The ads urge listeners to “join the mission to protect America” by becoming U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, but users of the music streaming giant have taken to social media and Spotify’s website to complain, and announce their withdrawal from the audio platform.
Fine, I’ll be that guy - if you’re not already boycotting Spotify for half-a-dozen other reasons, you’re probably not going to for this.
I was subscribed just so my Music Assistant could have my playlists and my kids liked the ease. I’ve exported those lists and just canceled.
I stand corrected.
I’ve been wanting to for a few years now as the service gets worse (where is my playlist radio?) but have been complacent. This is the last thing to push me over my limit. I’ll be transferring my decade-worth of playlists this weekend.
Nahh, all those other reasons are kind of hidden from the average person who doesn’t read music or tech news, most of them probably have no idea that Spotify sucks. I’m sure there’s even people hearing the ad right after witnessing ICE violence firsthand
I fall into this camp. I’ve been using YT Music more than Spotify for a while now and I haven’t paid attention to any controversy since they added Joe’s podcast. “Recruiting for ICE”, however, is one of those things that will spur me to instant action.
.
I mean I’ve been feeling the urge to for awhile now, it’s just a lot of work to move the family to something else. This is renewing my interest in sitting down and spending the time to do it.
You say that, but me moving my family plan over to Qobuz barely even interrupted the album that we were listening to - just waited for the track to end, and then switched services. Much better sound quality, much better curated recommendations, no more supporting fascist arseholes. No time like the present, do it.
Yeah I just have to sit down and move everyone’s playlists over.
Absolutely. People are insanely slow.
Also often only leaving a service or similar if it personally affects them negatively, otherwise just seeming angry but literally changing nothing.
I was thinking of re-subscribing, but I am probably not going to now.
Does it count as boycotting if I use the service for free with an ad blocker?
You never know what the final straw will be for any given individual
Welcome warmly anyone who joins the fold – no chastisement, only positive feedback for a positive step.
I quit Spotify the first time they refused to deplatform fascists.
Same. Cancelled since the gave Joe Roegen a platform for his fascist propaganda.
I wouldn’t say Rogan is a propagandist, just a convenient idiot that is a platform for fascists. Very slight distinction, but tables with Nazi’s making it a moot point.
I only use Spotify to get song/album URLs (web client search w/o login), which I then pass to spotdl to download them off YouTube. Now I have all the music I could ever want, offline and without ads.
What in tarnation? Thank you!
Holy shit what a find. I knew stuff like this existed, but I never knew I could install it in one command and download dozens of songs with one more. WOW. Thank you kind stranger!
Oh hell yeah, using it now.
How much storage space do you need for your entire downloaded music library, that’s the only concern I have about downloading music
Depends on how much music you want. I have about 3500 songs at the highest quality free YouTube will let me download songs at, and that comes to around 15GB.
I have around 12,000 tracks, 70GB.
it’s not 2008 anymore. audio file storage space is not a concern, we have larger storage drives now
Followup – do you know if I should use my VPN when doing this? I have been doing that for torrents for a while, but I wasn’t sure if Spotify, YouTube, or anyone else will reach out with cease and desists like has happened to me with torrents in the past
Also now I’m wondering if the URLs on Spotify identify me if I’m logged in (I have a bunch of music saved in playlists and libraries but I cancelled my subscription so it’s in free mode)
but I wasn’t sure if Spotify, YouTube, or anyone else will reach out with cease and desists like has happened to me with torrents in the past
Right now Google is more focused on breaking the library that powers downloading from YouTube (yt-dlp). They haven’t succeeded yet, but that’s definitely an easier path for them than prosecuting piracy.
I doubt Spotify will try to punish you for this since the content isn’t actually being stolen from them directly.
That makes sense. Thank you for this response.
No VPN needed. The media being downloaded is coming from YouTube.
So as far as they know, I’m just playing their music from YT Music my browser in free mode?
Why would you uninstall the app? Cancel your subscription and use Xmanager to get their premium for free. There, that way, you don’t support them with anything and still enjoy the service. 😄
When I checked that a few weeks ago it was patched and not working, was I mistaken or did it get updated?
Works no problem. They’ve just changed how it works slightly, but it works fine. It now just directs you at a link to download and already patched app. You can still choose any version you want. It has this long ad before you can get to the link, but you can either block it with blokada or watch it to support the devs.
It’s hard to find an ethical player in the media space, especially the streaming space. It’s hard to even agree on what that would look like and how it would work.
Having said that, it’s clear that Spotify isn’t it. From the first time the client paused an ad when I muted my laptop volume I knew the enshittification was coming. I’ve been Spotify free for a few years now, but decline to recommend my current solution because it’s not much better. When I have time again, I’ll be sorting my local music library and physical media.
ICE ads would have sent me over the top. That would be a FAST cancel from me.
It’s hard to find an ethical player in capitalism.
I’ve not used Spotify since they provided Rogan with a platform, ICE ads was the next logical step for that fascist friendly platform.
Happy to say that I’ve never used Spotify outside of closing the tab when I accidentally click a link that sends me there.
YouTube (Google from Google music) showed the same ads, too
Fuck! Now I have to cancel my subscription! This sucks I guess time to set up music on my media server
Good idea. Also give Qobuz a try. I did that and it went very well.
This is the way! I did exactly this (with Plexamp) and I never want to go back.
Jokes on you I never used Spotify.
For real though, the only thing I use Spotify for is uploading my own music. The only reason I don’t remove it is because I only get like 5 listens a month and they all come from my mom. She already got upset that I deleted it off soundcloud earlier this year and I really don’t wanna bum her out. Now, if I was actually good at making music and was actually making money I’d remove that shit today and go to Bandcamp.
Good, then you cost them more money in storage than they earn from hosting it.
Is this what we all should do? Just make shitty music and upload it to fuck with their storage?
However, if you need to pay to be an artist…
Self hosted media server. I don’t get quite as much content but I still have thousands of hours of content … Back to the olden days!
Can I do something like this on a Raspberry Pi?
Something like Syncthing, but for hosting media would be fantastic. No need to deal with opening ports in the router and all those shenanigans. Something that you install and it just works, without any additional software. Is there anything like this?
Navidrome/Airsonic with reverse proxy is best. There are lots of Android and iOS apps that stream music from you server. Rather than a reverse proxy, you could try connecting via tailscale maybe? I think at minimum, this would require your phone to be connected to tailscale whenever you want to listen to music. Not sure if this would work or be practical.
As others suggested, a simple server with a subsonic api is all you need. tailscale on it and your mobile device and you can stream with a handful of open source apps.
I am using a pi to server my music for years but been self hosting my music since google music died - never got on the spotify bandwagon.
A little docker/podman is all you need. I also work on an free android app for this purpose as well that I just posted an update to yesterday.
Well fuck. Spotify is going to be the most difficult to let go but there seems to be every reason.
Its such a convenient platform, but such a terrible business. They seem to believe they’re untouchable.
I hear Tidal is nice.
Tidal is excellent. Spotify only recently allowed lossless streaming, which tidal has been doing for a long time. There are apps you pay like $5 to and transfer your entire library. Which I cancelled same day. After it gets to know your music preferences, the recommendations are daily playlists instead of weekly, and in my opinion they’re much better.
Not to mention they pay the artists the most out of all streamers, which is why I initially changed.
Been self-hosting for months. Rebuilding my music collection has been an ardous but invigorating experience. I have been listening much more music than ever before with Spotify, with a way better user experience. Turns out I missed music.
What’s your tech stack look like for this? I’ve seen some guides on Lemmy here already for it. Always curious to see what other people come up with.
My stack is:
- Remote access: Bare metal Tailscale for the server and clients.
- Mobile music streaming client: Substreamer
- AndroidTV client: Chora
- Streaming server: Navidrome
- Fallback server: Jellyfin
- Collection handler: Lidarr with plugins
- Download handlers: Slskd, deluge
- Container manager: Podman
All services configured in a single rootless podman compose file that runs on a laptop.
Perfect! Thanks!
I switched to Qobuz about six months ago after also trialling Deezer, Tidal, Apple Music and YT Music. Highly recommended. Their curated playlists are excellent and I can’t believe what a different the higher quality and lossles bitrates makes. They pay artists way more than the other platforms though, remarkably, they’re the only (major) platform to actually publish per-stream figures, even if they’re only averages. Based in France if that matters to you. They only offer paid plans but do have free trials and provide users with a code for a third-party migration service to bring your playlists over.
Are these the same users that that vowed to boycott Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Substack? Or are these the same users that vowed to boycott when Spotify started banking Joe Rogan and other rightwingers?
I’ve stopped using all of the above years ago, I’m no hypocrite, but I also know the number of people who will drop Spotify over this are a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of its massive user base. Nothing will ever change when it comes to big social media/tech companies like this because too many people don’t actually care.
People care, but seemingly not enough to actually follow through and drop their subscriptions.
You have to be willing to cause yourself some inconvenience in order to do what’s right.
Just canceled and deleted my account. Swore I’d never do that, years ago.
If you’re not gonna start your own media server or don’t know how, tidal is the way to go
They’re supporting Nazis, but at least they’re also putting up prices.
I’ve been boycotting Spotify since before it was cool.
As soon as Tidal or Qobuz add a couple real key functionalities that Spotify has but they don’t I’m switching right over
What about Deezer?
