this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2024
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Spotify is officially raising its Premium subscription rates in the US come July, following reports of the move in April. The platform is increasing its Individual plan from $11 to $12 monthly and its Duo plan from $15 to $17 monthly — the same jump as last year's $1 and $2 price hikes, respectively. However, its Family plan is going up by a whopping $3, increasing from $17 to $20 monthly. The only subscribers getting a break are students, who will continue to pay $6 monthly.

Spotify announced the price hikes less than a year after its previous one last July. Before that, Spotify hadn't raised its fees since launching a decade and a half ago. I guess it was too optimistic to hope the next increase would also take that long, especially with Spotify's continued focus (and money dump) on audiobooks.

Premium subscribers should receive an email from Spotify in the next month detailing the price hike and providing a link to cancel their plan if they would prefer to do so. Users currently on a trial period for Spotify will get one month at $11 after it ends before being moved up to a $12 monthly fee.

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[–] JoMiran@lemmy.ml 0 points 8 months ago (4 children)
[–] Neato@ttrpg.network 0 points 8 months ago (13 children)

As someone else said: it doesn't replace streaming even a little. Pirating is replacing buying music directly. Streaming facilitates finding new music and trying it out. Being able to listen to anything at any time. You simply can't do that with downloads; no one can download everything. Piracy in this case really just works for people still listening to their highschool favs and not people looking for new stuff all the time.

[–] SadSadSatellite@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 8 months ago

It replaces paying for Spotify because its possible to download Spotify premium. Best of both worlds. Use Spotify or YouTube to find stuff, send it to a seedbox, load it later at home.

Biggest downside is most phones don't have SD card slots anymore.

Sent from my (slightly salty) hacked pixel 7

[–] small44@lemmy.world 0 points 8 months ago

I never had trouble finding new music without those recommandation algorithms.

[–] veeesix@lemmy.ca 0 points 8 months ago

I used to download exclusively when I was younger, but as I get older I’m trying out new genres from different cultures than my own and I’d miss out on it all without a streaming service.

In my opinion it’s worth it.

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[–] pineapplelover@lemm.ee 0 points 8 months ago

I use a cracked Spotify client but if I do legitimately pay, it will be for Tidal. I want that sweet sweet lossless audio people have been talking about.

[–] foggy@lemmy.world 0 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I'm all for pirating, but tbh music streaming apps are a service that is still in the "worth it" range. Not where Spotify is going, but, maintaining a library of high quality music with all the assets, and serving it to all your devices over the Internet is not a small feat to do securely.

I'll probably switch to tidal for now while I start building up my library to include stuff beyond what I like...

[–] PixelAlchemist@lemmy.world 0 points 8 months ago (7 children)

You should check out Plexamp while you bridge the gap. It has tidal support built in, and you can self-host your own collection as you build it up. Then when you’re done with tidal, you don’t have to learn or download a new app.

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[–] Norgur@fedia.io 0 points 8 months ago (4 children)

Plexamp, Lidarr, Lidarr extended, Tailscale. Done.

[–] li10@feddit.uk 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Done. Until it can’t find a decent quality option for an album you’re searching for.

A guy I know decided to move away from Spotify and pirate music. The amount of effort he went through means it’s something I’ll probably never try.

[–] ShepherdPie@midwest.social 0 points 8 months ago (5 children)

This is the biggest problem for me. I have thousands of movies and 10s of thousands of TV episodes, but my audio library is still all the same stuff I downloaded from Napster, Limewire, Kazaa 20+ years ago. It's too hard to find a good selection these days outside of a few private trackers. I'm in several private trackers but I'm not going to sit in a queue for 2 days waiting for an interview time and jump through hoops to join something like RED or PTP tier tracker.

Not to mention I mostly listen to podcasts these days and when I do listen to music, I try to find new stuff that I've never heard of rather than searching for a known artist. This would be way too convoluted to do on my own with some self-hosted solution.

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[–] wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 0 points 8 months ago

Just some perspective: I've been self-hosting stuff for 7y now, started with plex on a nas. I have tried a couple times to get the *arr stack working, one at a time and fuck me it's complex and the risk of fucking up the config and data crossing the clearnet without a VPN, noooope fuck right off with that. That risk/reward just is too skewed for me.

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[–] CorrodedCranium@leminal.space 0 points 8 months ago (5 children)

How does this compare to other music streaming services these days?

[–] Voyajer@lemmy.world 0 points 8 months ago (4 children)

Tidal is $11/mo for an individual and $17 for a 6 person family plan. I recently switched because they supposedly give a better cut to artists and serve flac files.

[–] Norgur@fedia.io 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yeah. Never thought I'd see the day when Tidal was cheaper than crappy Spotify.

[–] dinckelman@lemmy.world 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

If i wasn't paying for a family play on Spotify, I would have resorted to music piracy at this point. The quality is still garbage, the service is getting worse, but the prices are only going up every half a year

[–] variants@possumpat.io 0 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I tried sourcing my own music but man it's a lot harder than movies and shows. Especially when you like to hear random recommended music how do you get enough

[–] dinckelman@lemmy.world 0 points 8 months ago

Feel you there. A lot of what i listen to are brand new bands, and finding sources for those is rough

[–] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yeah - credit where it’s due, Spotify did a really good job with their music recommendation engine. It’s just that recently, they’ve started to get into the sad part of the enshittification cycle. I kinda saw the writing on the wall when they started forcing Joe Rogan podcast promos fucking everywhere, without having a config anywhere to disable podcast suggestions (which I don’t use through Spotify)

[–] CosmoNova@lemmy.world 0 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I'm surprised you're only getting these now. My recommendations have been mostly garbage for the better part of a decade so all this praise for finding new music confuses me a little. Spotify has many feats, but the algorithm never was one for me, quite the opposite. I find it more annoying than helpful, actually.

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[–] li10@feddit.uk 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

£2 a month for a HiFi subscription if you use a Nigerian VPN.

[–] cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

So if you use a VPN to sign up, then disconnect the VPN, does it block you? Or do you always need to be on VPN?

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[–] cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 0 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I feel they're all fairly similar. I won't do apple music because I don't do iOS, and I moved from Google play music when forced to the inferior YouTube music. I wonder if tidal or any other service has comparable pricing.

[–] Dasnap@lemmy.world 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I use YT Music because I get it cheap (VPN shenanigans), you can upload your own music (hello Nintendo soundtracks), and I mod the Android app to stop it being a mess (ReVanced Extended is the GOAT).

[–] cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Do you always have to have the VPN connected to get the cheaper rate?

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[–] impure9435@kbin.run 0 points 8 months ago (3 children)

I've been using Apple Music on Android for years, I definitely recommend it. The app is totally fine, I think it's still better than Spotify's crappy app. On desktop you can use the Cider app, which is much better than iTunes. It's even available on Linux.

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[–] impure9435@kbin.run 0 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Apple Music only raised the price by $1 since the launch in 2015 (9 years ago). But they added cool features like lossless audio quality and Dolby Atmos. They also had lyrics like 6 years before Spotify added them. I think you can even get it for $6 dollars if you're a student.

[–] ji17br@lemmy.ml 0 points 8 months ago (4 children)

They also payout about 2.5X what Spotify does to artists.

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[–] Magister@lemmy.world 0 points 8 months ago

Some lyrics are now disappearing from Spotify :-(

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[–] cas919@lemmynsfw.com 0 points 8 months ago

I use Apple Music, primarily because I need to pay for the higher tiers iCloud storage for my wife’s photo addiction and it’s basically “free” for the family plan.

If I didn’t already have the higher tier iCloud, I would probably prefer tidal for higher quality, or Spotify for the more diverse library.

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[–] HootinNHollerin@lemmy.world 0 points 8 months ago (2 children)

If switching services, this web service that moves your music between streaming services worked well for me. Paid for one month then canceled https://soundiiz.com/

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[–] 3aqn5k6ryk@lemmy.world 0 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Then the rest follow. If Apple music hike their price again, time to dust off my eye patch. Ive already cancelled all my streaming and went with plex, radarr, sonarr.

[–] cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I do all these plus the streaming services 😂.

[–] 3aqn5k6ryk@lemmy.world 0 points 8 months ago

Music streaming the only one i cant be bothered with since i have family plan with my gf plus discovering new music and new album from fav artist is too much to pass on.

[–] Norgur@fedia.io 0 points 8 months ago (4 children)

Life hack: get Plexamp and Lidarr with Lidarr extended scripts. Then sign up for a free month of tidal with a throwaway account. Add said account to Lidarr extended. Add all the artists you want to Lidarr and let Lidarr Extended download all the stuff from Tidal for you. Once it has run out, register with another throwaway adress.

[–] 3aqn5k6ryk@lemmy.world 0 points 8 months ago

Thanks mate. Will definitely look at lidar. Maybe its time, some music like doom eternal arent available in apple music and this might push me.

[–] cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Basically doing this already but my only issue is discovery. That's why I pay for Spotify. I used to have a script set up before the API closed that would run automatically monthly to snag all my liked songs.

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[–] Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca 0 points 8 months ago

It's funny: I haven't paid for any streaming/cable/media service in 10+ years; instead choosing to sail the seas, hord media, and host my own streaming service using tools like Emby/Plex/Jellyfin.

Spotify was the one and only service I had been considering, mainly because managing music files is still a PITA; but I keep running into articles like this one and renewing my will to fly the Jolly Rodger.

[–] murmelade@lemmy.ml 0 points 8 months ago (4 children)
[–] Neato@ttrpg.network 0 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Does this get rid of ads? It just looks like a UX redesign.

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[–] SadSadSatellite@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

You're supposed to vaguely imply the existence of those, not just give away secrets in public bruh

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[–] Caesium@lemmy.world 0 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I gotta start direct downloading my music again soon. Spotify has just left me feeling so frustrated lately.

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[–] teft@lemmy.world 0 points 8 months ago

Faster than inflation

[–] viking@infosec.pub 0 points 8 months ago

That's gotta be a running gag now. Fuck em with a cactus.

[–] Magzmak@lemmy.world 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I wish they allowed more audiobook time per month, so one could finish a book past 11hrs. I'd be fine with an extra buck or two for a combined audiobook/music streaming service.

[–] Neato@ttrpg.network 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Just your local library for Libby or other electronic access. You probably have access to borrow audiobooks online for free. (assuming the US)

[–] militant_spider@lemmy.world 0 points 8 months ago

Unfortunately, Spotify has it set where there doesn’t appear to be a limitation on how many people can listen at once, whereas Libby still only has so many copies to share.

[–] RinseDrizzle@midwest.social 0 points 8 months ago (8 children)

Bookmarking this page so I can learn modern sailing techniques. Audiophiles who sail the seven seas, please teach me your ways! My most hasn't hit the surf in a hot minute.

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[–] CosmoNova@lemmy.world 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

Well considering the last price hike got us gems like the music 8-ball/magic crystal thing, I can barely wait to see what banger they'll come up with to bloat my music player with next.

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[–] frunch@lemmy.world 0 points 8 months ago

"it's just another dollar, brah"

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