All these companies want to control what content you consume. Just walk away.
I know Plex gets a lot of crap here, but they have done me no wrong allowing me to simply play the music I like. Spotify is ruining artist discovery, which is exactly how radio became the shithole it is now. At least Pandora leads at artist discovery.
fuk spotify i dont need my music streamed over the internet mp3s forever
Your daily reminder: if you don't own it, it's not yours.
Disclaimer
The it in this case is your music library, and by own I mean have in your personal possession and not DRM'd.
Man I grow up buying at least 2/3 album a month. Paying monthly Spotify for almost all the music in the world seems like a good deal to me
All I have to say is:
Haven't paid shit in like 10 years and I try to download the songs I like for my self hosting.
My biggest issue with Spotify was that they were changing the main screen layout what seemed like every other week. Like bro I don’t do podcasts so keep them off my homepage.
I ended up canceling and going to Apple Music because we were already paying for their other services and it was cheaper with their bundled membership. I also have a Plexamp server with all of the music I have ripped over the years and actually prefer that to Apple Music
Next update will show text lyrics in free version. If you want to play the audio you better have premium
Spotify kind of sucks. I've been using Bandcamp for years (though they sold to epic and then got sold to some vultures, so they might be doomed)
If I buy one album a month for a year, that's about the same as a subscription except I get to keep what I bought. And after a few years I have a big library and don't need to buy as much. And the musicians get a bigger cut.
If you're listening to stuff that's not on Bandcamp I don't know what to tell you. Probably buy it from elsewhere, or if it's old just pirate it because it should be public domain anyway.
This is your rationale and that is ok for you. Ownership is important to you. That is ok. But people who make the point you are making never understand the point those of us who like Spotify are making.
We do not care that we don't own anything after paying. I am not paying to own it. Never felt like I was, never felt like I needed to. In fact, it's almost a perk that I don't because then I am not sitting amidst towers of CDs (something that was definitely possible if I had continued my pre-spotify trajectory). Anyway, I pay for access. No more, no less. I pay for access to Spotify's library, which is many orders of magnitude larger than anything I could ever hope to amass myself, even if I was pirating shit.
I want to listen to whatever I want, whenever I want, instantly. I don't want to go pirate it, I don't want to go find it at a store, if someone suggests me a song or album or artist I want to go listen to it right now. Spotify enables that. I have discovered so much music I would absolutely never have tried without Spotify.
And again, I am 100% comfortable paying for access to something not owned by me. I'm a member at our local zoo. I don't expect to own the animals, I pay to just to get in. I'm a member at our museum. I don't feel like I should own the artifacts, I pay for the privilege of seeing them. I am a member at a community pool. I don't own the water, I pay to get in, and have someone else handle all the hassle of maintaining that pool.
Spotify is the exact same for me.
I remember when it was a literal radio feature in Spotify and it was this but the algorithm was decent and you could curate different stations.
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