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submitted 5 months ago by fpslem@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

When Bloomberg reported that Spotify would be upping the cost of its premium subscription from $9.99 to $10.99, and including 15 hours of audiobooks per month in the U.S., the change sounded like a win for songwriters and publishers. Higher subscription prices typically equate to a bump in U.S. mechanical royalties — but not this time.

By adding audiobooks into Spotify’s premium tier, the streaming service now claims it qualifies to pay a discounted “bundle” rate to songwriters for premium streams, given Spotify now has to pay licensing for both books and music from the same price tag — which will only be a dollar higher than when music was the only premium offering. Additionally, Spotify will reclassify its duo and family subscription plans as bundles as well.

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[-] akilou@sh.itjust.works 7 points 5 months ago

This is why I don't feel bad about pirating

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[-] noodlejetski@lemm.ee 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I've ditched Spotify last year when their app has suddenly started draining battery on my phone (and also because of them being so eager to give Rogan a platform). I've switched to Deezer, but I've ran into the same issue I've had with Spotify for a while - even if I download a playlist for offline usage, it'll still try to connect to the internet, so if I was somewhere with poor reception, it'd get stuck on a spinning circle for a minute before giving up and showing me the songs I've wanted to play. I ended my Deezer subscription, rebuilt the library on my laptop, and just manually transfer files to my phone. I get instant access to my music with no delays, with music players that offer much better experience and handle shuffle and queues the way I want to, and aren't a glorified Chrome tab on desktop. and if I really like an album, I'll just straight up buy one. I listen to music a fucking lot (two years ago i was in top 0.2% of my country's Spotify users), and according to some screenshots of my Spotify Wrapped, I've played my artists songs for 1200 minutes, which translates to 300-400 plays at best (probably less than that, given that many of their songs are around 6 to 8 minutes long). given that, from what I've found online, 1000 plays gives artists 4 bucks, I could just buy two of their songs on Bandcamp and pirate the rest of their music, and they'll still get more money in a year from me.

I do miss seamless playback switching between devices, though. it was a really nice Spotify feature... when it worked, that is.

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[-] AshMan85@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago

Fuck stopify. If u have any respect/appreciation for music and who created it you should not be using spotify.

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[-] CrowAirbrush@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago

I already canceled with the last price increase, because it went from €9,99 to €12,99 for me they don't need to convince me that i made the right decision.

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this post was submitted on 09 May 2024
1483 points (98.8% liked)

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