Spotify fans threaten to return to piracy as music streamer introduces new face-scanning age checks in the UK
Spotify fans threaten to return to piracy as music streamer introduces new face-scanning age checks in the UK
I know bandcamp has its issues but I check there first for good flacs, I'll even settle for mp3s. I look REALLY hard. Not there? Ahoy.
Edit: Other places I try to buy first to support artists: https://www.junodownload.com/ https://us.7digital.com/
Is this just a thing for free users? I've not seen anything on there.
as an independent artist I just wanna add: the best thing you can do to support artists and bands is to buy directly / on bandcamp. spotify pays shit to artists, you need millions of listeners to get any meaningful amount of cash
of course that isn’t a sustainable option if you listen to a lot of different music. so piracy is an option that I wouldn’t mind. hell, if you like my stuff and just write to me I’ll send you mp3s for free
I already moved to piracy for music because these days Spotify isn't even giving the normal shuffle option for free users
Yeah I know it's cheap but I'm a student so..
Latest Spotify crackdowns on revanced apps and a very recent GrayJay plugin issues made me look into Spotify cracking scene. I found an app that works. But for how long?
Hmm could you tell me where, so that I can avoid that place?
Don't threaten, just do it!
I don't get why people are so stubborn to move away from corporate products.
I hate Spotify and would like to stop paying them even 1/5th of a family subscription. But I have researched alternatives and haven't found one that meets my need to manage offline files, playlists, and the current playback session across many (and I mean many) devices.
Personally, the open source community's aversion to algorithms is what's holding me back. Say what you will about them, but I've found many great songs thanks to Spotify's algo.
I've found many juat streaming themed internet radio on Radiodroid.
It's not so much an aversion to algorithms as it is a version to corporate controlled algorithms (which are often targeting highly questionable metrics).
If you're just looking for an engine that recommends you music based off your likes, the FOSS community could utilize the Music Genomoe Project to build a tool too do that based one a folder or Playlist of music provided to it. I would be surprised if there already wasn't a FOSS tool to do that.
Soulseeks recommendation algorithm is top notch, almost organic. You click the 'browse users files' button.
Already did this ages ago. Been building a collection for decades now. I'm pushing about 10k albums on the NAS. Haven't had spotify since like 2018
Same but I only keep what I really like and listen to, I put playlists on a thumb drive, almost like a cassette player, it just works.
You have more albums than I have individual files, I don't even know where I would find so much to download.
I usually just get it from YouTube currently
Soulseek
just buy releases from bands on Bandcamp
No account or subscription required.
Hundreds of internet radio stations. Some are ad-supported, some are ad-free but you can contribute to the station's patreon.
It's a load of bullshit, for a start the ISP has my details and should be able to attest my connection is rented by someone of legal age and it should be up to me what I let my children (assuming I have any) see and not see on that connection. I already had to click the "yes just give me the porn damn it" agreement on my mobile phone which was less likely to be randomly shared unmonitored and now this overbearing crap. I'll just avoid sites and services that require this.
I’ll just avoid sites and services that require this.
It's not the site wanting to do it. It's a requirement from Parliament in the UK.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Safety_Act_2023
The Online Safety Act 2023[1][2][3] (c. 50) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom to regulate online content. It was passed on 26 October 2023 and gives the relevant Secretary of State the power to designate, suppress, and record a wide range of online content that is deemed "illegal" or "harmful to children".[4][5]
The Act creates a new duty of care for online platforms, requiring them to take action against illegal content, or legal content that could be "harmful" to children where children are likely to access it. Platforms failing this duty would be liable to fines of up to £18 million or 10% of their annual turnover, whichever is higher. It also empowers Ofcom to block access to particular websites. It obliges large social media platforms not to remove, and to preserve access to, journalistic or "democratically important" content such as user comments on political parties and issues.
I mean, you don't have to go there if you want, but it's probably Parliament you want to be irritated with, not websites following British laws.
I switched to Qobuz about two weeks ago. I've been really impressed.
Is this FOSS? Is it on GitHub or can I get it from another app store like F-Droid?
Nope, it’s a Spotify alternative made in France which emphasize on paying a fair share to the artists and providing a great music quality.
No, it's 13€/month (first month free)
Don't threaten, just do it. Enshittification must end.
The only reason we have mainstream paid video streaming now is because early Netflix was genuinely better than dodgy, pop-up riddled mirrors on movie4k.to. The convenience was well worth 8 bucks a month. Same for Spotify.
Fast forward 10 years and Spotify wants me to pay 15 €, scan my face and listen to forced podcast ads AND pay extra for paywalled audiobooks that used to be free? Meet my good old friend youtube-downloader, then.
Back in the day, Grooveshark was the king before all these subscription guys showed up.
There are fans of Spotify?
It's their silly little way of saying conned subscription holders.
I could tell Spotify was trash when I first heard about it. That Spotify decided to enshitify their already bad site makes it even worse.
I'm just as mystified as you.
The only time I interact with the service is when I'm sent a link to a cool band/song and I wind up on the site. "Oh, this again." I really have zero concept of fandom for something like this.
You're way better off with your own music collection. That is what I have. I use Tauon music box it handles large playlists well.
Just a friendly reminder that the OSA was never about safeguarding kids from seeing porn.
Are the government seriously worried about a child being exposed to Break Stuff or So What on Spotify?
Its as if law makers don't learn from history. Do they not know what happened in the 90s and early 2000s when stores wouldn't sell M rated video games or CDs with mature content labels? We found ways to get around that. We would go to stores that didn't check or care, got our older sibling or friend to buy it for us. We burned copies of our friends CDs, or downloaded stuff off line with Limewire and Napster.
Same shit when there was prohibition in the US. People drove cars across the great lakes to bring alcohol into the US. People brewed there own spirits in bathtubs with radiator coils.
If people want to anomalously watch their favorite weird kinky shit or listing to music they like, they're going to find a way. And, if the easiest way to do that is through piracy, that is what they are going to do.
I mean, fuck Spotify and all that, but this one is really the UK government's doing.
And soon, this shit will come to every country. They're all drafting laws to mandate real age verification for adult content. The UK is just the first to implement it.
I mean, fuck it. At this point we might as well put our passport numbers in the HTTP headers.
Coming to a pop up near you. If they even bother to ask any more.
Its not like every industrie can somehow lobby every consumer right away when someone wants to make a new law... oh wait they do...
Actually, I don't think this is industry mandated. I don't think it's in the interest of tech and content companies to create more friction to access their services. This one seems to have more to do with the governments wanting to exert more control over online affairs, and of course, over its citizens.
The streaming services are run by shithead C-suites who think last quarter is the way it's always been. They forget the only reason most of us use their services is someone more visionary than them made it more convenient than piracy half a generation ago. Let's remind them there's an alternative.
I have like 5 alternates I would use before Spotify.
This age-verification bullshit is a fine example of how governments represent their rulers, not their citizens.
I dont understand this take. This is a "think of the children" bs that panders to (certain) citizens. Also a thinly veiled attempt at data collection of its citizens en masse
Ngl, right now I'm endevouring to acquire more music in digital file format rather than streaming right now. Spotify is great, especially when your looking for individual songs that you'll only listen to a handful of times, and for discovering music, but once you lose access to it you're pretty fucked.
At this point even the music discovery is being enshitified with AI bands taking up more and more space as low-cost filler.
The last 10 years of the internet are committing seppuku in front of us. Gird your musical loins, friend. We'll need jams in MP3 format in the dystopian hellscape that's rushing to meet us.
what are "spotify fans"? Spotify paid 150k $ for Trump's inauguration party, f them. They do not deserve my money
I left Spotify for many reasons including this. They've only proven that they do not care about artists at all. I remember before I left, many of the tracks that came up "based on my playlist" were just random AI generated crap.
Considering how much Spotify pays artists per listens, piracy is barely any different in that regard.
Wrong
Piracy is 100x more ethical
This is the most upsetting part. If you're a solo artist without a label, you need what's essentially a million listens to break minimum wage. For bands, and anyone with a label, even that's practically out of question. This shit is why everyone sells 75$ t-shirts at shows
Spotify fans?
If I am paying for my account personally, with a card in my name, what more do they need?
They want to scan your face to get as many images of people of stated ages to feed into their facial recognition system. Do not for one moment think it is for anything else.
Edit: it is like how Facebook had a 10 years ago you looked like this! Post a new comparison photo today!' Specifically because they want to know how people age for their AI shit.
Well sure, the real reason is always data harvesting.
Yeah, they want to be able to 'People that look like This listen to This' so that advertisers have more options when they are locking down commercials.
This is another step closer to requiring an ID to use the internet at all, which is exactly what the ruling class wants.
Fight back wherever you can.
Never understood Spotifys appeal. Youtube has always been better imo.
The few dumb artists who only release music there and nowhere else, the better streaming quality (I guess? I've read it somewhere), and slightly better at suggesting/categorizing music genres. I don't use it because all the time I'd see people cry "I wish this was on Spotify!!!" in a YT comment section, and YT music had everything I wanted. Plus YT free is way more bearable that Spotify free, and I use ReVanced now anyway.
But yeah Spotify always sucked to me and I'm tired of those who shame others for not using it. The "Apple green bubble shaming" of the music world.
Who could have guessed this very obvious a most expected outcome?! Not Spotify, I guess.
Bandcamp, Soulseek, Navidrome, ListenBrainz.
Has been a pretty solid Spotify-replacement stack.
Seriously, fuck Spotify and anyone else using that error-prone, intrusive, insecure bullshit.
Where is Spotify error prone? I dont use it that much, but I havent encountered a bug once.
I use it a lot, and have been for 10 years or so. I have never had any sort of error. It has simply always worked exactly like it's supposed to.
I don't know anything about it being intrusive or insecure, and definately need a source on that, but it's possible those criticisms are valid, but again, need a damn source. As is, the person you commented on has lost all cridibilty, so I'm inclined to err on the side of caution, and assume they don't know what they're talking about.
You can say a lot of Spotify and of Apple, but the iOS app of Spotify is basically bug free and has been bug free for more than a decade now for me. The webclient has been buggy for me though.
what's even the point of age gating "explicit" music?
"oh no! "Speak To Me" by Pink Floyd has the fuck word in it! can't let my kids hear it!"
We live in a rural part of Canada that has been left behind by modern times. Mostly by the choice of the residents. I grew up during satanic panic. It was crazy here. My wife and I let our kids listen to anything they want. They always have. They're 10 and 12.
Their friends often comment about swear words and "sex, drugs and rock and roll" themes of the music they listen too. As an old man I get to regale them with stories of how crazy the Christians were over heavy metal and punk rock when I was a kid, including their grandma.
Now I yell "you're gonna go to hell!" As a joke to them every time their friends bring it up and I am around.
You're parenting the right way. Let our kids know about our past and how it compares to theirs, live it. And joking with my kids and their friends without immediately jumping to "that's bullying", you can tell my kids are a bit happier than the rest because everything is a joke to them. I applaud you.
“you’re gonna go to hell!”
if where all the "christians" go is heaven, then i'd rather go to hell
My parents only let me listen to Spanish language music when I was little, so I wouldn't understand the cursing. 😂
I've been cursing a lot lately, and I blame what I listened to in Spotify. By no means was it because I was playing my pirated Eminem music all weekend 🤣🤣
Just get me the kid bop version
I mean, the Spotify CEO invests in AI weaponry being used to murder kids in Gaza so the morally correct thing to do would be to leave Spotify over that.
Do you have any other good alternative to recommend? Nice quality, not too much tracking, low/fair price, nice recommendation algorithm, has lots of musics...
I am trying the following services the next few months: Tidal, deezer, qobuz and pirating
Unfortunately most of the major players are involved in some sort of evilness as far as I am aware. Spotify/Google/Apple are all pretty unethical companies. Personally, I have made the decision to cut out the middle man and sail the seven seas while also supporting the artists I like by being a vinyl wanker and going to gigs.
As for streaming services (I am very happy to be corrected here because I am not certain) AFAIK both tidal and qobuz are good alternatives. Qobuz is based in France so your data will be safer but Tidal is a bit cheaper.
yt-dlp --extract-audio --audio-quality 3 --audio-format ogg
You can probably get a pirate hat online for a few bucks. And there are plenty of discoverability systems not based on integration with a subscription service.
Soundcloud lets you play any song you want at any time, even on the free tier, and when you ask it to play a playlist, it only plays songs on the playlist.
You can have recommendations from an algorithm if you choose, but it's encouraged rather than enforced.
There are a lot more independent artists on it, and fewer big labels, or at least it feels that way because it doesn't seem to prioritise big labels over some person I've never heard of.
Spotify has an annoy-users-until-they-pay model. If you deliberately piss me off, you're not getting any of my money. Soundcloud just has ads.
a NAS
I don't mind giving my date of birth to all the services I already pay for with credit card but face scanning? That's just creepy. Fuck off.
Date of birth (with some other details) is kind of a sensitive information in the right hands
given that governments are now starting to make certain protests illegal, definitely not as bad as having your face in a database and your behaviour being mapped for suspicious illegal activity like criticising genocide.
You're right and I'd go a bit further: It's none of their business what your age even is, they need to know only one bit for their legal duties, over or under age of majority.
Basically what is really needed is a certificate of majority digitally signed by the government bound to some identifier, email address or full name. All this uploading faces or ID card scans is ridiculous.
Even using a credit card for something like Spotify is already giving out more information than is needed.
It is 1970-01-01 like me, no?
it's 2000-01-01 for me
April 20th, 1969? Anyone?
deleted by creator
There's a wide gap between "travelling to another country" and "listening to music."
I'm not trying to go on holiday to Spotify
fair point but given the direction US and UK are headed, something legal you do online can be illegal in a couple years with a face attached to that activity. What you mention is also bad (your face being in a face recognition database) but not as bad as that being attached to tons of behavioural data collected about you.
I'm returning to car boot sales to buy cubic meters of CDs.
That, and BandCamp.
All my CD's got ripped (and re-ripped) to mp3 in increasing bitrates as storage increased. Bandcamp is where almost all my musicians release anyway, and I've got over a thousand albums through them, happy in the knowledge I support the artists in a fairly direct way.
Sure, I've still got an Apple Music sub (which sucks at times because licensing means a compilation gets split into several albums when whatever deal happens in the background expires). But I'll easily find new music, grab it and give it a go, and if I like it enough I'll dig them out on bandcamp. At some point I'm gonna quit that platform.
Planning to get a modern mp3 player to go offline with my music at some point. Or maybe rebuild the old iPod and put Rockbox on it and hook it up to my linux desktop.
A VPN is a must if you wanna go down this route
Soulseek (and I recommend the Nicotine+ client over the official one) is a fantastic source for all music in all formats, and particularly obscure off-label shit you won't get anywhere else. You'll even have some success finding audiobooks there, although this is very hit-and-miss. I wish audiobook pirates would use it more heavily. It's P2P, like Napster used to be. You'll have to share something or you'll get auto-ignored by most users.
RuTracker is a great non-private/non-ratio-monitoring torrent site for music (does require a free account though). I've never had a single torrent from there that wasn't seemingly seeded by a Godzilla's dick. Obviously it's in Russian, but there's really no difficulty navigating around. The only thing you might struggle with is signing up for an account, but just have your favourite translation tool open in another tab 👍
If you don't mind slow download speeds (from the likes of RapidGator), I enjoy Exystence. It's a blog that shares link to the latest albums and offers both lossy and lossless versions. Nice RSS subscription to have.
If you do find yourself using RapidGator a lot, don't waste money buying a sub directly from them, it's insanely pricey. Instead, get a reseller like Real Debrid, which costs like 10% as much and also covers you for about two-dozen other file hosters. I highly recommend putting as much distance between your credit card and the company as possible, just for safety reasons. Using PaySafeCard is fine, as Real Debrid will never see your details in that case. I don't have any specific reason to be weary of them, I just don't trust random/small/hitherto unheard of companies as a rule.
All good advice. I used to find a lot of stuff by entering "site:rutracker.org" behind my query in my favorite search engine - don't know if that still works but I never needed an account there...
Here's a reliable, free VPN: https://riseup.net/en/vpn
Remember to donate to them tough - and btw. they are actually running their services for radical left activists, not filesharing... so I guess it would be cool to please not strain their servers too much.
It’s P2P, like Napster used to be. You’ll have to share something or you’ll get auto-ignored by most users.
Oh, reminds me, you should also sort your share. I once got march-horny, added some German marches to my download queue (no judging pls), and then got a PM from the guy sharing them that I should keep my collection in order. And yes, the jerk ignored me.
Also not really p2p, there is a central server. The downloads are p2p.
RuTracker is a great non-private/non-ratio-monitoring torrent site for music
It was ratio-monitoring, that's how it became great. Just after being banned in Russia they decided that those who try hard enough to even reach there can be trusted to behave.
It's not only for music, it's for everything.
I've been using RuTracker for years and it usually has all the music I need. And it has more than music, great site.
Personally I could never get into the whole Spotify and Pandora thing. I want to listen to what I want to listen to and when I want to listen to it, without ridiculous restrictions and rules. YouTube has honestly been the far better choice for music for me.
Having a collection of music in files that I own has been my go-to for years. Currently VLC says I have 701 hours of music in files on my phone. That's only 29.2 days worth.
Man, I had around 10 gigs of vintage mp3s that is created since the days of Limewire/Napster. Uploaded it all to Google Music and lost track of the external I'd had the collection stored on. Whatever, it's all in the cloud now.
Then it wasn't.
I really, Really, need to back up all of my Gdocs, just in case that service ceases to be.
(I wonder if ancient crunchy low bitrate mp3s will be an aesthetic, the way that dusty vinyl or worn out tapes are?)
I used to do that and I do still have a lot of music from that time on my computer, but somewhere along the line I stopped downloading music and just started listening to it on YouTube whenever I thought of something in particular.
It's mostly the discovery aspect, it's easy to find new and emerging artists through these services, and they make playing that music very convenient. YouTube does have some of it with YouTube music but I've not found the algorithm to be as good as Spotify or Tidal
I used to use and praise Spotify and their algorithm, but I was starting to find that it would insist on playing the same 20 or 50 songs regardless of the playlist I was trying to generate music suggestions from. I read a rumor somewhere that it was a way to decrease the load on their servers and rely more on the cached songs already on the device, and got sick of that enough to switch to Pandora after over 10 years of Spotify
Pandora is sadly not available in NL and if I saw it correctly Pandora is also America which does mean that it will turn to shit somewhere in the future.
Buy and store your own music. HDTracks and 7Digital both sell high quality DRM free downloads, or you can just swing by your local Walmart or Dollar Store and grab some CDs to rip.
Or you could go sailing, that's always an option...
Libraries can have pretty good CD collections too
As much as I'd like to do that, I have listened to over 7000 artists on Spotify.
I simply don't have the time (or money) to look those up individually.
So I can either choose to have worse experience, or stick with Spotify for now.
There is a cost to convenience ratio. Each individual has to decide based on their own ethics and preferences whether they're willing to sacrifice their own personal experience for the right of ownership. I personally chose to cancel my Spotify subscription some time ago and start buying digital downloads and CDs again.
Age verification is a great success I see. I feel so much safer now with this shit in place so kids can't watch porn...
...on major/regulated sites only.
The worst was watching porn on spotify...
*so that the government can say kids won't watch porn.
Rule 1 of computers that everyone who has taught an ICT class learns - if little Timmy wants titties, he finds a way.
It has absolutely nothing to do with kids watching porn.
Of course.
God forbid people teach their kids sex/getting off is a drug and can be abused.
Who taught you sex is a drug? As long as words mean their definitions, it's categorically not. Plus it's probably kinda harmful to pile on the stigma already surrounding sex by conflating it with drugs and all the stigma that comes with that.
Hopefully I'm wrong, but it's kinda giving a nofap pseudoscience red flag to me.
Parents definitely should be teaching their kids about this stuff at the appropriate time, but they should stick to the facts.
In Sweden pretty much anybody has Bank Id, an app which is connected to a bank account and which can function as a valid identification.
App belongs a private company, but it's still trustworthy and everybody can sign government docs with that.
This is how you should do age verification, through a third party app, not like any site will get your id/picture to just end in their DBs ready to be stolen.
Every government should create an app for the online id, I don't get why this seems so hard to achieve.
It's super trustworthy bro I swear
Credit cards should roughly do the same, but both of those aren't "great" for privacy and really exists to make profiles of adults while pretending to negate the need for parents to parent (the only real way to reduce/prevent harms of kids witnessing age inappropriate media). Your ability to do financial transactions shouldn't be tied to your speech or content you view.
The thing is, UK has had age restrictions for years on its mobile platforms. So if you want to look at porn on your phone, you have to unlock it on your subscription. And to do this, they use youre credit card. The thing that they already have. Its easy and swift. And more to the point, only one company has your data. As it stands now, you are supposed to give your personal details to every single company in the world.
Over the past 20 years, how many massive hacks have we seen that leak email addresses and passwords? Are how about all those woman that get their iclouds hacked and their nude photos uploaded? I can think of at least 10 instances in the past 10 years. And now its going to be all of our driving licences, passports, other photo IDs? And the law also requires that they scan ALL private messages. Thats end to end encryption fucked. And god forbid your girlfriend calls you "Daddy" in a sext, you get the cops knocking on your door treating you like Jimmy Saville.
The shit is insane, and people arent anywhere near outraged enough. Its coming to Europe next, if reports are to be believed. So you lot should ALL start kicking up fuck about it now.
Tidal is pretty good these days. Qobuz too
And Bandcamp
Bandcamp is owned by union busters. Only use on Bandcamp Friday for best effect.
Tidal is pretty harsh on vpns and my whole network is behind something most of the time :(
I'm having a pretty good time with Qobuz. Their curated collections are actually really good and I've found a lot of new stuff in there; it's not the "here's what the record label is shoveling this week" like on Spotify. Also, the high bitrate stuff... I hate to admit it, but it really does sound better.
do they have a lot of german music too, or are they focused on american / french music?
We switched to Deezer about a month ago and are liking it. Flow seems to find music I like way better than Spotify's DJ or "for you" playlists.
Let this be a reminder to never turn away from piracy. It needs to constantly be in the background and if any company gets like they always do, then it comes back out. But if we let the knowledge fade away then it's impossible to rebuild it.
Piracy preserves media.
Piracy preserves art.
Piracy makes sure, that future generations still have access to the creations of humanity.
Data hoarding is a service to the public.
I initially perceived piracy similarly to how or perceive reading about archaeology and such, so the fact that someone is sincere in hating p2p copying and calling it immoral just felt preposterous.
Yet now it seems plenty of normies will agree. Then go listen to something they didn't pay for on YouTube or Facebook or whatever, because "everybody uses that". What "everybody uses" is fine, see. What they condemn me the pirate for is using ed2k, torrents and such other technologies. Even when I'm literally downloading public domain stuff or abandonware.
"Keep circulating the tapes!"
It doesn't take much for media though to parade out the "lil guy and change the opinion of people about how your basically attacking small indie creators"
What do you think of Qobuz? From what I've seen, it's got more stuff than bandcamp (at least from my library). It seems to pay the artists well too.
I just use Pandora for radio and youtube for specific songs.
Use Nicotine+ to download music for free.
ah from shady porn sites, like spotify and wikipedia. definitely protect kids from porn there. /s
Is wikipedia on the list? I see reddit is, lol. We might see an influx soon.
not yet, but the wikimedia foundation has been fighting against it expecting that it would be a class 1 site and require it.
So I feel like I'm now hearing more successful pushes for censorship through this stuff.
Just last week I learned how Texas has a bill that makes it so if anyone ever invested in green technology that they wouldn't be allowed
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/08/24/texas-boycott-companies-fossil-fuels/
Never stopped. Get your own mp3s kids.
I know so many people who are so ride-or-die for never having to manage the file space for their own music library and they don't seem particularly less stressed.
I think they just cannot live without an algorithm to recommend new music to them
I think they just cannot live without an algorithm to recommend new music to them
Oh, piss off. I just want to financially support artists for making something beautiful I enjoy. Streaming is the easiest because of space constraints. I still buy the CDs of my most favourite albums, but I cannot stress enough how great it is to NOT have to rip the MP3s every time, make sure the tags are good, etc.
It's convenient.
If you don't like Spotify's new ID check, kill your Spotify account and use an alternative - Tidal and Qobuz are both excellent.
they just cannot live without an algorithm to recommend new music to them
They might want to try LMS and its https://github.com/epoupon/lms?tab=readme-ov-file#music-discovery
me basically
An algorithm for them:
set rand [clock microseconds]
set len [mpc_pl_len]
set to [expr {$rand%$len}]
mpc_pl_jmp $to
Do it.
It's easy. Just use a Youtube-to-MP3 converter.
This is cool if you’re okay with low fidelity music.
After years of lossless and headphones to distinguish, this sounds like fingernails on a chalk board.
It’s akin to using a tape deck to aux adapter in an old car or recording a tape off of an old boombox radio lol. I’d rather listen to nothing.
You can download FLACs using Nicotine+.
I believe you so this is a genuine question: did you ever test your kbps threshold for being able to distinguish from lossless?
I remember in the MP3 and Winamp days, I was convinced I could detect anything below 192 kbps. Obviously depends on the content, and I’m implying 44 kHz minimum.
Back to Piracy! ✊🏴☠️
Really though? It isn't necessary. Use Bandcamp, you probably have half your artists covered. The rest - one of those Spotify alternatives: Tidal? Qobuz?
Personally I do selfhost btw. Jellyfin, though I heard of a better alternative specifically for music recently - and forgot the name again 😥 Something lowercase, like a verb... "normalize" or some such. Navidrome! Thanks @0konomiyaki@aussie.zone
more like 3% bandcamp availability. i know this is a linux/trans/selfhost/overpayeddev/westeu/foss echochamber, but im not wasting electricity and money on selfhost if a 1tb sd card in my phone can do the same thing offline.
Navidrome maybe? But I use jellyfin + symfonium myself. All my music is either bandcamp or used CDs. Started collecting music late last year and my entire collection is legally sourced now. No piracy required. Hardest part was starting very small and building the collection over time.
Thanks for recommending Navidrome. It looks really interesting.
I was using Spotify, but switched to Spotube. After Spotube was crippled, I was kind of aimless. I really liked having my music available on my cellphone and desktop. It looks like Navidrome will fill the gap perfectly.
You'd mentioned ripping CDs. Would you have some software, you'd recommend (Windows or Linux)? Preferably in FLAC.
I haven't looked at ripping software in a few years, but it was kind of tedious to set up and very manual to get the proper metadata, genres, and cover art. I've got a hundred CDs and that'll take awhile....
I want to leave Windows behind... abcde seems the way to go for Linux.
On Windows I use EAC, it's great but requires a little work to set up. There are a lot of tutorials for it if course.
abcde for Linux. It's in your repositories. Set it up once the way you want, then it's just: insert CD, enter abcde, repeat ad nauseam. You could even tell your system to auto-trigger it on every CD insert.
Don't know if it's still what's recommended, but I use foobar2000 for ripping CDs to FLAC.
Go to shows, buy the albums from the merch tables and use the events (to the best of your individual ability) as a means to connect with like minded anti-fascists.
That is of course even better. Just wish any band I'm interested in would ever come to play this quiet corner sigh
I have Jellyfin for movies/tv, and gonic for music!
Bandcamp is the best
Harmonize?
Or you know you could punish parents for not parenting. Like if kids are watching porn and caught and if it's actually against some law then go after the parents.
It's not hard to teach parents how to implement a filtering DNS. But no, countries think they need to be the nanny.
"Protecting children" is just the pretext under which governments can sell increased surveillance. The fact that there are more effective ways they could act to protect children, yet governments everywhere continue to push for ID checks and monitoring online activity, shows that the aim isn't what they say it is.
Don't forget trying to kill e2e encryption like what the EU wants to do, both to "catch criminals" and "protect the children"
https://www.theparliamentmagazine.eu/news/article/the-end-of-encryption-as-we-know-it
Protect from what? I mean seriously. Most of us (guys at least) probably saw porn way before we were old enough and most of us probably didn't end up as rapists or pedophiles. It's not a good thing by any means, but it really feels like we're trying harder to keep sexual material from entering their brains than we are trying to keep them fed, clothed, educated, housed, healthy, loved, and physically safe. Of all the things I mentioned the last seven have a monumentally greater affect on their success and well-being as an adult.
That's just the pretext they give to justify it. The real reason is surveillance. Now they have a way to confidently tie your accounts to your individual identity. And most of these solutions use third parties which will then sell that data as well, so now anyone can tie your account to you without you ever knowing.
Even if the government is barred from surveilling citizens in these ways, third parties aren't, and the government can just buy that information, no warrant needed anymore.
And these laws never stop at porn, it's drugs, LGBTQ information, etc. and they can always easily add additional things later with little fanfare.
This is it. Theyve been going after encrypted messaging apps for a long time, ig they realized theyre not getting anywhere and figured to just hit it head on.
The internet has always circumvented this kind of shit, just look at TPB. The ones who are getting really beaten up by this is the older generations and the ones lacking technical know-how.
It’s not about kids and never has been, it’s about surveillance of the internet and the death of anonymity.
As a parent, that's my take as well. If my kids break a law, I should be the one to fix it. Don't do my parenting for me...
I feel like I'm standing between two really stupid positions here.
On the one hand, just let parents teach their kids is basically a state's rights argument. A lot of parents won't teach their kids, so... do we care? Does this matter? We should probably mount a stronger effort then.
On the other hand, we don't need the government to get involved to stop 9 year olds from seeing titties—we just don't! Websites the world over have implemented 2-factor-authentication more or less by themselves (and probably because they want to spy on you). And, no one says the word r----- anymore because if you ever do, a bunch of anti-bullying PSAs will be really annoying about it in your replies.
Not every social problem needs to be solved by swinging around Thor's hammer. We do have other means.
Going against the parents is impopular and would make the parents vote against you in the next elections.
They could just offer a child protection browser where parents could set to child mode and require adult material offering sites to check if user has something like “attention not 18 year old user” in the headers.
Would be way cheaper, I think.
Spotify fans
“Fans”?
that's like saying Amazon fans really lol
Well.... ...gestures to apple fans...
Apple fans. Spotify fans. Same shit.
I showed it something else with cheeks and now I'm on 15 watchlists.
I just use spot-dl to download my music.
Already using Spotify to pirate music.
ReVanced? Or a Spotify downloader?
Just a web-based downloader, I’m patient and simple:p
Zotify
I have a non-uk account but at the first sight of age verification I will delete my account.
Just do it.
Flac > Spotify.
I keep getting advice of Flac > MP3 320 kbs.
I can't tell the difference to tell you the truth. Is it really worth it for audiophiles considering how much more space Flac files takes up?
I'd say it's definitely worth it.
Our brains shouldn't have to work harder to listen to lossy music, which is what happens even if you can't reliably perceive it.
Listening to music on acid (a lot) has really shaped my views of it and how even the most minor things can have a major impact on the final experience.
I'm not an audiophile though and can enjoy music in a wide range of formats and quality; I just prefer FLAC almost anywhere.*
*some songs sound 'better,' or at least more iconic in a lower quality
It could be the quality of your headphones.
I'm not an audiophile, but back-in-the-day I bought some analog "sennheiser studio monitors" as opposed to "just headphones".
I actually returned the first one and exchanged them, because when I listened to a live recorded CD, I kept hearing loud "pops" that I didn't hear with my "regular headphones". I assumed they were defective.
The exchanged sennheiser had the same "pop" in this CD. It turns out, most "regular headphones" didn't have the same depth in sound frequency as studio monitors and the "pops" were accidental artifacts that were mixed into the CD.
For other CD's, I'd hear telephones ringing and sirens in the background.
Eventually, I got use to it. Then after a few years, I replaced my CD collection with mp3's... and I could tell a different in songs/albums I was really familiar with. The base wasn't as deep, the high sounds weren't as high, I didn't hear telephones ringing in the background.
I had the same sennheiser, it was just that the nature of mp3's "flattened" the music.
Now, with Bluetooth and the disappearance of 3.5 mm jacks, there are too many layers of digital conversion happening. I've given up... and now just have some cheap ear buds I listen to.
There are online test you can do to see if you can successfully identify the FLAC from the MP3. I did one and failed miserably.
They say that if you have a very good DAC, amplifier and speaker / headphone system (as well as a good ear for audio), that you can hear it. But I would do the test first to see if it applies to your situation.
It is better, but it depends on the audio for the difference. Also, it would probably be hard to hear the difference playing over a phones speakers. The weakest link in the chain is always the problem you notice the most. Having a good setup for amp/speakers and you can hear the difference. Using Bluetooth earbuds to mow the lawn, it doesn’t matter. Sitting in my living room on my nice stereo, I notice.
The space it takes up is negligible in the modern era of cheap SSDs (and even cheaper hard drives).
The main benefit is not in being able to hear a difference from 320Kbps mp3 (I know I sure can't), but knowing that you can re-encode the file as many times as you want, without any quality loss (assuming you're going from lossless to lossless, of course). Or create an mp3 from the flac file at any time, with the same quality as a ripped CD.
So basically FLAC is great if you produce/edit/re-encode your music files often. If you don't do any of that (and have no plans to future-proof your music collection), then 320Kbps MP3 is more than adequate for your needs.
Go to Opus 128 kbps. About the same as MP3 320 or better.
Flac files contain orders of magnitude more data. As for the listening experience it's only ever going to be as good as the speakers at the other end. You'll also need a wired connection to said speakers in order to avoid some compression over Bluetooth. (Unless there's some newfangled lossless BT protocol that I'm unaware of.)
yeh
They will be blown away by the quality increase they get🤭
(Pirate tend to share/prefere best quality content, while Spotify offers only 256kbit mp3 as far as I remember (or is it 320kbi now?))
Most people can't tell the difference between 128 kbit MP3 and high quality recordings.
most people
Many people are ok with hearing music out of a phone speaker. Audiophiles don't necessarily care about how "most people" perceive sound quality.
Idk man. Show someone some cymbals on a 128kbps track and it sounds like someone crumpling a plastic bag via a tin can connected to a string. In contrast flac is going to sound much more natural.
I'd agree with you regarding 320 and flac - most people are gonna have a hard time differentiating.
i didn't care about just grabbing the 720p 600mb video file back when i was watching on a little laptop screen.
it does not hold up on the big stuff.
kinda same applies to audio?
crap sounds like crap on a phone speaker, but so does hi quality stuff.
noise and low dynamics are more noticeable on more powerful, louder gear.
just spitballing here, not an expert!
How about 48 kbit MP3? And more than that, for plenty of recordings that's sufficient.
Spotify uses vorbis if I'm not mistaken, not mp3. Mp3 sounds like absolute ass, even at 320.
Edit: why the downvotes? Spotify does use vorbis. Mp3 has weird artefacts, even at 320.
Even if your not in the UK you should go back to piracy. Steal from corporations as frequently as possible
LOL 'Spotify fans' buch of losers
ngl, Spotify has become hot ass these days
My favorite part is when the AI DJ plays some dumb song it's previously served up repeatedly, and then tells me how much I like it because I listen to it so often. I'd never choose to listen to it on my own, and the only reason I hear it is because Spotify keeps cramming it down my throat.
Spotify recommends based on your listening habits. You base your listening habits on Spotify recommendations. Ergo, Spotify recommends based on its own recommendation. Ourobouros achieved.
Yeah, that was what finally pished me over the edge a few years back. Switched to Tidal and have been very content with with it. They pay artists better, the sound quality is better, and the dily discovery playlist throws some serious curve balls. I have wide ranging tastes so it blends a few genres for a few weeks before moving onto something else, and it has introduced me to some AWESOME music that i would have never encountered otherwise.
Why would you use the Ai dj to feed you songs, when the normal daily mixes, daylist, etc are giving you the same songs without the fake personality injected between them? I literally do not understand. I'm open to your thoughts - it's just that it seems like an alien perspective.
...return? LOL
One more reason if you're still buying music, to start buying physical albums again while you still can.
CDs aren't age-gated and you can rip them to FLAC yourself. Vinyl also isn't age-gated because it's analog, and although it's a longer and more drawn-out process than just ripping a CD which will only take a few minutes as because vinyl is an analog format, you gotta record it in real-time, and then manually split the raw waveform up into separate tracks, manually input metadata, and manually generate a cuesheet from the split-up tracks before finally exporting*, you can still needle-drop LPs to FLAC as well.
*This isn't as big an issue with 78s, 45s, and EPs (which are 33-1/3rpm singles last time I thought) as it is with LPs as there isn't as much playback time on them, and at least 45s and EPs are singles rather than a full album like with LPs so you only have one song per side, and I assume 78s are singles as well, as 78s max out at 5min per side.
+1 for vinyl. The album art, inserts, etc. really adds something to the experience that I had long forgotten over the years of downloading and streaming music.
CDs still do that to some extent, especially with indie releases, and also higher-end physical formats like SACD and DVD-Audio tend to have a lot of extras packed in with them as they're typically considered to be special editions of a given album, but both SACD and DVD-Audio are DRM-encumbered unlike normal CDs and of course analog formats where DRM doesn't apply, so trying to get them on a PC will be harder if not impossible especially as the DSD codec that SACD uses has particularly nasty DRM shipped with it IIRC.
There's also true novelty formats like MD, DCC, or even in the case of Jeremy Heiden's Blue Wicked, Elcaset of all things, and Blue Wicked was legit the first album to ever be released on that format, 40+ years after it faded from public consciousness.
Do it
Jokes on them. My m4a library reaches 1000's easily
Thousands of bytes!
I’m confused. Is every app in the UK requiring face scanning? I thought it was just adult content.
According to the article :
However, the platform does have certain features that are aimed at mature users.
In Spotify's case, you may be asked to verify your age if you try to "access some Spotify content and features, like Music videos that are labeled as 18+ by rightsholders". This could also apply to podcasts that discuss mature content and songs with explicit lyrics.
Bluesky app also seems to require this for some features.
If something's finally going to force the industry to curb its bullshit, this might just be it. Once you annoy normal people, it's all over. They seriously underestimate how many people would just stop using Spotify, or Youtube, or whatever other platform it is
It would have to get pretty bad before people would be willing to forgo convenience.
That stuff is a nasty drug, very addictive and people will sell everything they got to keep it. They'd rather pay and arm and a leg instead of learning a little technology so they could help themselves.
People will slave themselves to the company that lets them be the most ignorant person possible but still enjoy the fun of technology.
Could you imagine if all mobile devices stopped using face recognition to unlock phones? I'd be willing to bet that a big chunk of people wouldn't be able to use them at all. I'm surprised that google and apple haven't started charging extra for that.
While I want to agree. I feel like normal people are still not gonna give a shit.
Every company has learned that any friction to using your site is a bleed of customers. There are a lot of people who will just not use your site if it requires a lengthy validation process. If there was some kind of identity system that sites would integrate with like login.gov, then people would ignore this, but I don't think the UK has such a thing that every site can use, so a lot of people will not use the site and over time fall to piracy or illegitimate sites.
They won't give a shit, but they're also lazy and won't bother setting up an account that requires ID and photo verification. Too much work. Maybe we'll even see somewhat of a recurrence of brick and mortar stores that sells music, movies, porn, etc.
People underestimate that most "regular" people are a product and exist for something other than humanity.
“Normal” people would put in their child’s social security number if it meant $2.99 off their subscription.
I'm not convinced. Look at how Netflix made bank on killing off "sharing is caring."
People are lazy, and if they want their easy Spotify fix, I fear they'll hand over their information and move on with their day.
Bring it on! Sail the high seas. Yargh!
Do it! I challenge you! People nowdays won't drop an every day thing just like that.
Does anyone have a good podcast app to replace Spotify that will keep track of progress across multiple devices? Bonus points if I can self host.
Antennapod with gPodderersync & Nextcloud? There are podcast apps for Nextcloud to play in the browser.
I use audiobookshelf. Obviously for audiobooks mainly, but it does podcasts and it works well.
I always used podcast player. Never had any issues before.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.podcast.podcasts
Ha! Fuck. That.
Never had a Spotify account, and I never will. I have apple one, but Im kinda forced into that because of the other half. But if Apple pulls this shit, Im not paying for it. I VPN everything, but I still wont support any company that complies with this bullshit with my money.
Im not even in the UK and im still going to cancel due to this. Thanks spotify, fuck you :)
Well I don't think Spotify wants to do it, but it's probably a better option than abandoning their UK users.
I assume the other streaming options will do the same in the UK market, so probably better to look at self-hosted alternatives, if you're into that
What are they supposed to do? Pull away from the UK?
I need a cheap mp3 player
Not sure about all those political experiments in the internet. Maybe they just don't like HTTP ? Maybe it's time to make HTTP to join BBS ?
Way easier to arrr!
They dont care about music, they want to make sure you are not listening to podcast they dont like.
Arr!!! Me hearty
Should never have left it behind to be honest.