Spotify reported a mix of good news and bad in its latest quarterly earnings report. The good news was that...

Spotify paid users hit 236M, but losing money, amid Apple battle::Spotify reported a mix of good news and bad in its latest quarterly earnings report. The good news was that…

  • Dr. Moose@lemmy.worldEnglish
    282·
    9 months ago

    I must be the only person on Lemmy who actually likes Spotify. You youngings don’t remember the time before spotify where the best option was Apple’s shit-of-a-service that charges flat 2$ per song (no matter where you are in the world lol) or spending evenings in p2p music sharing channels and music forums organizing your playlists.

    Spotify has objectively changes music for the better and I’d be very sad if it goes away because all alternatives are significantly worse still.

    • acceptable_pumpkin@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      9 months ago

      This is me as well. I haven’t downloaded music since I got Spotify. I just wish the movie industry had similar options. No I will not sign up for 15 different streaming platforms. There are much easier ways to solve that problem.

    • accideath@lemmy.worldEnglish
      51·
      9 months ago

      The problem (or at least mine) is not the concept of music streaming subscriptions but with Spotify in particular because the alternatives are in fact better in multiple ways.

      Most alternatives offer lossless audio for the same price for example. On top of that, Spotify reportedly pays artist second to worst, only surpassing Amazon Music (and is still not profitable).

      Besides that (although that’s opinion), their app hasn’t improved in a very long time either. Instead of building solid library management (which they had at dome point but removed) they add an overt focus on playlists and algorithm based recommendations and they make it annoyingly difficult to add titles that aren’t on the service to your library. Also, the app still does not offer a light mode.

      And, since you‘ve mentioned Apple‘s shit service: They did a 180 and are currently offering what is in my opinion the best package for people who are serious about listening to music: Great organized app that still offers great algorithms and hand curated playlists and recommendations if you want to use them, however they’re not the focus, your library is. Great audio quality with most of the music being lossless and lots even hires lossless. By now they have even (almost) caught up with apps on non Apple devices: Android, PlayStation, XBox, Roku, webOS, Samsung TV, web an probably a few more. Since the last update they’ve even finally added the last feature most other services had that they didn’t: collaborative playlists.

      Spotify has a few pluses, still, like even better support for more devices (better windows client, native linux client, androidTV client) and the Spotify device control feature is rather cool. However, I‘d argue the alternatives are definitely not (all) worse. I haven’t even mentioned deezer, which also has a very decent app and YouTube music, which is amazing but comes free with YouTube Premium and the ability to add any YouTube video to your playlists if what you‘re looking for isn’t in its library.

      While I don’t wish for Spotify to go bankrupt and disappear, I‘d still recommend taking a look at the market once in a while. Switching services is relatively easy and the competition isn’t sleeping.

      • Dr. Moose@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        9 months ago

        I have youtube music and tidal too (I pay for all because I do love my music) as well as tried every other service and Spotify is still the best daily driver by far because it does everything well enough and innovates just enough to be interesting but stable. Everything else is lacking some piece of a puzzle like no lyrics, small library, lacking core features.

        Other than that Youtube music is severely under rated because of music videos but the rest don’t really have anything special about them tbh

        • accideath@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          9 months ago

          What core features is Apple Music missing for you? The library isn’t smaller than spotify‘s (and has actually usually been a lot larger) and the lyrics feature is excellent. It even has a rather good library of official music videos.

          Also, what’s your reason of having tidal, spotify and YouTube music? In my experience they do not differ so much as to warrant paying for more than one…

          • Dr. Moose@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            9 months ago

            Cross platform being main feature missing from Apple music also a modern discovery mechanism and no way to control output device like on spotify. No group listens or social features. It’s not even close tbh.

            I have tidal for some audio quality for my house speaker setup. Yt music for mtv chill nights and Spotify for everything else :)