this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
550 points (97.3% liked)

Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

54424 readers
350 users here now

⚓ Dedicated to the discussion of digital piracy, including ethical problems and legal advancements.

Rules • Full Version

1. Posts must be related to the discussion of digital piracy

2. Don't request invites, trade, sell, or self-promote

3. Don't request or link to specific pirated titles, including DMs

4. Don't submit low-quality posts, be entitled, or harass others



Loot, Pillage, & Plunder

📜 c/Piracy Wiki (Community Edition):


💰 Please help cover server costs.

Ko-Fi Liberapay
Ko-fi Liberapay

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 65 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Do the people who wrote those lyrics get a cut of Spotify gatekeeping them?

[–] [email protected] 75 points 1 year ago (1 children)

hahahahaha spotify and paying someone lol

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Spotify is not profitable right now; their current revenue doesn't come anywhere close to covering their costs. The only reason they're able to survive is investors holding on to the belief that, some day, it'll be possible to actually make the numbers work.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

The majority of their investors are record labels now, so there's also an incentive to prevent competing streamers from taking Spotify's position

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (32 children)

Spotify purchases their lyrics from Musixmatch

load more comments (32 replies)
[–] [email protected] 64 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I’ve never used the free tier on Spotify and I don’t understand how anyone can. The ads alone would make me throw off my headset in disgust. So yeah, not going to affect me, and I do enjoy reading the lyrics a lot.

That said, I am experimenting with swapping over to Apple Music because I feel Spotify has become too expensive.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (11 children)

The ads alone would make me throw off my headset in disgust.

For a mobile, there is a modded apk,I've never heard ads there. For a PC, web player in Firefox with uBlock Origin, there are no ads at all there. The same goes for Tidal, I've never paid for these apps.

load more comments (11 replies)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

With xManager, the free tier comes quite close to premium. No ads, play whatever music you like. The only issues are lower sound quality & no downloads, which are really non-issues since you can just find other sources to download the music from, at flac quality

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (4 children)

The ads aren't even for anything. It was just really patronising ads for Spotify Premium.

Their business model is genuinely to just annoy you into paying.

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 57 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I just love watching everyone freak out about Spotify's shitty business practices while I'm casually looping YouTube videos with an adblocker.

[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Eh, I switched to Spotify last year (++, of course) and there’s a lot to be said in favour of the Spotify algorithm when it comes to music recommendations, as opposed to YouTube.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This. You get actual bang for your buck

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Anyone who uses spotify just to listen to their own music isn't using spotify correctly.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (9 children)

YouTube sound quality is poor, and 99% of your bandwidth being devoted to video is wasteful. Just use SoundCloud or something. Better yet revanced patched YT music or xmanager Spotify.

Edit: or better yet vimusic

load more comments (9 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago (4 children)

To be fair, Spotify is unsuable without premium.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Spotify is unusable without ~~premium~~ Xmanager

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It does make sense though since Spotify has to pay musixmatch for the service.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

As a Spotify Artist, I bet I don't even see a single hundredth of a penny for somebody paying extra for the lyrics, either...

And even if Spotify did pay out extra for lyrics, I'm sure they'd find a way to screw my band out of royalties like they currently are anyway.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago

Rent seeking intensifies capitalist-laugh

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Music is one of the easiest things to pirate, so much so that I often forget me downloading flacs of the songs I listen to is supposed to be a no-no

Between a flac playing app (Musicolet on Android and MusicBee on PC) as well as YT Music Revanced, things go smoothly

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The only reason I don't pirate music is because of discovery. I haven't found a good way to find new music without using a streaming service. And then, I'm already using a streaming service, so why bother.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Even then you might not see them. I've noticed recently that a ton of songs that used to have the lyrics attached no longer show the lyrics or have the button to show them. And I do have premium.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The funniest thing to ask money for. Just have genius.com open or stream the song on YouTube, the lyrics are probably in the description or at the very least the comments.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (32 children)

Why do people use Spotify still? Momentum?

Edited for clarity, I'm not saying music streaming I'm specifically referring to getting it from one company.

Whose CEO heavily invests in military AI

And pays artists' (and of course labels) the least out of their competitors?

[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago (51 children)

It's convenient. It's where all my playlists are... that said, I'm open to alternatives?

load more comments (51 replies)
[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago (7 children)

I don't get why anyone would use the free tier - not being able to choose songs would actually drive me insane, let alone the ads - but $11 monthly for essentially all the music anyone could ever want, plus solid playlists and recommendations, is a perfectly good value for me. Admittedly, I listen to music all the time and it's a pretty big part of my life, so it's an easy sell.

I guess the free tier is still an improvement over radio, but regardless, producing and distributing music has costs, and I'm more than happy to pay for it. Given that Spotify isn't even profitable, having lost about a billion dollars last year, I'm not sure how long this situation will last, but for the time being, I really don't mind it.

load more comments (7 replies)
load more comments (30 replies)
[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Solid business decision by Spotify here, I support this move. I’ll probably switch over to them from YouTube music.

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (3 children)

spotify-premium-apk for the mobile devices, soulseek for the desktop.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Soulseek is still around ;)

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Still working for me with just the basic bitch plan on the web/desktop.

That being said: Fuck you Spotify lol

Edit: fuck GadolElohai and CybranM too ya low expectation having downvoting motherfuckers lol

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Does anybody know of an alternative app that can do live lyrics?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's all about having the .lrc file, it gets read automatically (as long as it's named like the song file) by mpv player and many android players.

It's a simple text file containing the lyrics with timestamps. You can get them from deezer for example with certain downloaders. Or look for them on Soulseek.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Spotube.

Note that it's not really a Spotify streaming app, rather it uses your (free) Spotify account for playlists, search, recommendations, etc. and then goes and find the song you want to play on YouTube, and the lyrics from scraping websites I think. Pretty clever.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

The lyrics source that Spotify uses is free with a few caveats, like ads. The normal synced lyrics are free though.

The source is musixmatch and they have a floating lyrics window on Android which is neat.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Why don't you guys torrent ? I am back to torrenting and its the best.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Because direct downloads are better and faster.

https://slavart.gamesdrive.net/
https://free-mp3-download.net/ (don't use apostrophes in the search for this one)

You're welcome.

Edit: Also, Real-Debrid if you want to directly download any torrent instantly at your connection's maximum bandwidth (up to 1Gbps) without having to wait for seeds. But this one costs money. (It's worth it, though, especially if you're downloading a lot of 50GB+ AAA games like I am.)

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Recently ditched subscription services because of non-stop price hikes. Now I'm on Navidrome with a VPS and using Ultrasonic on my Android for mobile and Android Auto listening. For music, I turn to good old Soulseek and Telegram bots.

Never going back. The control and savings make it all worth it.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Jokes on you, I already memorized them all

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›