All this work needs to pass the wife test. That is why I just hack the android version of Spotify.
*It’s no longer running*
Friendly alert that it’s currently Bandcamp Friday - one full day that the site gives 100% of purchases to the artists. It’s a good way to support small artists and build up a personal collection.
The company that currently owns Bandcamp laid off all of the union bargaining team members when they acquired Bandcamp, or rather, didn’t extend an offer of employment to all of them which is effectively a layoff or firing. Just adding on to your comment so people are more aware, in case they need extra convincing to only buy from Bandcamp on that day (or preferably not at all). Purchase directly from artists whenever possible. Pretty sure those workers who were fired are still seeking resolution, and I don’t think Songtradr, the company that acquired Bandcamp, ever recognized the union even though they voted yes in their vote to unionize with OPEIU months before the acquisition. Go here for more info.
This right here is one of many reasons why you should download your purchases. Protect your collection from the inherent instability of capitalism.
Yup, enshittification comes for everything in the end. The profit motive takes no prisoners.
That’s some bullshit right there. Every day should be Bandcamp Friday. I understand charging a small 1-3% fee to cover server costs, but nothing more. Otherwise Apple is just another evil record label profiting off of peoples’ talent.
Server costs? I mean for a media serving website at this scale you need the servers, storage, people to run the servers, people to development the website, fix bugs, keep on top of security. If you had a very talented team that was very lean, and each member of which can wear multiple hats to reduce headcount, you’re talking $400-$600,000 a year just in salaries. Thats before you consider taxes, benefits, etc.
Do you think bandcamp is run by like one guy renting bargain bin shared cpu servers from AWS?
The most entitled people are CEOs and right after them it’s people who think everything on the internet should be free and without ads.
From what I can find, BC takes 15% for most sales, 10% for high-sellers. Dunno if that’s good or bad, but it seems low to me.
It’s certainly lower than the 20-30% game distribution platforms take.
I can pretty much guarantee the server & staff costs are more than 1% of sticker price, especially since BC includes streaming services.
Because I guess nothing is ever good enough.
My issue is discovery. I’ll take a look at what they’ve done here, but ive never been able to implement a reliable discovery process into my workflow. I still use local music, but my wife is not going to switch until I get at least some reliable and effective discovery built.
I scrobble all my navidrome activity to listenbrainz, which gives a weekly playlist of recommendations. You might have to wait a few weeks before it can establish your tastes depending on how much music you play.
But I need to get those recommendations to automatically populate into playlist in my music app so its all in one place. Thats the challenge. Providing a close to as good service as Spotify.
The thing that flipped it for me was realizing the Spotify algorithm isn’t actually about discovering new music, it’s about driving profit. Idealism aside, what that tactically means for music discovery is the recommendations are based primarily around what they want to play, and then secondarily around what you might like.
It means that you’re only discovering a subset of music you might like that is profitable to Spotify and their big record label partners.
After realizing that, the Spotify algorithm lost a lot of interest for me. Now I use SomaFM to discover new music. They do curated music channels in a bunch of different genres, and I find that the DJs have a similar taste to mine, so I hear a good amount of new music I’m into.
This is spot on (pun intended).
No, you don’t need that. You want it because it’s convenient and we live in a consumerist society where everything “needs” to be “frictionless”. Intentionally clicking on an artist’s bandcamp page to listen to a recommendation is fine. It’s a lot easier than mail order or taking the bus to the record store to buy a copy.
I get what you’re saying, but we need to question the parameters of the challenges more often.
You don’t need those either. You can learn to play an instrument, enjoy music on the Sunday mass, or wait until the local troubadour visits your place.
It’s just easier with the record store.
I didn’t say i needed it personally, I need it if I’m going to get my family members to drop Spotify for my service.
You did literally say “my” in there, though, so yea you did. I’m not surprised he assumed that, and either way I guess his comment can be redirected at your family members.
Sure I can see that.
My wife and I have 3 small children, full time jobs, and no daycare. I can definitely say our life is not frictionless. I dont think there is anything wrong with wanting some things to be easy, and I dont blame her for not wanting to switch when I dont have something better.
And that much I get. We all make some sacrifices to allow ourselves to survive and hopefully have the energy for the bigger changes.
Just went through this with both kids… The word “need” always implies a goal. “I need x (to do y)”. Without context, the goal is generally either survival, or more often, comfort: “I need a drink.” “I need a break.”
When you’re speaking in the context of doing something, as superglue was, that becomes the implied goal. “I need those recommendations to automatically populate (in order for my wife to be comfortable using this)” is a perfectly valid use of the word “need”.
Communities, friends, family and media are your discovery algorithm! Get involved in things. It makes your music acquisitions meaningful and makes the experience of discovering and listening to music so much better.
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I discover new music through Discord groups, YouTube, and Internet radio.
It is laziness on my part. I want to tell the Google home to play music.
I should just get a Bluetooth speaker and do this, shouldn’t I
You need the software, but there’s nothing about that request that should require access to the Internet.
I have a LLM chatbot that controls my Home Assistant and Kodi players. It’s all done locally and the response time is under a second.
On my PC(Arch, btw) I have a global hotkey so I can hold the key to record a message and when I let go of the key it uses a local model to do speech to text and sends the result to the chatbot.
I could probably use a wake word but I’d need to mic up my house and I’d rather not do that. A bluetooth lapel mic and a single button Bluetooth “keyboard” about the size of a key switch (using an ESP32C3 microcontroller) give me the same functionality.
I guess I can be proud of not getting into Spotify at the first place. Instead of discovering new music, I discover older ones which I find more reliable since new music industry mostly suck. Oh, also Bandcamp is fine for discovering indie.
There is so much music today. To say new music sucks is wild
That’s my nostalgia talking but what I hear in public is bad, I mean in malls, stores, shops etc. maybe they have a bad taste though. By the way I said the industry sucks not the music. Because of the industry, they’re much shorter now (thanks to Spotify I guess), I hardly find a 45 minutes album with whole great tracks.
If you’re just looking at the popular stuff it’s going to be shit. My library is filled with artists with just couple thousands of listens per month and it’s the shit (to me).
Nowadays everyone can make music and it’ll mean more stuff to filter through but there’ll be more gems to discover.
Are they popular because people actually like them, I wonder. Because some of them are really really bad, they’re far from being art.
But yes, every age has their own gems to discover.
Well I dunno your tastes, but some newer music that isn’t shit (I’m an album listener myself, so I judge by the whole album):
Black MIDI - Hellfire
Adult Jazz - Gist Is
Billy Woods - all three of his newest (one is under “Armand Hammer”, called “we buy diabetic test strips”, the other is “maps,” probably the most widely accessible, and the newest is Golliwog)
Shellac - To All Trains
Fiona Apple - Fetch the Boltcutters
KNOWER - KNOWER Forever
Those few albums span some genres and should cover a lot of tastes. I can add some more if you’re interested, those were just off the top of my head
It seems we have quite different tastes but appreciated the effort. I listened the half of the first song for first 3, Shellac’s music is really good (listened 3 songs) but not fond of the soloist or the lyrics. I listen Fiona Apple time to time but I always find her covers much better than her own songs, so there is that. KNOWER seems fun, I don’t prefer to listen swearing in songs, but they are fun. Actually I’d like to hear more, especially if you know something similar to what I like in your repertoire. <3
Not gonna share full albums here but gotta share what I like, I’ll try to be broad as possible. All of them I like to listen as a whole album.
That’s crazy to think that you need Spotify to discover new music.
Yeah, I never needed Spotify. It’s either my friends recommend me something or I make my own research, since I like music from many different countries. Sure I don’t randomly learn new ones much but that’s okay.
I have also moved fully to navidrome. It’s slightly less convenient, but it’s worth it to deplarform
What’s with lastFM these days? I used it some 20 years ago when they started and they offered free, automatically curated radios (like Spotify ), but then they flipped, thanked the users for the data they collected from listening data and switched to some subscription model
I wasn’t aware of that. I quit using them when they switched from whole songs to clips.
Does navidrome support Chromecast? I’ve had a hard time finding a self hosted music solution that will actual cast. I do have a public facing domain name with certs that, as far as I can tell, is working correctly.
It depends on the client app you use. Some support it, some don’t.
Not sure about navidrome, but if it supports upnp, you could setup a bubbleupnp server to bridge the two.
I know the main topic is ditching Spotify, but on the secondary topic of screwing over Spotify…
I realized that you can “pirate” Spotify (i.e. listen indefinitely as if you had a paid account) if you have uBlock Origin on Edge. No setup needed, it just works. Most likely any Chromium-like browser will work.
Unfortunately, I haven’t got it to work with Zen browser which is Firefox based so I’m not sure if all Firefox based browsers are affected. The workaround I have for now is just have Edge open with Spotify in the background, and control it from the Spotify interface on Zen. Never download the app, they control that fully.
Funnily enough, I also got ad-free Spotify play on Amazon Echo when I was controlling it from Edge, though I never tried with Zen because I don’t use Echo anymore.
PS: For audiophiles this is probably not gonna fly, as you don’t have access to the highest bit rates iirc.
What do you mean by “they control the app fully”? Something like https://github.com/abba23/spotify-adblock will let you run the app without ads, which kinda contradicts the idea they control the app fully.
Oh really? I didn’t know about that. Thanks! I meant they theoretically have full control over the app since they build the whole thing, rather than have it run in a browser environment which they can’t control and could theoretically be altered with extensions etc. Seems they’re not that great at controlling their own app either, lol
Happy to help!
What other options exist other than cloudflare?
I wish I was the kind of person who would do this.
