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Backing up Spotify

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641–650 of 732 posts

Re: Backing up Spotify

#641
post #57

Unrelated, but I just can't stop myself from saying that I absolutely hate Spotify even though I'm a paying customer. Fuck you Spotify. You were supposed to be a convenient way to discover and listen to music. Now you are only convenient for listening to music, and absolutely terrible for any recommendations. This is sad really. Spotify had good recommendations. It's absolutely in a position where it can provide good…

When they launched Discover Weekly thing, I used to add at least 1 track from it to my library - it was insanely good. Now it's all junk - not even close to what I listen to.

They also removed a lot of discovery features - Playlist Radio - for example. And they still do have some version of it on the backend, but you have to go through some weird mechanisms to trigger it - like play the last song in playlist, wait till it ends (or rewind) and you get the playlist radio. But it's also a crippled version of it - prefers playing the exact same popular songs for some reason.

Then they released this DJ thing, which is laughably bad. No Spotify, I don't want someone talking to me with useless information in between songs. Who though that was a good idea? Who actually uses that?

There hasn't been a change in Spotify in last 7 years or so that wasn't negative.

Re: Backing up Spotify

#642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cost recovery isn’t profit. Copyright is just a shared delusion, like most laws. They’re just bits on a disk we’re told are special for ~100 years (or whatever the copyright lockup length is in your jurisdiction), after which they’re no longer special (having entered the public domain). I think what is more ironic is we somehow were comfortable being collectively conditioned (manufactured consent?) with the idea that…

Are you an artist? Have you ever created a piece of work that has a copyright attached? You might be anti-establishment but ultimately you are anti-creation. Artists are finding it harder and harder to live and create, artists are vital proponents and voices in changing culture - for you to take away their ability to live in a financially viable way says more about you and how you have conflated big business and an a…

I pay artists directly, and know they receive almost nothing from Spotify and other Big Tech platforms, ymmv. Artists good, big business bad.

Re: Backing up Spotify

#643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“I only pirate because evil corporations make it too hard to pay for my favorite content” is a multi-decade ever-shifting goalpost. Some people just like to steal shit and will justify it to themselves on the thinnest of pretenses.

It is factually true though, music piracy DID drop once ad supported music streaming became available, the opposite is also true, video/movie piracy is now on the rise due to the amount of streaming subscriptions one has to juggle and their rising prices. Ofcourse there will always be those who yearn for the pirates life, but the vast majority just do it for convenience.

And Netflix’s profits have been on the rise for over a decade. I retired my plex server over six years ago. It just wasn’t worth the hassle of finding decent quality torrents. Everything ends up on streaming anyway.

Re: Backing up Spotify

#644

This is insane. I definitely was not aware Spotify DRM had been cracked to enable downloading at scale like this. The thing is, this doesn't even seem particularly useful for average consumers/listeners, since Spotify itself is so convenient, and trying to locate individual tracks in massive torrent files of presumably 10,000's of tracks each sounds horrible. But this does seem like it will be a godsend for researche…

I believe that we need to distinguish between convenience and preservation here. It is indeed convenient for consumers to use Spotify now whilst it exists and operates the way it does. They could go under, they could change their business model, they could decide to purge everything that is not easily justifiable commercially.

As a society, we should do our best to preserve this trove.

Re: Backing up Spotify

#646
post #31

Can someone explain why C#/Db (major/minor) is the third most popular key? Very unexpected for me, since its relatively more difficult to play.

For electronic music, it's around the lowest bass root note that most systems can play well without a subwoofer. C pretty much requires a sub and things rarely go lower than that.

Re: Backing up Spotify

#647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cost recovery isn’t profit. Copyright is just a shared delusion, like most laws. They’re just bits on a disk we’re told are special for ~100 years (or whatever the copyright lockup length is in your jurisdiction), after which they’re no longer special (having entered the public domain). I think what is more ironic is we somehow were comfortable being collectively conditioned (manufactured consent?) with the idea that…

Are you an artist? Have you ever created a piece of work that has a copyright attached? You might be anti-establishment but ultimately you are anti-creation. Artists are finding it harder and harder to live and create, artists are vital proponents and voices in changing culture - for you to take away their ability to live in a financially viable way says more about you and how you have conflated big business and an a…

I am. Copyright is fucking cancer and is one of the worst things if not the worst things that exists to make creating new things harder.

Making bits available isn't "taking artists ability to live in a financially viable way" any more than radio, LPs and player pianos was. If you are an artist who is trying to make art and live do more of that and don't waste peoples time arguing for copyright restricting other people's activity on websites like this one.

Re: Backing up Spotify

#648

This is insane. I definitely was not aware Spotify DRM had been cracked to enable downloading at scale like this. The thing is, this doesn't even seem particularly useful for average consumers/listeners, since Spotify itself is so convenient, and trying to locate individual tracks in massive torrent files of presumably 10,000's of tracks each sounds horrible. But this does seem like it will be a godsend for researche…

A little off topic, but I remain naively hopeful that the horror you describe will keep Spotify from going down the same road Netflix did once content owners decided to get into the streaming business themselves, so that streaming a movie today requires you to "change the channel" to whichever service offers that movie.

Can you imagine your favorite playlist needing to swap among 10 apps, each requiring a $10/month subscription?

Re: Backing up Spotify

#649
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The thing is, this doesn't even seem particularly useful for average consumers/listeners, since Spotify itself is so convenient, and trying to locate individual tracks in massive torrent files of presumably 10,000's of tracks each sounds horrible. I wouldn’t be so sure. There are already tools to automatically locate and stream pirated TV and movie content automatic and on demand. They’re so common that I had non-t…

Spotify is $12/month at most to get unlimited ad-free access to virtually all music. To get access to "all" TV content legally would be hundreds of dollars a month. And for many movies you must buy/rent each individually. And legal TV and movies are much more encumbered by DRM and lock in, limiting the way you can view them. (like many streaming apps removing AirPlay support, or limiting you to 720p in some browsers)…

> Spotify is $12/month at most to get unlimited ad-free access to virtually all music.

Until they decide to silence the artist you want to listen to because emperor god trump decides to unperson them.

Putting what music you listen to in the hands of a US corporation is such a dangerously stupid idea that it is amazing to me that there are people here who are OK with it.

>I think Spotify wins over pirating because of its relatively low cost and convenience

Spotify isn't "convenient" if you want to control and understand the media and software in your life. https://www.defectivebydesign.org/spotify

Re: Backing up Spotify

#650
post #378

Unlike books, which are massively overpriced, this will hurt artists a lot as they need the fees paid by Spotify to make ends meet.

> this will hurt artists a lot as they need the fees paid by Spotify to make ends meet.

Anyone using DRM/paracopyright to "make their ends meet" deserves what they get. This is de facto theft from the public domain.

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