I opened Spotify this morning to be greeted by a modal popup with a “sponsored recommendation”.
Why am I seeing ads if I’m already paying for the premium plan!? 😑
If you’re not paying you are the product. If you ARE paying you are STILL the product. This is how big tech works.
Basically every computer hardware manufacturer is collecting telemetry and sending it home. If you’re using MacOS or Windows, your OS is doing it aswell
Or Android, or iOS, or a Chromebook, or whatever other OS you’re using next year, if it isn’t some sort of Linux/UNIX system… and even some of those might not be great, but at least you can find out.
Tbh i have used linux on my home pc for years now and now they are very polished products , except most corporate apps are not there !
Which corporate apps?
Perhaps I’m lucky, but I rarely have an issue.
I mean… Android and ChromeOS are Linux underneath. MacOS is… related to Unix. Hang on, I need to look up that lineage…
Also Lineage.
Edit: MacOS used/uses the Mach kernel, and uses code “derived from BSD”, vague as Wikipedia is. That could mean it’s a whole copy-paste or that it just borrows ideas from BSD.
It has a history in the US anti trust (when the laws really worked)
Android isn’t in that list if you’re using something like LineageOS or GrapheneOS.
You become the product with name, address, and payment details attached to the account for improved demographic data for them to collect. Win win.
In the immortal words of James Stephanie Sterling “corporations don’t just want some money. They want all of the money”
Because why make money off you one way, when they can make money off you two ways?
It seems you can turn it off by touching “what’s this?” or “learn more” the next time you see one of these.
Really shitty that they don’t even put this as a setting though.
The lesson is that corporations will take, take, take no matter what. They will never honor any kind of social contract, and will always abuse anyone and everyone for profit to the maximum extent they are able.
So stop letting them take advantage of you.
Unless, usually, they are a not for profit organization.
Or at least not a corporation that is expected to provide infinite growth for their shareholders.
Even then. Look at the way they pay people and treat volunteers…
I agree that there are also organizations from this kind
Might I add, I hate the way every user-facing UI has devolved into the Youtube Shorts / TikTok “doomscrolling” swipe-UI now. There seems to be absolutely not a single braincell left in UI development to even consider the actual use case of the interface.
It’s all just:
- Monkey see UI to build.
- Moneky see TikTok big.
- Monkey do.
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they made this tiktok change a few months ago but reverted back after backlash
People defend intrusive advertising by appealing to some sort of social contract (ie you suffer through these things in order to get Spotify or whatever for free) but it’s not a social contract if the platform holds all the cards
Also we getting Spotify for free, if we’re buying premium.
The problem is you can’t “buy” products any more. Companies see that as interest, and then start to throw additional advertising to see how much they can get away with. Fuck that shit.
They’ve also run almost any way to do it outside of their ecosystems. If I want to listen to happy hardcore music, I have to hope spotify has it, but it’s rare to find that on most playlists, I’d have to go spend thousands of dollars for the same experience that Spotify offers, and that’s to own every track I’m even curious about.
Well we can always pirate !
Yo ho, yo ho!
“What are you gonna do? NOT use us? lmao owned.” - Spotify
Deezer, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Tidal waving furiously Pick me! Pick me!
I haven’t tried all of those, but I like Deezer. It plays music and it’s much less pushy about podcasts or other crap that Spotify always clutters your start page with. The queue interface is also simpler to use. The only downside I see is that search is noticeably slower than Spotify on desktop.
Deezer nuts lmao
Just buying the mp3s and having them forever.
Aren’t you buing just the license to play it, though? Like, if they delete them from their catalogue you can’t listen to them anymore?
Apple Music has better audio quality and pays artists better.
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I’d rather support an independent European company like Spotify than any of the big five.
I’d rather support the actual artists more. Apple pays the artists 3 times as much per stream as Spotify.
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Get 'vanced lmao
Android auto, doesn’t have an app
Yeah it’s odd for it to act cocky when it’s actually one of the few modern service products that has plenty of competition that people are willing to use.
I just use InnerTune on Android.
Spotify pissed me off with some billing or API thing (don’t even remember the details) back in 2012, so I cancelled and never looked back. From what I’m reading now and then things is just getting worse and worse - and I have no clue why people (especially paying ones) are sticking with it.
My whole family uses it, and it’s fine (the paid plan). People just want to hate on Spotify in this thread. More power to them, but it’s nowhere near as horrible as they describe. I get all my music and podcasts from there.
About a year ago I switched from Spotify to a local library with the Symfonium music player on my phone and Rhythmbox on the PC. I have not once looked back.
Plus, you get the satisfaction of growing a collection that can last forever.
I highly recommend it !
may I recommend Strawberry on desktop? It’s really nice to use with large collections! https://i.imgur.com/ViOJK6B.png
I’ve tried it, not my cup of tea. Rhythmbox conforms to my GTK4 theme a lot better, and the layout is so much more suited for me.
I feel that Strawberry’s layout is ugly as sin, but hey, everyone seems to think Rhythmbox is ugly so maybe that’s just me.
I admire any active music library management app tho. Seems like there aren’t that many people with local music libraries anymore, so we don’t get many new apps like Strawberry or Rhythmbox where MTP transfers, tag editing, lyrics, etc are big focuses. So cheers to the devs of Strawberry and thanks for the recommendation!
My dream is for Rhythmbox to be ported to libadwaita, but that doesn’t seem to be in the cards. All the latest GTK4 music players are extremely simple, with no library management features whatsoever. Think Amberol, GNOME Music, and G4Music. I wish I had learned some C when I was young and had the time so I could just port it myself.
Why does my Strawberry look like it’s from 1999 :/
if you’re on windows it cant really theme that well, but if you’re on linux you can use qt6ct to retheme it to look a bit newer, i’m using the “kvantum-dark” theme
GTK theme issue?
no, you pay spotify so they can give Joe Rogan money to make up bullshit every day.
What I really love about commercials is that if I click on them and order a life time subscription of whatever product they’re selling, I’m still gonna get the same commercials.
Or even worse you’ll get more. It applies to everything too. I got a vacuum a while ago and Amazon keeps recommending more. Who tf is out there buying multiple vacuums? Why does Amazon think that someone who spent $50 on a shop vac is now in the market for a $700 Dyson? For stealing so much of our data they sure are shit at advertising… Which is supposed to be the whole excuse for collecting data in the first place lmao
Why does Amazon think that someone who spent $50 on a shop vac is now in the market for a $700 Dyson?
Because their “algorithms” suck. Their “ML/AI” recommendation engine garbage sucks ass. I have no idea why publications or advertisers think this is in any way a better form of advertising than just…recommending things related to what you’re watching / reading / listening to…but hey…I guess it at least allows them to spy on everything you ever do anywhere on the Internet and then try to join that up to what you do in real life through phone data, so the ends justify the means I guess.
EDIT: In addition to it sucking, it’s largely irrelevant and likely prevents some sales from occurring. If I’m listening to a lot of a certain rock band…I’d likely want to know if they’re touring and may be unaware of that fact…but nah, gotta push people to buy another vacuum or whatever instead.
Some people do use the strategy of buying a cheap product if you aren’t sure you need a higher end one and then getting the better one if you don’t like the cheap one. So people who buy a cheap x might actually be more likely to buy an expensive x than people who haven’t recently bought a cheap x. Especially if they know that cheap x they sold you sucks.
You paid yes but… what if MORE money?
But think of the poor billionaires!
Yeah, I dropped Spotify when they started plastering my home screen with ads for podcasts that I didn’t want to listen to. If there had even just been a way to hide them after the fact, but no. I guess they really needed to justify the deal with Joe Rogan.
Advertisements are now pretending to be recommendations
Haven’t ads always been recommendations in some roundabout way? Regular ads are technically just a company recommending their own product/service to you (whether you need it or not).
What the shit are you taking about? Musicians literally want to sell you their music. How else are you discovering new music and artists these days? Hoping to stumble upon them?
delete Spotify. it’s toxic
I haven’t had any issues with Spotify. I’ve discovered a bunch of new artists since joining a couolr years ago. I even remember the very first. I had no idea who Token was. Now I’m a fan. What’s wrong with this kind of thing? I’ll admit it’s not as good as old fashioned radio used to be but it’s still great, and being ad-free when paid is pretty amazing.
Nothing wrong with discovery, though masquerading an ad as an algorithm recommendation is super shady.
That said, Spotify has a track record of treating artists horribly. It also has atrocious sound quality compared to every other service out there.
I’m using Tidal. Has one of the highest artist pay out rates, and top notch quality.
