this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2023
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You Should Know

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Why YSK: Spotify forces you either to pay, listen to ads or to find unofficial, potentially dangerous versions to use it. It's better to find a free alternative, both for your wallet and for your peace of mind.

Introducing: ViMusic

Downloads: https://github.com/vfsfitvnm/ViMusic

  • Free and open source
  • No ads/trackers
  • Song lyrics
  • Music from both YouTube Music and YouTube
  • Weights 2MB or so
  • Beautiful UI and amazing UX

Cons: no high kbps streaming support

DO NOT TRY TO DOWNLOAD THE APP FROM ANY SOURCE OTHER THAN THE ONES LISTED IN THEIR GITHUB PAGE. They are malware.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 years ago (7 children)

Potential bias: I'm a developer at Spotify.

"Spotify forces you either to pay, listen to ads or to find unofficial, potentially dangerous versions to use it."

I don't think the company forces you to do anything. It is their business model, how they can provide copyrighted music to you and have a share of the pie too.

I'd say the very idea that Spotify is forcing you to pay with time and attention or money so you can have music conveniently streamed to your devices is a testament to the company's success. It created this business model and fulfilled an apparently basic need to the point you think that charging for it is unfair.

But "forcing" is too much. You can always buy discs, digital downloads and so.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

I mean the streamers have to get paid too, you might hear artists complain about how much money Spotify takes but as someone who has released lots of music on Spotify they do pay you, pretty decently too! Lots of artists are making hundreds of thousands a year from just Spotify and the business itself is profitable, which allows pretty much anyone to upload their music and try their dream.

That is valuable in it of itself, without services like Spotify many of the artists I listen too would probably have given up on music for a boring IT job, like I did.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Thanks to you and/or other Spotify devs for the linux desktop app that I understand you develop in your free time

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Of course they don't force you to use spotify, but it's one of those "soft monopolies" many other companies have. It's not the only option, but they basically are, because everyone thinks so: it's like whatsapp, if you catch my drift (everyone use it because everyone's on it)

And when a company realizes they're in that position, they will prey down on their users without fail, and I'm talking about:

Privacy invasive app: https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/com.spotify.music/latest/

Investing in military AI: https://mixmag.net/read/spotify-daniel-ek-ai-defence-investment-criticism-news

Patents for extremely invasive technologies: https://www.accessnow.org/press-release/spotify-tech-emotion-manipulation/

Allowing disinformation during covid, not paying properly the artists and many other things I'm not going over for sake of brevity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify#Criticism

What I don't like about spotify and all the companies who are in a similar position in the market is that, as usual, their share of the pie it's unfairly big, which is why I try to drive people away from them. Not saying YouTube is better, but at least with vimusic you don't have to listen to ads (which I think heavily harm people's mental health, among other things)

Of course music can be bought, but people only buy what they like nowdays, and use online services to discover new music. Few have the money to buy music and listen to it for the first time afterwards. Many people don't even have the money to meet their basic needs, let alone buy music

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago

Spotify really isn't a "Soft monopoly" though. There are a lot of competitors in the music streaming business. Youtube music, Apple music, and Pandora, just to name a few. Sure, Spotify is perhaps the most commonly used, but it's also unfair to punish a company because they're successful.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Not to argue against any of the points against Spotify, but YT Music (and it's parent, Google) are much worse; leaving only Apple Music with a much smaller library as a realistic alternative to streaming music.

I do miss the old days of Google Play Music though - it is a shame what Google did to a neat app with a standalone subscription.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Oh my God yes Google Play Music was the best. And whoever convinced them to give up that glorious branding (Play Music, Play Movies, Play Store) in favor of 'YouTube Music' should be drawn and quartered.

Play Music's uncanny ability to let me know who was actually playing near me, meaning within my usual territory, and with music I would like, was unmatched. It was par with Spotify for playlists based on the sound of a song. YouTube music doesn't do playing near you, Spotify seems to think 1000 miles away is nearby, and neither are as good as Play Music was at finding good match for my location and time of day. It was perfect in name and function and they gave it up.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Spotify took an existing thing and made it convenient and worse at the same time. How long before we are just listening to AI music? Since their cost is the artists...it's only a matter of time.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I think the important thing is to keep Spotify from being the only way you can stream music. While I agree you can buy discs or digital downloads, these are fundamentally different methods of consumption from streaming.

Stopping Spotify purchasing the exclusive rights to stream prevents a monopoly where, if you want to stream, you are 'forced' to use Spotify and pay/listen to ads there. Keeping artists' options open allows the most customer-friendly streaming service to win out as consumers choose which streaming service gives them the best product to listen to who they want

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

First of all, thank you for your work to create or improve Spotify! I think that - as some others have pointed out - the word "force" here comes from Spotify's quasi-monopoly these days. It has gained such an important position of power that both musicians and listeners are almost "forced" to make use of it. As somebody who makes music, I think that Spotify urgently needs to realize the responsibility that comes with its success. Paying the people who create and offer the very content that makes their platform useful and successful in the first place laughable 0.003 - 0.005$ on average per stream is destroying any chance of realistic income for most artists. The amount of streams required for even a minimum wage can only be achieved with heavy and expensive marketing efforts, by abusing Spotify's systems and getting lucky by being placed on larger playlists. There's a lot of money made there, and only very few selectively benefit from it. We see entire phenomena due to this. For example that "songs" are getting shorter and shorter, in order to increase the amount of streams and thus compensating for that joke of payment. Creating longer, atmospheric pieces with a REAL structure and buildup worth exploring just isn't financially viable on Spotify. Any form of creative risk is also not helpful to earn money, so you get more and more super short bits of music that are very playlist-friendly and thus, samey. And this has a negative effect on music as an artform itself. And in the long run, it will make Spotify's catalogue less valuable, because it will degenerate into a grey, boring mass of meaningless low-effort content. Spotify offers a great service, but also devalues music as a medium and the carreers behind it. You may say that people are free to purchase physical media or directly purchase music on other services. But let's be realistic. Spotify offers an enormous, centralized catalogue of music for just a few bucks a month. If people can listen to your songs there for a cheap flatrate, they will simply not navigate other services and purchase a single album for the price of a month full of anything they like. So, if you have even the smallest amount of influence, please use it to improve Spotify on that field too, not only in terms of the app's code base. Make Spotify a healthier place for artists, which will help sustainability for everyone involved. And find ways to not only financially reward the shortest, most playlist-friendly pieces of music.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Could you please add a “Why YSK:”? It’s rule #2. It's also helpful for readability, and informs readers about the importance of the content. Thank you. :)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Oh I'm sorry, I skimmed through the rules and I missed that one. Ty for letting me know

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

AFAIK ViMusic is no longer being actively maintained. An similar app which is InnerTune although I'm experiencing some weird glitches during search (unable to subscribe to an artist and playlist tab remains empty for every search).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It's true its last update was in November, but the dev(s) still monitor and reply in the issues tab. Most important, the app works flawlessly.

The project still seems alive to me, but if you prefer innertune by all means go with that! I followed it for a bit (when it was still called "Music") and it's a great app

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

@UprisingVoltage Good to hear that the Dev is still involved. This makes me more comfortable to keep using ViMusic

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Adverts like this post shouldn't be a think in "YSK". It makes no sense.

This app is literally just music piracy in a fancy shell anyways. Since there's no YouTube ads displayed, artists get nothing. Think Spotify is bad at paying artists? Try... piracy...?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

That's fair, but I am curious how much of streaming revenue go towards the artists and how much goes towards the labels.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

That isn't up to Spotify, all money goes to the labels and then the labels and artists negotiate their share. They've got a good site actually: https://loudandclear.byspotify.com/

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

But did you know that when Spotify negotiated streaming rights from the labels, the labels only agreed if they could take an ownership stake in Spotify. Then the labels insisted on LOWER streaming fees for themselves. This shifts their income to come from their Spotify stake, which they don't have to pay to artists.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

How long is this likely to stay online? It sounds like it's circumventing paid services (YouTube Music, specifically) - I can't see Google being too happy about people skipping out on paying for their service.

(I'm not saying this is a bad idea, I'm openly wondering about the longevity of the app and slightly nervous about the dev's wallet when it might come to a lawsuit. I don't know if that's a thing that would happen.)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

As long as you can acess an youtube music from the web, it should be safe to keep working (as long as google doesn't rewrite something on their end) there are a gazillion of projects that are able to stream/download from youtube (youtube-dl, newpipe come to mind now)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Savor it. Google is about to shut those down. They recently figured out how to tell if a user is watching the ads or not an interrupt the streams to them.

I've seen two separate methods so far one where they just block the stream when it gets to the add point, and another where they completely blocked all my clients except the official YouTube. I'm sure we have a lot of cat and mouse left in us, but in the end, if they solve this on the server side there's probably not a lot we can do about it

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

How? Projects like Newpipe, Invidious, Freetube have existed forever. this is no different.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It's not quite the same thing. ViMusic is a dedicated app for streaming music, which means better user experience. You're free to stick to revanced if it better suits your needs obv

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

YouTube Music ReVanced?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Hmm I need more info on revanced

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I'd paste the R*ddit post but...

So basically you rebuild the YouTube app using revanced manager.

  1. Make sure you nuke YouTube from your phone.
  2. Download YouTube apk from apkmirror (don't install yet)
  3. Download and install from revanced.app
  4. Patcher -> select the YT apk. Patch as recommended and install
  5. Download, install and login from microG.org (basically an emulator for Google play services)
  6. ???
  7. Realise you can do the same for ad-free R*ddit, twitter, Instagram apps
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I've been mostly using newpipe for the same purpose but this one looks great too. Thanks!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

So it is basically Premium for free?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Yeah! You choose your songs, create your playlists and stream all the music you want. No ads or costs

Vimusic is free and open source software, just like lemmy

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Just pay for Spotify... £10 for access to almost every song ever published. People need to appreciate how good they have it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

I'm not affiliated with the devs in any way, I'm jusy a user tired of bloated apps and ads.

If you've never installed apps from github/froid I'll be glad to help you out

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

For youtube, I use newpipe. It's pretty cool. You can import your subscriptions so you don't miss out on new videos.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I'm just waiting for the day I can shuffle playlists on Newpipe then I could use it as my primary music app. Right now though you can only play all in order unless I'm missing something

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

This is great, just before my free Spotify trial runs out too.

Thanks!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I discovered ViMusic a few months ago and the app is just amazing!

It even saves all your played songs offline.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 2 years ago

Ok, so I was skeptical, but this is rad. And it finds anything, including my own tiny band's releases. I'm impressed.

https://i.imgur.com/wImzPNR.png

F-Droid is a viable installation source in addition to GitHub.