cross-posted from: sh.itjust.works/post/61959659
Spotify has been pissing me off recently. Repeated pop up (internal) ads, and now this. Are there any alternatives that don’t require selfhosting?
Submitted 1 day ago by AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works to mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world
https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/800408fb-c4c3-4c12-86b9-27d3c3958b74.jpeg
cross-posted from: sh.itjust.works/post/61959659
Spotify has been pissing me off recently. Repeated pop up (internal) ads, and now this. Are there any alternatives that don’t require selfhosting?
I’ve just switched to Tidal and it seems pretty good.
I like the quality and the higher artist payouts from Tidal. It is kinda buggy, though, and I miss things like listening parties or Spotify Connect.
Yaa, plus Spotify has lossless too now, and wayy more niche artists. As much as I hate Spotify, it’s just not something I can part with. Though I support the artists I listen to in many other ways anyway. There’s also Spicetify which is another thing I may not want to part with xD.
I ran into a bunch of AI slop on Tidal. It kept being on artist pages that I really enjoy. For example Against Me! is one of my favorite bands but some AI sloptist named their slop band Against Me. Tidal has no way to separate these two names and everything shows up on one page. To make things worse there’s no way to report this except by emailing to the artist being ripped off and hoping they see your email.
I found it so frequently, roughly 6 or 7 times in 3 months, that I cancelled and moved on to the next service, YouTube Music. It’s not necessarily better or worse in my experience but they can differentiate between Against Me! and Against Me and I have yet to discover a fake song since I switched about 3 months ago.
I’m not sure about the support I’m giving to Google, I kind of fucking hate it, but I have very very few complaints about the service. My main complaint is there is no dedicated TV app, it goes through the default YouTube app and that is significantly worse at finding playlists or surfacing new music.
I just couldn’t do Tidal any longer with the slopfest. And I left Spotify behind when news broke they were showing ICE ads. I’ll be honest I’ve not heard that YouTube is showing ICE ads but it would not surprise me.
Well, doesn’t have a tv app (that I know of at least) but for what it’s worth, I’ve been using Qobuz which is a little French outfit. Great selection, a vehement anti ai slop attitude and I believe that per stream they pay out higher than most services.
YT Music also has an AI impostor problem.
I was listening to Crimson Veil (melodic grey metal, woman vocalist) when it started playing songs of a completely different genre, but the ‘band’ was still “Crimson Veil”; but this other music was drone-y industrial with flat, uninspired lyrics that felt AI generated. I poked around a few other streaming platforms and found the same thing on Spotify and Tidal. I think the band was eventually able to get the impostor removed, but they were up there for at least a couple weeks.
Lots of musicians are getting their discographies infiltrated this way. The last time I listened to Primus on Tidal, there was an AI generated rap group, and an AI generated blue/jazz act listed in their discography. The streaming services must know that this is an issue by now, as labels are having to spend a lot of time finding and squashing these impostors. Hopefully they implement some way of validating artist uploads to prevent playlist hijacking like this.
I’ve been quite satisfied with Tidal for years, except for the exact thing you’re mentioning. It got a lot worse in the last year, and it happened to some pretty popular bands too, like Muse. Someone is uploading “albums” with a literal Gemini watermark on them under their name and they take months to get taken down.
Actually had another issue with YouTube Music.
While listening to a Mix, YT’s version of a radio, it kept putting Kanye West music into the mix. Now I like a lot of Kanye’s old music but I’m not going to listen to it now since he’s a fucking Nazi piece of shit. I don’t want his fuckass getting my fraction of a fraction of a penny. Fuck Nazis…not like that.
There is also no way to completely block an artist. So I have to be every vigilant.
I also have to vigilant about at least once other artist, while listening to an awesome, trancy mix last year I stumbled across a song that was hypnotic and said something like, “To have a good party you need to do Marijuana.” Weird but not upsetting, I can enjoy the vibe. Then it swings around to, “To have a good time you need to do Heroin…heroin…heroin…heroin…”
I dunno who makes this shit but it’s definitely not my vibe and I want to be able to block shit that cruises in from left field to ruin my vibe. YouTube Music had no way to do this and I’m not sure what I want to do about it next.
I’ve been using Qobuz, it’s a French alternative (so, not supporting Google or other American companies!) I’ve really enjoyed the selection and some of their suggestions are fantastic. They also have really high quality options for streaming/download which I’m too tone deaf to fully appreciate.
They also pay artists 5-10x more than spotify per stream!
They probably wanted a severe TOS update for you to agree to.
yeah I didn’t get that either but pretty sure the old one started working after I put the new one somewhere else.
The KDE builtin widget works pretty well. Not sure what OS you’re on.
Grapheneos. I assume you’re referring to Linux?
Correct
Kolanaki@pawb.social 22 hours ago
The new one fucking sucks ass, too. If the app isn’t already open, tapping the widget does not open it, and unless you makw it like twice the size of the old one, it shows less info.
yermaw@sh.itjust.works 16 hours ago
Also mine wont let me update because I need to update to the latest widget to update the widget.
Multi-Billion-dollar global tech companies pulling shit I’d have been ashamed to turn into my schoolteacher.