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Spotify re-invented the radio
(lemmy.world)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I tried it free once, and found it generally unusable.
Like it was filled with annoying adverts, but it wasn't adverts for other people. It was adverts for itself. All overly chipper voice actors going "Wow, is it true that Spotify Premium is just £9.99 a month?" as if that's how anybody has ever talked in the history of humankind.
The free version is funded by paying customers. The only purpose it has is to annoy you into paying.
I was happy to use Amazon Prime's version for a bit, and then they decided that merely paying for Prime wasn't enough, and I had to pay special extra fees to listen to albums. So I got Spotify instead, because fuck giving more money to Amazon.
Yeah for a few months there I was starting to like the Amazon player too and then they made it worse for more money and I realized.... I am so done with Amazon and paying them $180 a year for barely getting things (mostly scams and garbage) shipped from them, a weird mess of a video player and radio.
I actually have YouTube premium because at least it helps me get rid of the onslaught of YouTube ads and helps pay my creators of choice slightly better, and the music player is I guess just basically YouTube which isn't that bad. Not perfect but not bad.
For a company worth over a trillion dollars, there's this unmistakable layer of couldn't-give-a-fuckness to all their products.
From a store that ships blatantly fake products, through the video service that misses subtitles on like half the movies, or looks like it's been transferred from a well used VHS, to the music service that used to let you listen to full albums, but on playing you notice that a bunch of tracks are missing from it.
And the race to the bottom ain't even over yet.
It's actually really fucking sad how bad their marketplace is. I can buy more legitimate tech items from a creepy back alleyway in Malaysia and that's a really bad sign. I don't want to be scammed and have to return every other item or more, it's so wasteful.
They are able to burn so much money without even a second thought it is so impressive and scary to watch. So yeah "This track is not available" was like final straw.
P.S. on couldn't give a fuck-ness did you know that Amazon video has a share watch function that includes a live chat and sync play? They paid a developer for this and it seems completely forgot it's in their system
My favourite Amazon Prime GUI WTF was the old one where you'd have a bit of blurb about the film on the main page, you'd click into it to see more info, and it would just show it in bigger text so you'd be able to read even less of it... 👍