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Lefty Memes

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submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Meme: Amphibian creature labelled "Spotify" emerging from a body of water, but being pushed back. Captions read: "Stop them! Don't let a single company rule them all. If you see a Horrid Beast monopolizing, push it back in."

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I buy music from Bandcamp. Drm free. Musicians get a bigger cut. You can write a note to the band when you buy and sometimes they write back. Their recommendations and write-ups feel more human than algorithm. Feels pretty good. Renting music on Spotify sounds like a bad deal for me and my personal habits.

Of course, they sold themselves and probably will enshittify in a couple years.

For older stuff that's not on Bandcamp... Honestly I don't feel bad about pirating music that's 15 years old. Copyright is too long, anyway.

And for new mega pop stuff? Not my jam, but I'd probably still buy it drm free somewhere.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

I'm surprised BC hasn't been ruined by Epic yet. At the time of a deal I was very afraid for them declining fast but I still don't see any effect on the platform. I guess EG has that much money they don't need to milk BC for what ammounts to a pocket change for them. They just wanted their presence in that market too.

!remind me in 5 years, lol

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

dude im like 80% sure epic forgot that bandcamp exists

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

They sold Bandcamp to some company I've never heard of. SongTradr https://www.songtradr.com/blog/posts/songtradr-bandcamp-acquisition

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

I'd up that to 95% and I feel it's for our own good,

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

Epic has sold Bandcamp to music licensing company called Songtradr.

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

I used to use 7digital for music before the streaming days. Still have a few dozen gigabytes on my disks. DRM free, high Bitrate mp3s.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's one thing to rule them all and a whole other to lock users into your platform

Apple monopolized the podcast market for a decade but never stopped people from using the podcasts there with whatever client people wanted to use it with

Spotify is just going the shitty route and forcing people to use their client and not just their servers

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (2 children)

How did apple monopolize podcasts? They are just audio served by RSS.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago

They are using monopoly loosely. To run a podcast through Apple was easy and you could run it on many platforms. On Spotify you are locked into using their services. Just because Apple had the vast majority of podcasts at the beginning did not make them a monopoly, Spotify forcing podcasts to either be on their large platform or not be makes them a monopoly.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

I'm not a native speaker - I just wanted to say that for a very long time, most podcasts where hosted on iTunes and that was (and kind of still is) the go-to place for podcast-reviews/ratings

And as I said: they kept the system open despite their market position

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, this is why is use YouTube music - got to support the little guys!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago

/s..? O.o

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Anyone here know of a good open-source and/or federated platform for music and podcasts? I heard of Funkwhale, but is it usable?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

I like AntennaPod for podcasts.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

I will learn to entertain myself with ruinously catchy freestyle like an oompa loompa before Spotify sees one red cent from me.

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

gonna fix my moms old walkman & put my music on her blank tapes..maybe ill try and join red or orph and upload her mega collection of music there idk

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

In the mid-2000s, I remember getting a podcast for my coworker and putting it on 80min CDs so he can play it in his car. So CDs were like [episode 15]. And sometimes, the podcast would go long so I had to make two CDs.

He didn't have an MP3 player and didnt know how to use the internet. And he paid me a few bucks for the work.

I think I made like a $100 from reselling free podcasts to my coworker.

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

I'm doing my part, I set up Navidrome on my home server today 💪

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

Fed up with the algorithms and looming AI integration last November I ditched Spotify and downloaded songs through soul seek. All my albums are on my Mac and my iPhone which I play via VLC media player. I’ve never looked back. No one telling me who I should listen to next or what my top artist of the year is. No more streaming with bad cell connection.

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

No more streaming with bad cell connection.

You know Spotify has an offline mode, right? I have many thousands of tracks downloaded using their offline mode.

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

Yeah like 50gb of my phones storage is just Spotify music

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

Yes but I have ownership of my songs and you don’t

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Didn't you pirate the songs? I wouldn't call that ownership.

I just like Spotify and their discovery stuff. I wouldn't enjoy having to find and download every single song I want to listen to. That would be a pain.

Also, nothing is stopping me from pirating the songs whenever I want. It's not like you "own" anything that I can't also "own" the moment I decide to ditch Spotify.

If you were actually buying CDs I would agree that you might have had a point (and a lot of cash because CDs are really expensive).

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

OP you should make the same meme about Steam right? Never mind that they massively reduced piracy and get creators paid

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

monopolies are the same as dictators, generally really bad, but a great dictator can get so much shit done and change things for the better much faster than great democracy could (i'm not dictator-apologising here, i'll take democracy any day, just stating a fact here)

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

This is where I'm conflicted.

I don't use Spotify because I don't believe in ads or paying money for things that are relatively easy to get. Im also not into music, which means my NEED to get anything is pretty low.

Where gaming, Steam is a platform. One could argue the ads are in the store page or all the sales. But there's still a huge pirate community. There's still GoG. All the other drm platforms are miniscule so not going to talk about them.

Where Steam is different is that shit just works on Steam. I can download a game from 2005, install, and I'm at the title screen. If I pirate, I have to do a handful of things to get to the title screen. Same with GoG. My Steamdeck is amazing! I've been actually rethinking building PCs in favor of just getting new Steam Decks.

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

Well for me the same is with Spotify, I could just download stuff and put it on my plex server, but I just don't feel like bothering with it, we have a shared plan, so it comes out to like 2,75 euros a month to have ad free music, with the very good discover weekly and other auto generated playlists that are mostly a hit for me, if I spend more than 6 minutes a month having to fuck around with my own music setup I am already losing money compared to just working those minutes

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 months ago

The other thing Spotify is doing is commodifying and reducing the value of all of those things.

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

just use Soulseek (through Nicotine+) and Torrents (through a free/libre client of your choice) and if you like some smaller artist buy their stuff on Bandcamp or even better Mirlo