Wow, that trade went by very quietly. Glad they're out from Epic at least i guess... scummy as hell behavior from Songtradr...

I have got to admit I canned Spotify subs years ago - but how are they managing to grow their subscriber base whn it is now going to be £11.99 in the UK? That is way, way too high for what it offers...

Spotify confirms price rise for millions worldwide, here's how much extra you'll need to pay

Your monthly Spotify Premium subscription will increase by £1 next month

GB News (www.gbnews.com)

There are probably many individual reasons people have for hating Spotify, but here are some of them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pHbS6bgmqE

There are a lot of reasons for this but mostly because music streaming has been so popular that it wiped out the market for music. Its also a huge pain in the ass to sort and organize music when nobody follows a standard when they rip music so it makes automating things a lot harder as well.

I have several thousand songs I've downloaded over the last 25 years but even with modern tools like MusicBrainz Picard or Lidarr, there's no good way to organize your collection. You wind up with a bunch of singles or oddball songs from a compilation album, from a sampler, or you download an album and half of the songs come from the US version while the other half is from a UK version of the album and the uploader forgot to include a bonus track that comes on that version. Its just a huge mess that you dont see with movies and TV because apart from things like a "Director's Cut" or "Extended Version," you know what you're getting when you download them.

Additionally, playback isnt easy either. Are you going to manually transfer hundreds of files to your phone? Stream from your home media server to your phone and use a bunch of bandwidth? You're getting tired of 30% of your songs so are you going to go through your collection one by one and erase them?

There's a huge convenience factor for services like Spotify. With movies and TV the convenience factor definitely favors the self-hosted side of things.

When I got tired of Spotify's shitty practices, I looked into other streaming services that could compare, and honestly I didn't like any other offerings. So I said fuck it, I'll just download everything and play it locally.

What made the jump easy was a service called Spotidown, I even paid for the ad free version it was so convenient. You literally copy the spotify link for songs and playlists and it let's you download it. There's a couple different services like this, that will make the switch easier.

I have got to admit I canned Spotify subs years ago - but how are they managing to grow their subscriber base whn it is now going to be £11.99 in the UK? That is way, way too high for what it offers...

Spotify confirms price rise for millions worldwide, here's how much extra you'll need to pay

Your monthly Spotify Premium subscription will increase by £1 next month

GB News (www.gbnews.com)

When I got tired of Spotify's shitty practices, I looked into other streaming services that could compare, and honestly I didn't like any other offerings. So I said fuck it, I'll just download everything and play it locally.

What made the jump easy was a service called Spotidown, I even paid for the ad free version it was so convenient. You literally copy the spotify link for songs and playlists and it let's you download it. There's a couple different services like this, that will make the switch easier.

I have got to admit I canned Spotify subs years ago - but how are they managing to grow their subscriber base whn it is now going to be £11.99 in the UK? That is way, way too high for what it offers...

Spotify confirms price rise for millions worldwide, here's how much extra you'll need to pay

Your monthly Spotify Premium subscription will increase by £1 next month

GB News (www.gbnews.com)

Out of curiosity, what is your experience/usage like with this? Spotify is very easy to justify if you heavily use some of their features because there's not a way (that I know of) to replicate them. For example:

• Shared playlists
• Universal links directly to songs
• Playback control from a second device
• Group listen/jam
• Zero overhead for search and discovery. From someone mentioning a band you can find, sample, and add to a playlist in 30s or less
• Public playlist discovery
• Easy crawling. Eg. browsing from Song -> Featured Artist -> Album -> Record label -> Related Artists etc...

From my usage, sacrificing a majority of those is a non-starter because my Spotify usage has become more than mp3 hosting and organization.

My main beef with spotify is their attempt to privatize and monopolize podcasting.

Spotify offers audio hosting and a large userbase, but does not provide rss. A few people I like are trapped in this, and I have no way to listen to their shows apart from using spotify. They refuse to understand that this is an issue, just like youtubers are ok with lock-in.

Podcasting infrastructure is not monopolized yet, like video is. It is even bigger problem for me than underpayid artists.

So boycotting, and if you undersrand that, you should too.

You guys are paying for Spotify?

Just saying; cancelling Spotify and changing to Qobuz takes five minutes. Sound quality is amazingly better, the curated recommendations are done by human beings that love music, and 'just works' with everything that Spotify does. (For us, anyway.) It's French, rather than Norwegian-American like Tidal is, if you're trying to stop spending money on everything US at the moment, too.

Is there any reasonable option that I can use on a Garmin watch standalone? I like to run without my phone and listen to a podcast and Spotify has been my go to.

I mean, you could just pay the artists for their music.

Does SpotiDown have a linux version? If not, do you know an alternative?

The podcasters that you are referring to being "trapped in this" chose to be "trapped". So don't just be upset with Spotify over it.

I have got to admit I canned Spotify subs years ago - but how are they managing to grow their subscriber base whn it is now going to be £11.99 in the UK? That is way, way too high for what it offers...

Spotify confirms price rise for millions worldwide, here's how much extra you'll need to pay

Your monthly Spotify Premium subscription will increase by £1 next month

GB News (www.gbnews.com)

For those using spofity connect: tidal has "tidal connect" as well, which is identical and exactly as supported. Qobuz unfortunately lacks this feature, to my knowledge.

I personally also prefer the tidal algo to Spotify and qobuz, but that is a matter of preference.

It's quite easy to download Tidal content on any device w/o the app as well—for educational purposes, of course.

For some, Tidal may be a better alternative. I've been quite happy with it. Others may prefer Qobuz.

I'm going to need a free (ads ok) option that I can try a little bit before I switch the whole family plan over. I tried downloading tidal and another one a little while back, and they didn't last for long. One I couldn't test without a subscription. I don't remember the problem with another. I'm strictly in the convenience camp with this one folks. I just want to press play, I don't have time to think about music otherwise.

I'm going to need a free (ads ok) option that I can try a little bit before I switch the whole family plan over. I tried downloading tidal and another one a little while back, and they didn't last for long. One I couldn't test without a subscription. I don't remember the problem with another. I'm strictly in the convenience camp with this one folks. I just want to press play, I don't have time to think about music otherwise.