real reason is surveillance. Now they have a way to confidently tie your accounts to your individual identity. And most of these solutions use third parties which will then sell that data as well, so now anyone can tie your account to you without you ever knowing.
Even if the government is barred from surveilling citizens in these ways, third parties aren’t, and the government can just buy that information, no warrant needed anymore.
And these laws never stop at porn, it’s drugs, LGBTQ information, etc. and they can always easily add additional things later with little fanfare.
This is it. Theyve been going after encrypted messaging apps for a long time, ig they realized theyre not getting anywhere and figured to just hit it head on.
The internet has always circumvented this kind of shit, just look at TPB. The ones who are getting really beaten up by this is the older generations and the ones lacking technical know-how.
Yep. “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”
LOL, wrong on that last point! Gen X and Millennials are generally hot shit on tech. It’s the young folks who don’t have a clue if something doesn’t “just work”. Present company excluded of course. :)
It’s not about kids and never has been, it’s about surveillance of the internet and the death of anonymity.
They could just offer a child protection browser where parents could set to child mode and require adult material offering sites to check if user has something like “attention not 18 year old user” in the headers.
Would be way cheaper, I think.
As a parent, that’s my take as well. If my kids break a law, I should be the one to fix it. Don’t do my parenting for me…
I feel like I’m standing between two really stupid positions here.
On the one hand, just let parents teach their kids is basically a state’s rights argument. A lot of parents won’t teach their kids, so… do we care? Does this matter? We should probably mount a stronger effort then.
On the other hand, we don’t need the government to get involved to stop 9 year olds from seeing titties—we just don’t! Websites the world over have implemented 2-factor-authentication more or less by themselves (
and probably because they want to spy on you). And, no one says the word r----- anymore because if you ever do, a bunch of anti-bullying PSAs will be really annoying about it in your replies.Not every social problem needs to be solved by swinging around Thor’s hammer. We do have other means.
No, it’s a privacy and individual rights argument. I don’t want local governments enforcing it any more than I want national arguments enforcing it.
Kids seeing stuff they shouldn’t isn’t itself a problem, but it can lead to problems. For example, kids learning to make bombs itself isn’t an issue, kids making bombs to hurt others is the issue. Hold parents legally accountable for the latter, not the former.
The furthest I’d be willing to go on this is requiring a payment method (which itself requires sufficient age) to be entered before accessing anything “adult oriented,” and even then I’m not completely sold. But this way the burden of verifying age is restricted to things consumers already need to trust, and parents would need to give or allow their kid access to a payment method.
I think you misunderstand. I’m not saying I’m in favor of this law.
By state’s rights, I’m referring to the way republicans pretend they want the freedom of choice where they are actually just looking for excuses to keep doing what they’re doing. In this way, letting parents choose is functionally identical: parents won’t choose, so it is equivalent to doing nothing.
There has to be a cultural shift for anything to change.
If I’m being perfectly honest, I do not give a shit if 9-year-olds can see titties. Like, my other argument against this government overreach is that I don’t know what problem it’s supposedly solving that can’t just be solved with better sex-ed.
ah from shady porn sites, like spotify and wikipedia. definitely protect kids from porn there. /s
Is wikipedia on the list? I see reddit is, lol. We might see an influx soon.
not yet, but the wikimedia foundation has been fighting against it expecting that it would be a class 1 site and require it.
We have to protect wikipedia
Here’s one way to help: kiwix.org/en/about-us/#our-story
Download Wikipedia to your own device. If it’s ever blocked or taken down you still have access and can help share information with others.
You can download different versions (e.g. without images) and different languages based on your needs.
There’s other resources available via kiwix as well but I’ve not really explored them to be honest
Does it run a local web server or is it all static files? Is it searchable?
flathub.org/apps/org.kiwix.desktop
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZIM_(file_format)
Edit:
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwix#Description
So I feel like I’m now hearing more successful pushes for censorship through this stuff.
Just last week I learned how Texas has a bill that makes it so if anyone ever invested in green technology that they wouldn’t be allowed
texastribune.org/…/texas-boycott-companies-fossil…
I saw a post saying /r/period required an age check.
They’re gonna censor as much as they can with this.
Ah, yes. As we all know, periods start at 18, when you’re a legal adult. It’s illegal to have periods before then
That makes no sense, surely everyone has invested in green energy through workplace retirement plans, no?
Even if your not in the UK you should go back to piracy. Steal from corporations as frequently as possible
Way easier to arrr!
Im not even in the UK and im still going to cancel due to this. Thanks spotify, fuck you :)
What are they supposed to do? Pull away from the UK?
Well I don’t think Spotify wants to do it, but it’s probably a better option than abandoning their UK users.
I assume the other streaming options will do the same in the UK market, so probably better to look at self-hosted alternatives, if you’re into that
If something’s finally going to force the industry to curb its bullshit, this might just be it. Once you annoy normal people, it’s all over. They seriously underestimate how many people would just stop using Spotify, or Youtube, or whatever other platform it is
While I want to agree. I feel like normal people are still not gonna give a shit.
People underestimate that most “regular” people are a product and exist for something other than humanity.
They won’t give a shit, but they’re also lazy and won’t bother setting up an account that requires ID and photo verification. Too much work. Maybe we’ll even see somewhat of a recurrence of brick and mortar stores that sells music, movies, porn, etc.
Ah the laziness to not even set up an account that needs it. I didn’t consider that. Was more thinking of current users meeting the resistance.
I tend to agree with you in that most people are too addicted to the convenience. But yeah, Balaquina does make a good point. After all, a commonly cited reason as for why the Fediverse won’t rival mainstream sites is that making an account is more complex. Even then, it’s just choosing an instance, which isn’t that hard, it’s just more complicated in comparison to, say, Reddit or Twitter. So following the same logic, it very well could backfire if Spotify raises the barrier of entry (or barrier of continuous entry, for those who already have accounts that they will have to verify).
Every company has learned that any friction to using your site is a bleed of customers. There are a lot of people who will just not use your site if it requires a lengthy validation process. If there was some kind of identity system that sites would integrate with like login.gov, then people would ignore this, but I don’t think the UK has such a thing that every site can use, so a lot of people will not use the site and over time fall to piracy or illegitimate sites.
Imagine if Spotify just opened the camera on your phone once a month when you first open the app that day. Just for like a split second. Theoretically it would be legal, for age verification. 🤮
“Normal” people would put in their child’s social security number if it meant $2.99 off their subscription.
I’m not convinced. Look at how Netflix made bank on killing off “sharing is caring.”
People are lazy, and if they want their easy Spotify fix, I fear they’ll hand over their information and move on with their day.
It would have to get pretty bad before people would be willing to forgo convenience.
That stuff is a nasty drug, very addictive and people will sell everything they got to keep it. They’d rather pay and arm and a leg instead of learning a little technology so they could help themselves.
People will slave themselves to the company that lets them be the most ignorant person possible but still enjoy the fun of technology.
Could you imagine if all mobile devices stopped using face recognition to unlock phones? I’d be willing to bet that a big chunk of people wouldn’t be able to use them at all. I’m surprised that google and apple haven’t started charging extra for that.
“Fans”?
that’s like saying Amazon fans really lol
Well… …gestures to apple fans…
Apple fans. Spotify fans. Same shit.
ngl, Spotify has become hot ass these days
My favorite part is when the AI DJ plays some dumb song it’s previously served up repeatedly, and then tells me how much I like it because I listen to it so often. I’d never choose to listen to it on my own, and the only reason I hear it is because Spotify keeps cramming it down my throat.
Spotify recommends based on your listening habits. You base your listening habits on Spotify recommendations. Ergo, Spotify recommends based on its own recommendation. Ourobouros achieved.
I used Spotify like 5 years ago and it was good. Tried to use it again this year and it’s recommendations and service were complete garbage.
Yeah, that was what finally pished me over the edge a few years back. Switched to Tidal and have been very content with with it. They pay artists better, the sound quality is better, and the dily discovery playlist throws some serious curve balls. I have wide ranging tastes so it blends a few genres for a few weeks before moving onto something else, and it has introduced me to some AWESOME music that i would have never encountered otherwise.
Why would you use the Ai dj to feed you songs, when the normal daily mixes, daylist, etc are giving you the same songs without the fake personality injected between them? I literally do not understand. I’m open to your thoughts - it’s just that it seems like an alien perspective.
It gives you a general mix and exposes you to new things that are unrelated to things you’ve listened to in the past. I listen to a lot of punk and ska, and the AI DJ serves up random pop and things I otherwise would never hear.
Not Spotify’s fault here, though. Shit legislation.
Does anyone have a good podcast app to replace Spotify that will keep track of progress across multiple devices? Bonus points if I can self host.
I use audiobookshelf. Obviously for audiobooks mainly, but it does podcasts and it works well.
I always used podcast player. Never had any issues before.
play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.podcast…
Antennapod with gPodderersync & Nextcloud? There are podcast apps for Nextcloud to play in the browser.
Thanks, this did it. Opodsync (since I don’t have nextcloud) and antennapod.
Let this be a reminder to never turn away from piracy. It needs to constantly be in the background and if any company gets like they always do, then it comes back out. But if we let the knowledge fade away then it’s impossible to rebuild it.
Piracy preserves media.
Piracy preserves art.
Piracy makes sure, that future generations still have access to the creations of humanity.
Data hoarding is a service to the public.
“Keep circulating the tapes!”
It doesn’t take much for media though to parade out the “lil guy and change the opinion of people about how your basically attacking small time creators”
I initially perceived piracy similarly to how or perceive reading about archaeology and such, so the fact that someone is sincere in hating p2p copying and calling it immoral just felt preposterous.
Yet now it seems plenty of normies will agree. Then go listen to something they didn’t pay for on YouTube or Facebook or whatever, because “everybody uses that”. What “everybody uses” is fine, see. What they condemn me the pirate for is using ed2k, torrents and such other technologies. Even when I’m literally downloading public domain stuff or abandonware.
Not sure about all those political experiments in the internet. Maybe they just don’t like HTTP ? Maybe it’s time to make HTTP to join BBS ?
Back to Piracy! ✊🏴☠️
Really though? It isn’t necessary. Use Bandcamp, you probably have half your artists covered. The rest - one of those Spotify alternatives: Tidal? Qobuz?
Personally I do selfhost btw. Jellyfin, though I heard of a better alternative specifically for music recently - and forgot the name again 😥 Something lowercase,
like a verb… “normalize” or some such.Navidrome! Thanks @0konomiyaki@aussie.zoneNavidrome maybe? But I use jellyfin + symfonium myself. All my music is either bandcamp or used CDs. Started collecting music late last year and my entire collection is legally sourced now. No piracy required. Hardest part was starting very small and building the collection over time.
Yes! Navidrome!
I get them dirt cheap or completely for free. It’s actually reverse piracy (no I’m not serious) since no doubt the previous owners ripped everything.
Yea, it literally makes no difference for the artist, if you pirate or if you buy a used CD.
Pirate it is just way more convenient.
Harmonize?
Bandcamp is the best
Go to shows, buy the albums from the merch tables and use the events (to the best of your individual ability) as a means to connect with like minded anti-fascists.
That is of course even better. Just wish any band I’m interested in would ever come to play this quiet corner *sigh*
I switched to Deezer!
I would suggest Qobuz (if available) or Tidal. Deezer’s CEO is a hard-core religious nutjob who finances anti-trans orgs and sexual conversion “therapies”.
Ah dang. :( Thanks for the heads up, I thought I found something nice…
I have Jellyfin for movies/tv, and gonic for music!
Thanks for recommending Navidrome. It looks really interesting.
I was using Spotify, but switched to Spotube. After Spotube was crippled, I was kind of aimless. I really liked having my music available on my cellphone and desktop. It looks like Navidrome will fill the gap perfectly.
You’d mentioned ripping CDs. Would you have some software, you’d recommend (Windows or Linux)? Preferably in FLAC.
I haven’t looked at ripping software in a few years, but it was kind of tedious to set up and very manual to get the proper metadata, genres, and cover art. I’ve got a hundred CDs and that’ll take awhile…
Don’t know if it’s still what’s recommended, but I use foobar2000 for ripping CDs to FLAC.
abcde
for Linux. It’s in your repositories. Set it up once the way you want, then it’s just: insert CD, enterabcde
, repeat ad nauseam. You could even tell your system to auto-trigger it on every CD insert.I want to leave Windows behind… abcde seems the way to go for Linux.
On Windows I use EAC, it’s great but requires a little work to set up. There are a lot of tutorials for it if course.
more like 3% bandcamp availability. i know this is a linux/trans/selfhost/overpayeddev/westeu/foss echochamber, but im not wasting electricity and money on selfhost if a 1tb sd card in my phone can do the same thing offline.
They dont care about music, they want to make sure you are not listening to podcast they dont like.
I need a cheap mp3 player
One more reason if you’re still buying music, to start buying physical albums again while you still can.
CDs aren’t age-gated and you can rip them to FLAC yourself. Vinyl also isn’t age-gated because it’s analog, and although it’s a longer and more drawn-out process than just ripping a CD which will only take a few minutes as because vinyl is an analog format, you gotta record it in real-time, and then manually split the raw waveform up into separate tracks, manually input metadata, and manually generate a cuesheet from the split-up tracks before finally exporting*, you can still needle-drop LPs to FLAC as well.
*This isn’t as big an issue with 78s, 45s, and EPs (which are 33-1/3rpm singles last time I thought) as it is with LPs as there isn’t as much playback time on them, and at least 45s and EPs are singles rather than a full album like with LPs so you only have one song per side, and I assume 78s are singles as well, as 78s max out at 5min per side.
+1 for vinyl. The album art, inserts, etc. really adds something to the experience that I had long forgotten over the years of downloading and streaming music.
CDs still do that to some extent, especially with indie releases, and also higher-end physical formats like SACD and DVD-Audio tend to have a lot of extras packed in with them as they’re typically considered to be special editions of a given album, but both SACD and DVD-Audio are DRM-encumbered unlike normal CDs and of course analog formats where DRM doesn’t apply, so trying to get them on a PC will be harder if not impossible especially as the DSD codec that SACD uses has particularly nasty DRM shipped with it IIRC.
There’s also true novelty formats like MD, DCC, or even in the case of Jeremy Heiden’s Blue Wicked, Elcaset of all things, and Blue Wicked was legit the first album to ever be released on that format, 40+ years after it faded from public consciousness.
Bring it on! Sail the high seas. Yargh!
Never had a Spotify account, and I never will. I have apple one, but Im kinda forced into that because of the other half. But if Apple pulls this shit, Im not paying for it. I VPN everything, but I still wont support any company that complies with this bullshit with my money.
I’m confused. Is every app in the UK requiring face scanning? I thought it was just adult content.
According to the article :
Bluesky app also seems to require this for some features.
Arr!!! Me hearty
Just do it.
Flac > Spotify.
I keep getting advice of Flac > MP3 320 kbs.
I can’t tell the difference to tell you the truth. Is it really worth it for audiophiles considering how much more space Flac files takes up?
yeh
The space it takes up is negligible in the modern era of cheap SSDs (and even cheaper hard drives).
The main benefit is not in being able to hear a difference from 320Kbps mp3 (I know I sure can’t), but knowing that you can re-encode the file as many times as you want, without any quality loss (assuming you’re going from lossless to lossless, of course). Or create an mp3 from the flac file at any time, with the same quality as a ripped CD.
So basically FLAC is great if you produce/edit/re-encode your music files often. If you don’t do any of that (and have no plans to future-proof your music collection), then 320Kbps MP3 is more than adequate for your needs.
My concerns with space mostly deals with my cell phone but you make a lot of great point of being able to convert Flac for any use case. Thank you for your input.
TBF, I was answering your question in its original context (is it worth it for audiophiles). Maybe it’s just my age, but I was assuming that the majority of audiophiles still keep the bulk of their music collection stored on a desktop PC. But IDK, I’m in my late 30s and out of touch.
Anyway I’m happy to help.
It is better, but it depends on the audio for the difference. Also, it would probably be hard to hear the difference playing over a phones speakers. The weakest link in the chain is always the problem you notice the most. Having a good setup for amp/speakers and you can hear the difference. Using Bluetooth earbuds to mow the lawn, it doesn’t matter. Sitting in my living room on my nice stereo, I notice.
I have Sennheiser HD 25 I bought 15 years ago. I play music through my Pixel 5a with a headphone jack and my iMac.
Is this good enough to be able to tell? I have no idea what devices have a good DAC or not.
Thank you for your input.
Flac files contain orders of magnitude more data. As for the listening experience it’s only ever going to be as good as the speakers at the other end. You’ll also need a wired connection to said speakers in order to avoid some compression over Bluetooth. (Unless there’s some newfangled lossless BT protocol that I’m unaware of.)
That makes sense. Thanks.
There are online test you can do to see if you can successfully identify the FLAC from the MP3. I did one and failed miserably.
They say that if you have a very good DAC, amplifier and speaker / headphone system (as well as a good ear for audio), that you can hear it. But I would do the test first to see if it applies to your situation.
I have Sennheiser HD 25 I bought 15 years ago. I play music through my Pixel 5a with a headphone jack and my iMac. I have no idea if this is good enough for the test but I will try it anyway.
I did the NPR test.
I’m on my iMac and I chose 128 kbps four times… I chose 320 kbps once and Uncompressed WAV once.
I did so horribly. Lol.
This puts either my hearing limits or the limit of my tech. If I don’t get better equipment, I have my answer forever.
This is truly great. Thank you for this suggestion.
I’m happy it helped. I was a musician and audiophile for most of my life so I was equally shocked to fail 😄 I also tested on my iMac too. I’m tempted sometimes to get an external DAC and maybe a nice amp, but I’m not sure I want the clutter.
It could be the quality of your headphones.
I’m not an audiophile, but back-in-the-day I bought some analog “sennheiser studio monitors” as opposed to “just headphones”.
I actually returned the first one and exchanged them, because when I listened to a live recorded CD, I kept hearing loud “pops” that I didn’t hear with my “regular headphones”. I assumed they were defective.
The exchanged sennheiser had the same “pop” in this CD. It turns out, most “regular headphones” didn’t have the same depth in sound frequency as studio monitors and the “pops” were accidental artifacts that were mixed into the CD.
For other CD’s, I’d hear telephones ringing and sirens in the background.
Eventually, I got use to it. Then after a few years, I replaced my CD collection with mp3’s… and I could tell a different in songs/albums I was really familiar with. The base wasn’t as deep, the high sounds weren’t as high, I didn’t hear telephones ringing in the background.
I had the same sennheiser, it was just that the nature of mp3’s “flattened” the music.
Now, with Bluetooth and the disappearance of 3.5 mm jacks, there are too many layers of digital conversion happening. I’ve given up… and now just have some cheap ear buds I listen to.
I have a pair Sennheiser HD 25.
I just took the NPR test suggested by another poster. I did horribly.
Thank you for your input. I will not be updating to Flac.
Go to Opus 128 kbps. About the same as MP3 320 or better.
Thanks for the suggestion but it would drive me nuts either to convert all my music or to have several different files. Getting MP3s is easier.
Yes, I meant in case you have a library of FLACs. In that case it wouldn’t be too problematic cause, well, it’s just a script recursing your library, encoding from FLAC to Opus and if succeeded, removing FLAC files.
Okay. That makes sense.
I’d say it’s definitely worth it.
Our brains shouldn’t have to work harder to listen to lossy music, which is what happens even if you can’t reliably perceive it.
Listening to music on acid (a lot) has really shaped my views of it and how even the most minor things can have a major impact on the final experience.
I’m not an audiophile though and can enjoy music in a wide range of formats and quality; I just prefer FLAC almost anywhere.*
*some songs sound ‘better,’ or at least more iconic in a lower quality
I’m curious. How does acid change listening to music?
You get to notice things you didn’t notice before. It’s a lot easier for our brains to ‘zoom in’ and process minute details that we don’t perceive normally. Since lossless and lossy music is not the exact same audio vibrating the air, our brains are not going to interpret them exactly the same. This difference doesn’t matter to most and isn’t always perceivable, but it’s there.
One thing that stood out to me during an acid trip was how moving my phone affected the playback speed of my bluetooth speakers. Moving it farther away caused the song to slow down slightly for a moment, moving it closer caused the song to speed up slightly. You can imagine that this is because of some kind of ‘space invaders’ effect, where my phone is sending out signals at a constant rate and adjusting the distance to the receiver causes those signals to be received faster or slower, temporarily.
That’s amazing!
I jerked it to the Hanson mmbop video back in the nineties.
Found out later the girl was a boy.
You can judge all you want, but the general thing is that horny teenagers will jerk it to almost anything.
Wait there’s a boy in that band? Stop trolling.
…genuinely trying to figure out how this relates to the topic at hand.
It moreso relates to what’s in hand
That a porn ban does not work and people will find a way around it.
When I was a kid there weren’t all this free porn sites and most of them were paid.
So you would go to some shady site where people shared passwords. This might make a comeback
Shit, those sites are a core memory for me. sexypasswords was my goto and the thrill of finding a working one. Ah good times.
Yeah I used iseekpasswords my older cousin told me about it
This.
But also this
The age control of pointless when it comes to protecting the children.
But also this
Thank you for letting us know. I’ll be sure to use this information to my best.
The internet is based on this underlying trust. You are a true custodian!
Kids these days will let you be attracted to whoever you want.
m.youtube.com/watch?v=6OamjBYCAz4
Nice to know that I’m not the only one. It was quite a surprise when I realized that they all are boys/men.
There’s more out there that would never admit it because of that. Which is silly when you think about it.
They will be blown away by the quality increase they get🤭
(Pirate tend to share/prefere best quality content, while Spotify offers only 256kbit mp3 as far as I remember (or is it 320kbi now?))
Most people can’t tell the difference between 128 kbit MP3 and high quality recordings.
Idk man. Show someone some cymbals on a 128kbps track and it sounds like someone crumpling a plastic bag via a tin can connected to a string. In contrast flac is going to sound much more natural.
I’d agree with you regarding 320 and flac - most people are gonna have a hard time differentiating.
With the usual psychoacoustic model of MP3 if you can hear the difference between 320 MP3 and FLAC you are either lying or there’s something wrong with your speakers. It’s certain with long odds.
i didn’t care about just grabbing the 720p 600mb video file back when i was watching on a little laptop screen.
it does not hold up on the big stuff.
kinda same applies to audio?
crap sounds like crap on a phone speaker, but so does hi quality stuff.
noise and low dynamics are more noticeable on more powerful, louder gear.
just spitballing here, not an expert!
Many people are ok with hearing music out of a phone speaker. Audiophiles don’t necessarily care about how “most people” perceive sound quality.
That was my point. The comment I was replying to was suggesting that people switching from Spotify will be blown away by better quality audio. Most wouldn’t notice a difference.
Why is it the people that are ok listening to music out of a phone speaker are also the people ok polluting public spaces with music from phone speakers?
Because they are dumb assholes? I grew up around folks who jury rigged speakers into the back of their trucks for camping and the worst they got was blaring freebird on the highway, it used to take work to be that guy now someone can just play some obnoxious trash in the restaurant with no work whatsoever.
Can’t confirm, I can’t tell.
How about 48 kbit MP3? And more than that, for plenty of recordings that’s sufficient.
Spotify uses vorbis if I’m not mistaken, not mp3. Mp3 sounds like absolute ass, even at 320.
Edit: why the downvotes? Spotify does use vorbis. Mp3 has weird artefacts, even at 320.
Already using Spotify to pirate music.
ReVanced? Or a Spotify downloader?
Just a web-based downloader, I’m patient and simple:p
Zotify
Spotify was shit anyway use yt music
won’t they suffer the same fate?
For now yt music is what new Spotify was , but when one goes down the other cums and dominate
😳
Never stopped. Get your own mp3s kids.
I know so many people who are so ride-or-die for never having to manage the file space for their own music library and they don’t seem particularly less stressed.
I think they just cannot live without an algorithm to recommend new music to them
They might want to try LMS and its github.com/epoupon/lms?tab=readme-ov-file#music-d…
An algorithm for them:
mpc, is that shuffling media player cassic with the system clock? isn’t that what shuffle already does ?
mpc
as inmpd
CLI client, wherempc_pl_len
andmpc_pl_jmp
procedures are not listed, but just call it with some other Unix commands to get playlist length and jump to a playlist position.Oh, piss off. I just want to financially support artists for making something beautiful I enjoy. Streaming is the easiest because of space constraints. I still buy the CDs of my most favourite albums, but I cannot stress enough how great it is to NOT have to rip the MP3s every time, make sure the tags are good, etc.
It’s convenient.
If you don’t like Spotify’s new ID check, kill your Spotify account and use an alternative - Tidal and Qobuz are both excellent.
woah woah woah, chill bro goddamn. let’s sit and think about this. Record labels take pretty much all of the cut for streaming. Here is the chart showing what each service pays artists per song played. I used to think Napster was the best and subscribed to them for years, which is ironic considering their history <img alt="" src="https://leminal.space/pictrs/image/81b99767-0bba-4c31-9e25-5bbf9ad42e63.jpeg">
obviously the payout is going to vary widely but it’s common knowledge that for even the most played artists, the pay from this avenue sucks. they simply use these services to get their music to potential concert goers since that’s the income that record labels actually let artists keep. vinyls, merch, and usually tickets unless they REALLY get fucked over like child musician groups tend to.
If You have an interest in discovering just how shady that industry is, you should watch this essay about payola and how it’s literally more profitable for a musician to die than it is to release a certain number of future albums. I’m going to stick to pirating albums and using my cash to actually see the artists I love
It’s still giving them SOMETHING, isn’t it?
Of course I’d prefer to buy directly from the artist (hence: Bandcamp), but that’s not the world we live in. Flat out piracy is just the worst of all the available options.
Then stop saying stupid shit like “they just cannot live without an algorithm” when talking about people who use streaming services.
it really isn’t though. I don’t really know where you live or how your local economy is organized but where I’m at people in my tax bracket are extracted for every ounce of raw money we can generate, both now but even speculatively in the future. it really doesn’t make sense to consider theft as a taboo against corporations since we are literally a resource that’s being exploited in real time for far much more than whatever artists would lose if we all stole.
.sopuli is a Finnish board right? my understanding is that you guys have way stronger social ethics and consumer protection, so yeah. in your world I probably would sign up for that Napster subscription again. or even better, a service actually from Finland. Bandcamp is good too.
here, though in the present we have far worse things to worry about than theft. being tricked into defending the feelings of billionaires is a big one. letting corporations curate our education and media is another. but I hope you continue to have the life where you can engage with your economy in such a good intentioned way. I miss back when I felt I could do that too.
This is such an “I’m 12 and a rebel” position to take…
Sure, corporate greed is a cancer, there’s zero doubt about that.
But these corporation also create jobs, make it possible for many people to survive. In terms of media streaming corpos SO MANY people/bands were allowed to have a career thanks to people just stumbling upon them.
Should they be getting paid more? Absolutely. Should the corpos handling the hardware, infrastructure, AND software be also paid? If you don’t believe that, you’re just naive or ignorant. Or both.
Or the French Qobuz.
Be the change you want to see. Instead of going stomping feet and stealing candy, go to the store that you feel you can morally support. Hard to do IRL, but online - sky is the limit. Use European services, those that pay artists (Qobuz pays around 5 times more than Spotify to rights holders), buy directly from artists on Bandcamp, etc., etc.
Piracy is literally the worst solution here because you’re taking without giving. Any “fight the corpo!” banner here is just extreme naivete because the artist will starve MUCH quicker than the corp.
yeeesh. I realize now that getting artists paid is obviously way less important to you than having somebody to verbally spar with. this is reductive and overall pretty naive to the actual experience of being in the workforce or trying to consume ethically.
instead of shouldering the responsibility of being your debate partner, I’m going to bow out and bid you a good life 👍 perhaps somebody else here would like to take turns quote tweeting and making character assessments with you.
“I want to have my publicly stated opinion, but it’s not allowed to be challenged or questioned in any way” 🙄
you’re right. not by a certain type of internet person. nothing personal, but the shame of being a fragile baby is actually worth that boundary and there are other better interactions for us both to go have
That’s a very interesting take considering I’m against piracy and pro direct purchases from bands. Please, do explain how you ended up at that conclusion.
nah we’re done. I already said but you don’t listen. have a good night ✌️
Flat out piracy is the best of all available option. Boycott the major and support local independant artists insteas
Why would I support local artists if an artist from abroad makes the music I love?
And, if their music is not available locally, nor they have a Bandcamp/similar account, how do I support them if not through streaming services?
Idk go there?
If you’re ever in Europe I have a couch
You’re mostly supporting the industry that encouraged your favorite artists to kill themselves once they’re not profitable anymore. Why do you think they keep blowing thelself up? The music industry is inherently exploitative.
Not to even mention all the corruption (payolas) going on.
I have honestly no clue what you mean. Could you explain?
Which is why I’m actively searching for the best possible options.
When I learned that Spotify is fleecing artists, I moved to Tidal.
Then I learned about the French Qobuz, which pays artists even more, and I switched.
I support artists on Bandcamp. I buy physical CDs and will soon fire up a vinyl collection.
I’m aware that 100% of the money I spent on art doesn’t go to the artist, but even if it’s 10%, it’s going to be 100% more than if I resorted to piracy.
Supporting piracy to show corpos the finger is the equivalent of stealing CDs from a music store, because the store price includes the store’s margin, transport costs, manufacturing costs, and only a (relatively) small percentage goes to the artists.
Ah yes you wouldn’t download a carp
I think if you send like a dollar to everyone on your playlist, it would end up being like 100 times more than they get from the system.
me basically
Why mp3?
Usually when someone still use mp3s it’s for the ubiquity of the format. Every device that has a USB port handle mp3s. I personally use opus and it’s not common at all.
It’s really interesting when you think about that.
In the video world, we’ve had an arms race all throughout the last 25 years for the lowest possible file size at the best possible quality, with new codecs and containers constantly coming in and out of favour. Hardware playback has always been spotty at best, with little guarantee you’ll get a file to play on any device in particular.
Meanwhile I could rip a CD and put it on even my first-generation MP3 player from the year 1999, and it would work. A blessing we rather take for granted.
I guess there just hasn’t been sufficient pressure to toss MP3 out completely. From an evolutionary perspective, just like the horseshoe crab, it is “good enough” and so it endures.
You just reminded me: A while back there was this slew of articles coming out of the tech press saying MP3 was now dead.
And why did they say that? Because the last Fraunhofer Patent on an MP3 related invention ran out.
Instead of reporting the format was now fully free, those idiots thought that meant it was now dead 😂
Opus is far better, but with MP3’s there’s been plenty of hardware players only working with that format. Also Opus is new, before it was Vorbis which was kinda as good as MP3 but far less popular.
And yes, MP3 is very “good enough”, like JPEG.
…return? LOL
A VPN is a must if you wanna go down this route
Soulseek (and I recommend the Nicotine+ client over the official one) is a fantastic source for all music in all formats, and particularly obscure off-label shit you won’t get anywhere else. You’ll even have some success finding audiobooks there, although this is very hit-and-miss. I wish audiobook pirates would use it more heavily. It’s P2P, like Napster used to be. You’ll have to share something or you’ll get auto-ignored by most users.
RuTracker is a great non-private/non-ratio-monitoring torrent site for music (does require a free account though). I’ve never had a single torrent from there that wasn’t seemingly seeded by a Godzilla’s dick. Obviously it’s in Russian, but there’s really no difficulty navigating around. The only thing you might struggle with is signing up for an account, but just have your favourite translation tool open in another tab 👍
If you don’t mind slow download speeds (from the likes of RapidGator), I enjoy Exystence. It’s a blog that shares link to the latest albums and offers both lossy and lossless versions. Nice RSS subscription to have.
If you do find yourself using RapidGator a lot, don’t waste money buying a sub directly from them, it’s insanely pricey. Instead, get a reseller like Real Debrid, which costs like 10% as much and also covers you for about two-dozen other file hosters. I highly recommend putting as much distance between your credit card and the company as possible, just for safety reasons. Using PaySafeCard is fine, as Real Debrid will never see your details in that case. I don’t have any specific reason to be weary of them, I just don’t trust random/small/hitherto unheard of companies as a rule.
I’ve been using RuTracker for years and it usually has all the music I need. And it has more than music, great site.
Oh, reminds me, you should also sort your share. I once got march-horny, added some German marches to my download queue (no judging pls), and then got a PM from the guy sharing them that I should keep my collection in order. And yes, the jerk ignored me.
Also not really p2p, there is a central server. The downloads are p2p.
It was ratio-monitoring, that’s how it became great. Just after being banned in Russia they decided that those who try hard enough to even reach there can be trusted to behave.
It’s not only for music, it’s for everything.
Here’s a reliable, free VPN: riseup.net/en/vpn
Remember to donate to them tough - and btw. they are actually running their services for radical left activists, not filesharing… so I guess it would be cool to please not strain their servers too much.
All good advice. I used to find a lot of stuff by entering “site:rutracker.org” behind my query in my favorite search engine - don’t know if that still works but I never needed an account there…
Jokes on them. My m4a library reaches 1000’s easily
Thousands of megabytes!
I don’t mind giving my date of birth to all the services I already pay for with credit card but face scanning? That’s just creepy. Fuck off.
Date of birth (with some other details) is kind of a sensitive information in the right hands
given that governments are now starting to make certain protests illegal, definitely not as bad as having your face in a database and your behaviour being mapped for suspicious illegal activity like criticising genocide.
You’re right and I’d go a bit further: It’s none of their business what your age even is, they need to know only one bit for their legal duties, over or under age of majority.
Basically what is really needed is a certificate of majority digitally signed by the government bound to some identifier, email address or full name. All this uploading faces or ID card scans is ridiculous.
The invasiveness is the point. Age gating explicit content is just the excuse.
This
deleted by creator
fair point but given the direction US and UK are headed, something legal you do online can be illegal in a couple years with a face attached to that activity. What you mention is also bad (your face being in a face recognition database) but not as bad as that being attached to tons of behavioural data collected about you.
There’s a wide gap between “travelling to another country” and “listening to music.”
I’m not trying to go on holiday to Spotify
Even using a credit card for something like Spotify is already giving out more information than is needed.
How do you suggest people pay for Spotify?
He’s saying if you have a credit card to pay there’s no need to verify (I think)
Edit: nah I’m wrong, cheers
I just hate credit cards since they are like the worst payment method unless you want to dig a financial hole for yourself
Only if you’re bad with money. Nothing wrong with credit cards themselves, and most of them these days are credit/debit cards.
Besides that, credit cards (and chipless debit cards) are unsecure? That receiving credit cards payments costs more in terms of administration costs?
That credit cards are a system designed for consumerism (you see this especially in the US) and that people who grew up with credit cards being the default/more common payment method are often worse with money?
There is a reason why you can only own credit cards if you are an adult, but you can own chipped debit cards earlier.
A normal modern bank card (with 2FA) through a payment provider which obfuscates everything besides the name on your bank account and your bank account number (this will also share the country of your bank if you are in a SEPA region). And since people younger than 18 can use that system, they cannot use that for verification.
Plus, you won’t be at risk of spending money you don’t have, and it doesn’t negatively impact your credit score like even having a credit card does in some countries.
It is 1970-01-01 like me, no?
April 20th, 1969? Anyone?
it’s 2000-01-01 for me
You’ve got to be 18 to be able to have a credit card.
At that point someone else has verified your details for them, a bank (who are generally considered to be accurate about most things)
I showed it something else with cheeks and now I’m on 15 watchlists.
I have a non-uk account but at the first sight of age verification I will delete my account.
what’s even the point of age gating “explicit” music?
“oh no! “Speak To Me” by Pink Floyd has the fuck word in it! can’t let my kids hear it!”
Just get me the kid bop version
We live in a rural part of Canada that has been left behind by modern times. Mostly by the choice of the residents. I grew up during satanic panic. It was crazy here. My wife and I let our kids listen to anything they want. They always have. They’re 10 and 12.
Their friends often comment about swear words and “sex, drugs and rock and roll” themes of the music they listen too. As an old man I get to regale them with stories of how crazy the Christians were over heavy metal and punk rock when I was a kid, including their grandma.
Now I yell “you’re gonna go to hell!” As a joke to them every time their friends bring it up and I am around.
You’re parenting the right way. Let our kids know about our past and how it compares to theirs, live it. And joking with my kids and their friends without immediately jumping to “that’s bullying”, you can tell my kids are a bit happier than the rest because everything is a joke to them. I applaud you.
if where all the “christians” go is heaven, then i’d rather go to hell
I’ve been cursing a lot lately, and I blame what I listened to in Spotify. By no means was it because I was playing my pirated Eminem music all weekend 🤣🤣
My parents only let me listen to Spanish language music when I was little, so I wouldn’t understand the cursing. 😂
I mean, the Spotify CEO invests in AI weaponry being used to murder kids in Gaza so the morally correct thing to do would be to leave Spotify over that.
Do you have any other good alternative to recommend? Nice quality, not too much tracking, low/fair price, nice recommendation algorithm, has lots of musics…
.
You can probably get a pirate hat online for a few bucks. And there are plenty of discoverability systems not based on integration with a subscription service.
I’d love something nicely automated
lidarr.audio
yt-dlp --extract-audio --audio-quality 3 --audio-format ogg
Fails sometimes, I’ve had issues downloading many musics, and it doesn’t have recommendations and stuff
I am trying the following services the next few months: Tidal, deezer, qobuz and pirating
keep me updated!
I’ve been on tidal for a few months now. It’s not as feature rich as far as integrations and sharing a link to a track for your pals is hit or miss but it seems to have all the music i listen to and sounds a little better than spotify for the artists that upload max quality.
I did the import from spotify using their suggested vendor and only like 20 out of 8000 or so songs didn’t transfer because they didn’t have the artist on tidal.
I heartily recommend the last two.
Soundcloud lets you play any song you want at any time, even on the free tier, and when you ask it to play a playlist, it only plays songs on the playlist.
You can have recommendations from an algorithm if you choose, but it’s encouraged rather than enforced.
There are a lot more independent artists on it, and fewer big labels, or at least it feels that way because it doesn’t seem to prioritise big labels over some person I’ve never heard of.
Spotify has an annoy-users-until-they-pay model. If you deliberately piss me off, you’re not getting any of my money. Soundcloud just has ads.
I like the random recommendations from time to time
I’m a bit afraid that their algorithm is shit
to be fair at this point I’m mostly on youtube music because it allows playing youtube videos as well, which sometimes is the only way of playing some musics
YouTube music won’t play in the background though, so it’s a pain whilst driving and navigating traffic or routes. Some of my friends make playlists on there and share them, so I do use it sometimes.
But absolutely use the service that brings you joy, not the ones that I prefer!
It does for me though? Unless you don’t pay I guess? On android you can patch this with revanced, or use custom players
I don’t pay for music unless I buy the track or album.
What’s revanced? I’m not especially keen to give Google my money either. They fall into the category of businesses that have way too much money and power already.
revanced.app
It’s basically a patcher app to apply some FOSS changes to your regular apps (ex: modify the YouTube app to add custom features, remove ads, add background play, bypass some other…)
I believe they have patches for YouTube music to remove ads and add background playback for non subscribers
Unfortunately most of the major players are involved in some sort of evilness as far as I am aware. Spotify/Google/Apple are all pretty unethical companies. Personally, I have made the decision to cut out the middle man and sail the seven seas while also supporting the artists I like by being a vinyl wanker and going to gigs.
As for streaming services (I am very happy to be corrected here because I am not certain) AFAIK both tidal and qobuz are good alternatives. Qobuz is based in France so your data will be safer but Tidal is a bit cheaper.
Source for this?
Not the one who mentioned it but I was curious about this as well and found this;
Spotify boycott: Artists leave ‘garbage hole’ platform after CEO invests in AI weapons.
Spotify CEO investments $700m in AI drone weapons company, as artists call for boycott.
Wow, $700m!? So this is why spotify is priced the way that it is!
Useful idiots kept telling me it’s so they can keep the lights on and put their kids through college, lmao.
Do it! I challenge you! People nowdays won’t drop an every day thing just like that.
I just use spot-dl to download my music.
Buy and store your own music. HDTracks and 7Digital both sell high quality DRM free downloads, or you can just swing by your local Walmart or Dollar Store and grab some CDs to rip.
Or you could go sailing, that’s always an option…
Is there rippers for Spotify?
That I don’t know. I mean you could always just use something to record the sound played by your PC, but at that point A) You’re not getting as good of quality as you would from an actual download of the source material and you’d have to manually assign metadata, make sure no notifications or other sounds played, make sure your recording settings were optimum, etc. It’s easier, right now at least, to just buy what you want on CD or from a store that sells digital downloads legitimately.
The sound isolation could be fixed by using a separate audio channel for Spotify, but no way it’s gonna be worth the effort as it’s not gonna be as good quality and if you’re considering doing all that you would be better off sailing the high seas (on one of the big music trackers)
As much as I’d like to do that, I have listened to over 7000 artists on Spotify.
I simply don’t have the time (or money) to look those up individually.
So I can either choose to have worse experience, or stick with Spotify for now.
There is a cost to convenience ratio. Each individual has to decide based on their own ethics and preferences whether they’re willing to sacrifice their own personal experience for the right of ownership. I personally chose to cancel my Spotify subscription some time ago and start buying digital downloads and CDs again.
Libraries can have pretty good CD collections too
LOL ‘Spotify fans’ buch of losers
tf is spotify “fans”? more like spotify “users”
Fans of things that are provisioned by Spotify.
doesn’t make them fans of spotify though
I guess that’s why I didn’t say that, or agree with that framing.
If I am paying for my account personally, with a card in my name, what more do they need?
They want to scan your face to get as many images of people of stated ages to feed into their facial recognition system. Do not for one moment think it is for anything else.
Edit: it is like how Facebook had a 10 years ago you looked like this! Post a new comparison photo today!’ Specifically because they want to know how people age for their AI shit.
Well sure, the real reason is always data harvesting.
Yeah, they want to be able to ‘People that look like This listen to This’ so that advertisers have more options when they are locking down commercials.
Tidal is pretty good these days. Qobuz too
And Bandcamp
Bandcamp is owned by union busters. Only use on Bandcamp Friday for best effect.
Tidal is pretty harsh on vpns and my whole network is behind something most of the time :(
I’m having a pretty good time with Qobuz. Their curated collections are actually really good and I’ve found a lot of new stuff in there; it’s not the “here’s what the record label is shoveling this week” like on Spotify. Also, the high bitrate stuff… I hate to admit it, but it really does sound better.
do they have a lot of german music too, or are they focused on american / french music?
We switched to Deezer about a month ago and are liking it. Flow seems to find music I like way better than Spotify’s DJ or “for you” playlists.
Personally I could never get into the whole Spotify and Pandora thing. I want to listen to what I want to listen to and when I want to listen to it, without ridiculous restrictions and rules. YouTube has honestly been the far better choice for music for me.
Having a collection of music in files that I own has been my go-to for years. Currently VLC says I have 701 hours of music in files on my phone. That’s only 29.2 days worth.
I used to do that and I do still have a lot of music from that time on my computer, but somewhere along the line I stopped downloading music and just started listening to it on YouTube whenever I thought of something in particular.
Man, I had around 10 gigs of vintage mp3s that is created since the days of Limewire/Napster. Uploaded it all to Google Music and lost track of the external I’d had the collection stored on. Whatever, it’s all in the cloud now.
Then it wasn’t.
I really, Really, need to back up all of my Gdocs, just in case that service ceases to be.
(I wonder if ancient crunchy low bitrate mp3s will be an aesthetic, the way that dusty vinyl or worn out tapes are?)
wildergardenaudio.com/maim/
You might want to check music.youtube.com, I still have my (GMusic) uploaded collection available there, I cannot upload new, but what was there still is. Just mentioning it in case you are still looking for your music.
That said, yes, downloading (pirating or not) and setting a home music server seems to be the best option.
It’s not necessarily your music though, it’s the closest that they found in their library sometimes. I have tons of tracks that I uploaded the explicit copy of to gmusic but my library downloads only had the censored/radio version.
Found that out the hard way after a drive crash a few years back. Have spent a bit of time reacquiring the stuff I cared about.
That’s why I have it uploaded to a cloud service but I have the entire collection backed up on my phone, 3 computers and a few miscellaneous SD cards.
Wow! You are right, I completely forgot about that. You can listen to your music still, but it is true that is not a good way for rebuilding your collection 😟
It’s mostly the discovery aspect, it’s easy to find new and emerging artists through these services, and they make playing that music very convenient. YouTube does have some of it with YouTube music but I’ve not found the algorithm to be as good as Spotify or Tidal
I used to use and praise Spotify and their algorithm, but I was starting to find that it would insist on playing the same 20 or 50 songs regardless of the playlist I was trying to generate music suggestions from. I read a rumor somewhere that it was a way to decrease the load on their servers and rely more on the cached songs already on the device, and got sick of that enough to switch to Pandora after over 10 years of Spotify
Same for me, I got tired of the same artists being played over and over. I’ve switched to Deezer who does a much better job. I will probably switch to Qobuz soon.
I tried Tidal, and now I’m on Pandora. The ‘radio’ feature of Pandora more closely matches the way I want to listen to music (I feel like playing this, stay in this mood, but vary the artists), but I’m disappointed by the android app. I should also try Qobuz, maybe even Deezer, but the real pain point is that I have literally thousands of playlists on Spotify. I can pay TuneMyMusic again, I guess
What issues are you having with the mobile app?
They’re not issues so much as nit-picks.
On the now playing screen, I try to swipe the album image to skip (like Spotify) but it doesn’t. Yes, the skip button is right there, but when driving it’s needlessly distracting to have to find the small button.
There’s no obvious way to see your play history when it’s on auto play or radio.
You can start a station from a single song, and you can add song variety to a single-song station, and you can let a playlist end and it will autoplay songs, but you can’t create a station from a playlist directly. These seem like the same function but are treated differently.
You can ‘collect’ or ‘👍’ a song from radio/autoplay, and it’s implied that it influences the station to do the latter, but all the 👍 songs go to their own playlist and sometimes a ‘songs you liked from this station’ playlist separate from the station and sometimes in the station page. It can unintuitive.
There’s no API so there’s no way for TuneMyMusic to import my playlists from Spotify.
Adding a song to a playlist often fails the first time, I can mash it but it doesn’t go, but if I back out and add it again it works.
Some of these can be chalked up to user error, I haven’t gotten used to the paradigm change, but the app still feels rigid and “less polished”. Like I said, nitpicks.
You can import your liked songs fyi but yeah I didn’t see anything about playlists or liked artists
I had no trouble transferring my playlists to Deezer, but I only had dozens of them.
I recommend looking at song mixes over the daily mixes, that’s what I use on tidal too and it’s a lot better at mixing things up
Pandora is sadly not available in NL and if I saw it correctly Pandora is also America which does mean that it will turn to shit somewhere in the future.
Seriously, fuck Spotify and another using that error-prone, intrusive, insecure bullshit.
Where is Spotify error prone? I dont use it that much, but I havent encountered a bug once.
I use it a lot, and have been for 10 years or so. I have never had any sort of error. It has simply always worked exactly like it’s supposed to.
I don’t know anything about it being intrusive or insecure, and definately need a source on that, but it’s possible those criticisms are valid, but again, need a damn source. As is, the person you commented on has lost all cridibilty, so I’m inclined to err on the side of caution, and assume they don’t know what they’re talking about.
When people get mad they get hyperbolic sometimes. Might be the case here. Same with not having it error on me as well. That said, fuck their CEO, they lost a sub from me after I heard about the drone investment.
You can say a lot of Spotify and of Apple, but the iOS app of Spotify is basically bug free and has been bug free for more than a decade now for me. The webclient has been buggy for me though.
what are “spotify fans”? Spotify paid 150k $ for Trump’s inauguration party, f them. They do not deserve my money
I left Spotify for many reasons including this. They’ve only proven that they do not care about artists at all. I remember before I left, many of the tracks that came up “based on my playlist” were just random AI generated crap.
Considering how much Spotify pays artists per listens, piracy is barely any different in that regard.
This is the most upsetting part. If you’re a solo artist without a label, you need what’s essentially a million listens to break minimum wage. For bands, and anyone with a label, even that’s practically out of question. This shit is why everyone sells 75$ t-shirts at shows
Wrong
Piracy is 100x more ethical
I mean… I’m already using Nicotine+ (Soulseek).
Do it
Do it.
It’s easy. Just use a Youtube-to-MP3 converter.
This is cool if you’re okay with low fidelity music.
After years of lossless and headphones to distinguish, this sounds like fingernails on a chalk board.
It’s akin to using a tape deck to aux adapter in an old car or recording a tape off of an old boombox radio lol. I’d rather listen to nothing.
I believe you so this is a genuine question: did you ever test your kbps threshold for being able to distinguish from lossless?
I remember in the MP3 and Winamp days, I was convinced I could detect anything below 192 kbps. Obviously depends on the content, and I’m implying 44 kHz minimum.
Never ran any tests here but the difference is so stark that I never really considered it a need.
Kinda like when I switched from SoundCloud to Apple Music. I couldn’t go back to listening to the songs I had in my SC library because it was just noticeably worse.
I’m sure there are ways to rip high fi YouTube audio but the basic options I used in the past yielded results worse than avg SoundCloud quality.
Will say it’s been a few years since trying and I never had any paid for YouTube subscription, don’t even have an account. So, while it may be acceptable, I just never had a need and if I wanted to rip music, I’d be torrenting .flac files, not ripping .mp3s from YouTube
I was impressed when iTunes added the option to get your album in .flac. And while I acknowledge there’s a lot of placebo effect with audiophillia, I still argue space is cheap and you never know how good your ears and sound system may get in the future.
You can download FLACs using Nicotine+.
Bandcamp, Soulseek, Navidrome, ListenBrainz.
Has been a pretty solid Spotify-replacement stack.
The streaming services are run by shithead C-suites who think last quarter is the way it’s always been. They forget the only reason most of us use their services is someone more visionary than them made it more convenient than piracy half a generation ago. Let’s remind them there’s an alternative.
I have like 5 alternates I would use before Spotify.
Well bully for you
I’m returning to car boot sales to buy cubic meters of CDs.
That, and BandCamp.
All my CD’s got ripped (and re-ripped) to mp3 in increasing bitrates as storage increased. Bandcamp is where almost all my musicians release anyway, and I’ve got over a thousand albums through them, happy in the knowledge I support the artists in a fairly direct way.
Sure, I’ve still got an Apple Music sub (which sucks at times because licensing means a compilation gets split into several albums when whatever deal happens in the background expires). But I’ll easily find new music, grab it and give it a go, and if I like it enough I’ll dig them out on bandcamp. At some point I’m gonna quit that platform.
Planning to get a modern mp3 player to go offline with my music at some point. Or maybe rebuild the old iPod and put Rockbox on it and hook it up to my linux desktop.
I found it was well worth ripping to flac securely using EAC (no idea what the modern setup is).
As then I knew I had a perfect copy to make whatever MP3 I wanted in the future from.
Nowadays, I convert everything to V0 for portable use, but who knows what the future may hold.
I mean, fuck Spotify and all that, but this one is really the UK government’s doing.
And soon, this shit will come to every country. They’re all drafting laws to mandate real age verification for adult content. The UK is just the first to implement it.
Its not like every industrie can somehow lobby every consumer right away when someone wants to make a new law… oh wait they do…
Actually, I don’t think this is industry mandated. I don’t think it’s in the interest of tech and content companies to create more friction to access their services. This one seems to have more to do with the governments wanting to exert more control over online affairs, and of course, over its citizens.
Yea my point was if people stopped using the apps then the big players will lobby the governemt to revert shit like that. But i also think that long term all big players would love to normalize taking your picture to open their app. Every bit of information they can sell is a win for them.
Ah I see, misunderstood your point then.
I guess that’s also why Google is going to use some kind of AI to determine whether or not a profile is underage. That way, existing adult users of their services are (most likely) not affected.
In my opinion, draconian government overreach in matters of civil liberties is one of the few instances where we should be on the side of big tech companies.
I mean, fuck it. At this point we might as well put our passport numbers in the HTTP headers.
Coming to a pop up near you. If they even bother to ask any more.
I think there are going to be a whole lot of phishing and blackmail scams in the future, preying on the stupid computer illiterate masses putting in their personal information into fake “age verifiers” to access porn or other adult content.
It’s a good thing it’s so easy to tell them from the “trustworthy” ones…
What do you think of Qobuz? From what I’ve seen, it’s got more stuff than bandcamp (at least from my library). It seems to pay the artists well too.
I just use Pandora for radio and youtube for specific songs.
Use Nicotine+ to download music for free.
This age-verification bullshit is a fine example of how governments represent their rulers, not their citizens.
I dont understand this take. This is a “think of the children” bs that panders to (certain) citizens. Also a thinly veiled attempt at data collection of its citizens en masse
Sounds like you understand the take perfectly
This is another step closer to requiring an ID to use the internet at all, which is exactly what the ruling class wants.
Fight back wherever you can.
.
Don’t threaten, just do it. Enshittification must end.
The only reason we have mainstream paid video streaming now is because early Netflix was genuinely better than dodgy, pop-up riddled mirrors on movie4k.to. The convenience was well worth 8 bucks a month. Same for Spotify.
Fast forward 10 years and Spotify wants me to pay 15 €, scan my face and listen to forced podcast ads AND pay extra for paywalled audiobooks that used to be free? Meet my good old friend youtube-downloader, then.
The news can’t easily report on users actually returning to piracy; who would admit to it? And how would you get data on it? Much easier to truthfully report on users who talk about returning to piracy.
Never understood Spotifys appeal. Youtube has always been better imo.
The few dumb artists who only release music there and nowhere else, the better streaming quality (I guess? I’ve read it somewhere), and slightly better at suggesting/categorizing music genres. I don’t use it because all the time I’d see people cry “I wish this was on Spotify!!!” in a YT comment section, and YT music had everything I wanted. Plus YT free is way more bearable that Spotify free, and I use ReVanced now anyway.
But yeah Spotify always sucked to me and I’m tired of those who shame others for not using it. The “Apple green bubble shaming” of the music world.
Its as if law makers don’t learn from history. Do they not know what happened in the 90s and early 2000s when stores wouldn’t sell M rated video games or CDs with mature content labels? We found ways to get around that. We would go to stores that didn’t check or care, got our older sibling or friend to buy it for us. We burned copies of our friends CDs, or downloaded stuff off line with Limewire and Napster.
Same shit when there was prohibition in the US. People drove cars across the great lakes to bring alcohol into the US. People brewed there own spirits in bathtubs with radiator coils.
If people want to anomalously watch their favorite weird kinky shit or listing to music they like, they’re going to find a way. And, if the easiest way to do that is through piracy, that is what they are going to do.
Spotify fans?
You’re way better off with your own music collection. That is what I have. I use Tauon music box it handles large playlists well.
There are fans of Spotify?
I’m just as mystified as you.
The only time I interact with the service is when I’m sent a link to a cool band/song and I wind up on the site. “Oh, this again.” I really have zero concept of fandom for something like this.
I could tell Spotify was trash when I first heard about it. That Spotify decided to enshitify their already bad site makes it even worse.
It’s their silly little way of saying conned subscription holders.
Just a friendly reminder that the OSA was never about safeguarding kids from seeing porn.
Are the government seriously worried about a child being exposed to Break Stuff or So What on Spotify?
It’s a load of bullshit, for a start the ISP has my details and should be able to attest my connection is rented by someone of legal age and it should be up to me what I let my children (assuming I have any) see and not see on that connection. I already had to click the “yes just give me the porn damn it” agreement on my mobile phone which was less likely to be randomly shared unmonitored and now this overbearing crap. I’ll just avoid sites and services that require this.
It’s not the site wanting to do it. It’s a requirement from Parliament in the UK.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Safety_Act_2023
I mean, you don’t have to go there if you want, but it’s probably Parliament you want to be irritated with, not websites following British laws.
Ngl, right now I’m endevouring to acquire more music in digital file format rather than streaming right now. Spotify is great, especially when your looking for individual songs that you’ll only listen to a handful of times, and for discovering music, but once you lose access to it you’re pretty fucked.
At this point even the music discovery is being enshitified with AI bands taking up more and more space as low-cost filler.
The last 10 years of the internet are committing seppuku in front of us. Gird your musical loins, friend. We’ll need jams in MP3 format in the dystopian hellscape that’s rushing to meet us.
I use Tidal, which pays artists even better
Don’t threaten, just do it!
I don’t get why people are so stubborn to move away from corporate products.
I don’t use any proprietary apps. Only FOSS apps installed on my phone.
Hope you’re enjoying the freedom, fellow FOSSer :)
Sometimes I feel like it’s just too simple. Then I see articles like this and I’m like nope. Staying away from that bullshit.
<img alt="Shia Labeouf Just Do It Meme Animated GIF" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/a731a32f-ef41-419e-a5c0-aceb9714f535.gif">
Personally, the open source community’s aversion to algorithms is what’s holding me back. Say what you will about them, but I’ve found many great songs thanks to Spotify’s algo.
Soulseeks recommendation algorithm is top notch, almost organic. You click the ‘browse users files’ button.
If you’re just looking for an engine that recommends you music based off your likes, the FOSS community could utilize the Music Genomoe Project to build a tool too do that based one a folder or Playlist of music provided to it. I would be surprised if there already wasn’t a FOSS tool to do that.
It’s not so much an aversion to algorithms as it is a version to corporate controlled algorithms (which are often targeting highly questionable metrics).
We’ll they do also like to they you too just get good. Which can be a bit overwhelming when your are okay l just looking for music.
I’ve found many juat streaming themed internet radio on Radiodroid.
people like having their stuff.
Well… with streaming services people don’t actually have anything, because nothing in there is theirs to own ;)
sure. though it would be easier to talk someone into jumping off a bridge than to convince them to give up something they mostly hate but enjoy one crucial feature of
When you lease access to information, you literally don’t gave any stuff.
I hate Spotify and would like to stop paying them even 1/5th of a family subscription. But I have researched alternatives and haven’t found one that meets my need to manage offline files, playlists, and the current playback session across many (and I mean many) devices.
I was dragging my feet because I really liked the algorithmic features. As much as I hate “AI” being jammed into everything these days, I really liked their DJ feature, and the “crate a playlist from a prompt” was a lot of fun to play with!
My favorite generated playlist was “Determined music for poopwalking home from Taco Bell”
That being said, they’ve been corrupting their music exploration tools with corporate interest for a while, so it’s been becoming less desirable as a result
Who could have guessed this very obvious a most expected outcome?! Not Spotify, I guess.
I switched to Qobuz about two weeks ago. I’ve been really impressed.
Is this FOSS? Is it on GitHub or can I get it from another app store like F-Droid?
No, it’s 13€/month (first month free)
Nope, it’s a Spotify alternative made in France which emphasize on paying a fair share to the artists and providing a great music quality.
Back in the day, Grooveshark was the king before all these subscription guys showed up.
www.live365.com/listen
No account or subscription required.
Hundreds of internet radio stations. Some are ad-supported, some are ad-free but you can contribute to the station’s patreon.
Already did this ages ago. Been building a collection for decades now. I’m pushing about 10k albums on the NAS. Haven’t had spotify since like 2018
You have more albums than I have individual files, I don’t even know where I would find so much to download.
I usually just get it from YouTube currently
Soulseek
Same but I only keep what I really like and listen to, I put playlists on a thumb drive, almost like a cassette player, it just works.
I have never in my entire life paid for a streaming service. I didn’t stop pirating when Netflix was the only game in town and cost $8 / month. I didn’t pay for streaming even when every normie started getting internet access and “everyone was doing it”. Even during the high point of my life where I was not only gainfully employed but also able to accumulate savings I STILL never had a streaming service. You could count the self hosting spotify clone I made as a “streaming service” but I’m not paying extra money or probably supporting people with different ideological beliefs than me in order to use it so that really doesn’t count.
just buy releases from bands on Bandcamp
Latest Spotify crackdowns on revanced apps and a very recent GrayJay plugin issues made me look into Spotify cracking scene. I found an app that works. But for how long?
Hmm could you tell me where, so that I can avoid that place?
After they killed spotube, people are going back to the old hacked Spotify, but since it’s not open it’s way more risky, and maybe that’s the intent, to make people scared of using them.
I already moved to piracy for music because these days Spotify isn’t even giving the normal shuffle option for free users
Yeah I know it’s cheap but I’m a student so…
as an independent artist I just wanna add: the best thing you can do to support artists and bands is to buy directly / on bandcamp. spotify pays shit to artists, you need millions of listeners to get any meaningful amount of cash
of course that isn’t a sustainable option if you listen to a lot of different music. so piracy is an option that I wouldn’t mind. hell, if you like my stuff and just write to me I’ll send you mp3s for free
Preferably on Bandcamp Friday
This exactly. Pirating is still preventing the artists from getting paid for their work. Choose to buy albums from companies like Bandcamp over just simply stealing their work.
not in a lossless format?
Don’t forget to tell them to go to the shows!!
Musicians are real people who very often hold live performances in high-population locations, you can see them directly with your eyeballs, hear them directly with your hearholes, and physically hand them actual cash with your flesh and blood hands!
Edit - To the people complaining about ticket company charges: You need to get into your local music scene and the +95% of bands out there who aren’t big enough to play venues that have ticket company contracts. There is a world of music out there completely free of that system and you’re neglecting it.
music to my ears
Man, I wish I could hand them cold, hard cash. Instead, I gotta pay Ticketmaster to skim off the top first before giving the artist and their team peanuts.
Most of the time you have to pre book BA some website that takes its 30% cut.
DO WHAT YOU WANT CAUSE A PIRATE IS FREE! YOU ARE A PIRATE!
I often see here and reddit people justifying piracy with various reason.
I do it because I can, because i’m a tight cunt and I like free stuff.
Is this just a thing for free users? I’ve not seen anything on there.
I know bandcamp has its issues but I check there first for good flacs, I’ll even settle for mp3s. I look REALLY hard. Not there? Ahoy.
Edit: Other places I try to buy first to support artists:
Should never have left it behind to be honest.
People sometimes don’t believe me when I tell them I’ve literally never used Spotify.
You should already be doing that anyways with the phantom artists scandal, thousands of fake artists made with AI so Spotify doesn’t have to pay real people.
Welcome back 🏴☠️🦜
You aren’t wrong, it is the government’s ham fisted and poorly thought out legislation… I fact the last government’s that this one inexplicably pushed on with despite it not being anything like a priority for the electorate. I’m frankly shocked at how many unforced errors this government is making given how “not being as rubbish as the last lot” was not a high bar to clear.
…funnily enough, it may actually be better for musicians if people left spotify, considering the absolute pennies they pay per stream.