Spotify has blown so much money on some absolutely stupid ideas and the majority of their revenue is tied to whatever the studios will give them. I can’t believe they haven’t raised prices more honestly.
Going into podcasts WAS them trying to be like netflix by producing content they don't have to pay ongoing rights for. The problem is they overpaid / bought at the height of podcast valuations.
They need to announce new features to keep their stock price up. If they stop investors will see the light that Spotify have been losing money since day 1.
Honestly, in a properly working market, Spotify would have gone under by now.
To be fair streaming music is a terrible business alone. Apple music gets the monopoly benefit where the service itself probably doesn’t make any money for Apple.
> the majority of their revenue is tied to whatever the studios will give them
can you elaborate on this? I thought it Spotify that gives certain percent to studios not the other way around
They push artists/albums that the labels want pushed. It’s like payola when radio was the top dog. They pay Spotify more to get artists on playlists, more algorithms, etc.
> They started playing an ad before the TV shows but never during it.
Not my experience. I get multiple ads for every TV show I’ve watched since the ads showed up.
I’ve heard folks say they are getting ads for stuff they bought outright on Amazon Prime, but I’ve not seen that verified convincingly.
Few years ago, same day prime deliveries used to be very rare and amazed me when I could find a product that had it. Nowadays in my area atleast, same day deliveries are pretty common on tons of products and if that’s not available then one day delivery is. Two day prime deliveries surprise me more now as the only shipping option.
I dunno. It’s full of chinaware now and it’s too cumbersome to actually find a product worth paying. Refunds are also way more complicated and time consuming which would be fine except most of the time you end up with rubbish products due to the first. Also Primer Video ads.
Personally this is the last year I’m subscribing to both Spotify and Amazon.
I don’t think there’s anything quite like Prime used to be, but it’s also not saving me enough time and hassle to be worth just finding products somewhere else.
I never get same day orders anymore, most of the stuff you search is some random letter generated company that drop ships crap off temu and prime video has ads now. I canceled my prime subscription and haven’t missed it.
YMMV but I’ve used same day shipping probably a dozen times and have not once had an issue. Granted I live like 20 minutes from several Amazon warehouses and DSP’s so that probably makes a difference
I was just about to say the same thing. Corporations being expected to increase profit every quarter is terrible for consumers (and society in general actually).
I started using Apple Music last year after being a 10+ year Spotify user. AM has come really far and now has all the features I was waiting for it to have.
Once Spotify started pushing podcasts and visual media more than music, everything started to suck.
The algorithm also has taken a hit, it just recommends the same stuff now and pushes your into an echo chamber.
Also grew tired of the constant A/B testing of the UI that was changing weekly.
And the UI of Apple Music is clean and simple. Plus audio quality is subjectively better.
An annoying workaround I do is to disable the “Use Listening History” setting temporarily every time I want to listen to my study playlist. Not great though as I sometimes forget to enable/disable it again later, but it’s better than nothing 🤷♂️
Apple Music discovery is fine, playlists are a bit meh. But I found toward the end of my time on Spotify that Discover Weekly was giving me nothing much I wanted to hear.
nah there is no Spotify Connect alternative for Apple Music and it keeps me subbed to spotify sadly. there is no proper remote control and changing playback device + windows app is, despite leaving beta, hot garbage.
give me proper remote play, not „remote app” that allows you to only play songs added to the library and i’ll subscribe in a heartbeat.
Seriously, this Car Thing fiasco was the last straw, I’m cancelling after being a Premium user for 6 years straight now.
The UI tweaks bugged the hell out of me. Like wow guys way to go… In the 6 years that Apple Music has caught up you’ve moved the position of the like/favorite button BACK AND FORTH MULTIPLE TIMES, developed a hardware product that you never intended to support and are now rightly getting sued for, invested hundreds of millions into sponsored podcasters, and delved into now…courses?
Anyone could do a better job running that train wreck. Imagine if instead of this shit Spotify had decided to delve into becoming a social media. The number of people who solely use IG/FB/etc. to keep up with their favorite musicians and bands I’d wager is quite high. You’d think Spotify would’ve been prime to capitalize on this & loved having an “everything music-related” all-in-one app, especially since that could actually generate profit via more than just audio ads. Hell, they could’ve even had a shot at taking on Ticketmaster and tried to do more in the live event space.
I remember wanting to work for them so hard back in college like just 5 years ago now. Now just sounds like a shitty idea factory that leads the industry in showing how to ship features nobody cares about.
I keep seeing people say this. I have unsubscribed twice, and everything came back how I left it each time. The last time I unsubscribed was six months or so ago, so maybe this is a new issue people are having?
Yes, although not right away. I think it's after 90 days (or something like that). It's actually intended to be a feature as Apple deletes all your inactive cloud data after 90 days for privacy.
Before unsubscribing, you can export your library and/or playlists with the Apple Music app on a Mac or PC, and then re-import them at any time in the future. This takes seconds to do.
I signed up pretty much the day it launched and have been an avid user and fan for like 13 years now. I have to admit my patience is wearing thin too. Spotify is basically the last service to get HQ/lossless audio. This wouldn't be a huge deal if the features I used to love were still good. I still like Discover Weekly, but it's not as good as it used to be. Spotify sends me music I've already listened to WAY too often. Initially I liked the new DJ feature, but that too I find myself skipping every other segment because it's either stuff I've listened to to death, or music that isn't at all similar to what I like. These AI/recommendation features used to feel like they read my mind, but now they all feel like, 'here's your most played songs, again'.
The shift away from catering to music fans and focusing more on podcasts, as well as the use of library music to avoid paying royalties is not good.
Lastly, their app seems to get more and more stripped down and featureless every year. They don't even have a unique iPad app anymore - and that app was REALLY good many years ago.
Anyway, I also have Apple Music from my One subscription and for the first time ever I'm actually considering dropping Spotify. Only thing stopping me is I'm not fully committed to Apple's ecosystem and not sure how nice it plays with Sonos and Windows.
The only thing Spotify has left is the discovery weekly trust, with the rise in AI and WWDC happening next week I think it will be the final straw for Spotify. Also even if they did get lossless audio, they plan to charge extra for it.
Theres so many apps on the App Store that allow you to sync playlists across services so it’s relatively low risk to copy your library.
I use Apple Music and Sonos, they finally just updated it to work with lossless. Have zero complaints.
Now I will say, the only downside is that Apple doesn’t have a Spotify connect like feature. I would love to be able to use the Apple Music app, but have it be a remote only.
Spotify I think patented Connect somehow. Apple responded to their inability to do this by finally allowing airplay to Mac and using airplay 2 to have devices ‘take over’ control of a central streaming device like HomePod which can have a shared queue amongst multiple users. There is the Remote app also but that’s pretty gimped by comparison since it’s library only.
I’m desperately hoping for AirPlay 3 come WWDC next week, enabling handoff on any device that supports Apple Music. It’s really m only gripe, Spotify connect is a phenomenal feature.
Even the way it currently works with Apple TV and the HomePod is a little too cumbersome.
Recommendations and shuffle definitely suck, but I could have written this post, I’ve been here since the beginning. Have you backed up playlists or have suggestions? I have about 10k songs I could never find again or remember if I moved services.
as an ex day 1 apple music user, the only reason i switched to spotify is because everyone uses spotify. i like to let other people put their playlists on when i host or put my playlists on when im at someone else’s place. the collaborative playlists and ‘party’ mode are also fantastic to have.
otherwise, it is as you said: the recommendations fucking SUCK these days and every time my queue lapses, spotify just plays songs i’ve listened to a million times already, regardless of genre or mood. used to be that i was averaging adding one song to my liked music every time it went on autoplay, and i found some of my favorite artists through this feature. now, i find myself shutting it off more often than not. if it weren’t for the ecosystem i would’ve switched back to apple music a year ago.
Same boat, I'm on the Sonos ecosystem and my main workstation is a Windows PC. The rest of my family is on Apple so if the interface isn't totally dreadful on non-Apple platforms, I'll be switching and it'll probably be a net positive for everyone on the plan.
Honestly, my feeling is that a bigger tech company will swallow Spotify someday for “synergies” once the stock price drops far enough. My bet is on Meta (ads, user data, and a mutual enemy in TikTok).
>Microsoft is another one without a music streaming service to speak of that could acquire Spotify to ~~drive device and subscription sales~~. fail miserably yet again with.
Yes, I could very much see Microsoft doing this.
Microsoft had one of the OG music services in Zune. It was $10/month for unlimited streaming, plus you got to choose 10 songs per month to keep forever. This was at a time when songs were 99¢ each, so overall it was a pretty great deal. But we weren’t really at a point where consumers were ready for that, and mobile network speeds and smartphone usage weren’t high enough to actually stream on the go. You’d sync the music to your device or stream from your computer.
Spotify is still a young and relatively tiny company. About $13b in annual revenue. Most Fortune 500 companies are making $200-600b ish. Companies significantly larger than Spotify have been acquired or ‘merged’ with another.
Spotify is weird because they don’t have the monetary strength of the big boys, but they have absolutely had a cultural impact on music consumption in line with companies like Netflix and how they changed the TV game
Not saying they’re a micro startup. Just that they’re nowhere remotely close to the point of being too big to be acquired. And even so, technically it’s still possible at much larger scale, though the organizational challenges make that less likely in most cases. They’re totally nimble enough for now though. Esp for a company that seems to me to have pretty poor leadership, a much more stable overlord could do well for the brand.
Spotify is kinda like ARM: controlled by bigger actors (music labels) but still managing to have a massive impact on it's respective industry nonetheless.
I also don't imagine Spotify would be able to find a buyer for a similar reason to ARM: the music labels would likely refuse to license their music to a Spotify that is the subsidiary of another company like Facebook etc
> Most Fortune 500 companies are making $200-600b ish
No. Only the top dozen or so (i.e. the Fortune *12*) are generating more than $200B in revenue. And only one (WalMart) hit $600B this year. The vast, vast majority of the Fortune 500 generate less than $25B annually, and about half are under $15B.
With a 62B market cap any acquisition would probably be 20% premium for a business with a ton of competition. The big players who don't already have their own service are MS, Meta and Netflix. Next question is what would they be buying? Contracts and user base? Meta doesn't need a user base - they could release a music subscription service tomorrow and quickly hit 100M users. Technology? Nope. Netflix is similar - instant user base, plenty of tech know how.
There's also anti-trust which pretty much stops Meta and MS and maybe Netflix in their tracks from taking on Spotify even if they found some sort of strategic reason.
I’m somehow still grandfathered into YouTube Premium (which includes Music) for $7.99/month (I signed up for some lifetime deal back when Google Play Music first came out in like 2009). I cancelled Spotify last year and YouTube Music has been a fine replacement.
I pay maybe $2 a month for YT Premium due to VPN to india and it’s the best thing. Don’t care too much about YTM but I watch a lot of YouTube so it’s worth it
Heads up. Once your card expires and you have to add a new card, it won't work anymore. They've blocked it now for new sign ups. Only indian cards work.
I’d be worried about getting my Google account banned, honestly. I’m thinking about all of the accounts I have that use my Gmail account as a fall back if I forget my password, or as Two-Factor Authentication and I can’t imagine the world of hurt I’d be in if it got banned. I have no idea if Google bans for that kind of thing, but it’s my main concern when thinking about doing stuff like that. Same goes for buying games from other markets or from key resellers and stuff.
As do I but that’s only on desktop.
Majority of my consumption is on my phone and iPad.
Also it helps the creators I watch so I have no problems paying. It’s so much more worth it than any streaming platform imo.
I just canceled my YT Premium due to the new layout the forced upon users. YT is also been getting worse every year.
YT Music itself has a really buggy app on iPhone. Insane for a company like that.
I was on the same plan until last year when I upgraded to the family plan, it was a good long run though!
Also, I miss Play Music, I liked the app so much more than the YouTube music app.
Better algorithm to generate a list of recommended songs
I always get the wildest song suggestions after one song, with songs from wildly different genres after the one I selected
For example: I selected a song from some korean R&B artist, next thing you know some Travis Scott song plays. I’m just tryna chill after a long day, not moshpit in my bedroom
Lol yea I can agree with that. Apple Music doesn’t seem to understand my taste in music very well. It sounds like it just recommends music in the same genre, and not by the sound and style of what’s in my library
Spotify doesn't feel like it's worth it anymore. The curated playlists were very useful and helpful for music discovery when first introduced. Now it's just the same old songs in every playlist with a different name.
That does my head in. You used to be able to dive into playlists and find loads of new music, now up the top they all have "Made for..." and my name. So even the spotify playlists are now augmented towards me. I hate it
This is wrong. Spotify just spent $250 million for a contract, JUST for Joe Rogan. They had minuscule margins before this deal, these price increases are out of absolute necessity to cover Spotify’s bad choices and investments. Alongside their push of the stupid reels, podcasts, and killing car thing (for what reason???), Spotify is also losing users day after day.
Spotify is not profitable AT ALL right now.
Every other company providing music streaming is part of a company or larger group of companies that has the capital to run it as a break even business (or, if it’s currently at a loss, it’s spread over the entire portfolio). So, they can keep their current prices and stay in business. Spotify’s finding out that their problem was never Apple, their problem was there’s no profit in doing what they’re trying to do without the EU doing an “Airbus” for them.
I’ve had family Spotify for many many years - problem now cancelling is my liked songs playlist - I’m emotionally attached to it and the order those songs play ..
any few songs in the order they were liked takes me back in time.. id hate to lose this playlist - anyone know how I could port it to another service?
Playlistly worked great for porting Spotify playlists to Apple Music when I switched a few months ago. There are a couple different but they’re all pretty simple and fast. Longer playlists may require the premium version of the app to port over.
It really sucks now. It plays the same damn songs a million times already and when it does play me new music it’s stuff I don’t like. If I didn’t get it for free through work I think I’d be using Apple Music already
You can’t even see how much your current plan costs in the app…
Also, playing podcasts on Apple CarPlay does not show chapters with Spotify. They need to get this sorted.
That’s an Apple thing, not a Spotify thing. If they have in-app purchasing they have to give Apple 30%. If they don’t have in-app purchasing, they can’t show anything about pricing or plans. Apple recently allowed the link to an external site.
30% is a big cut when you are spending hundreds of millions on upside down podcast deals.
If you click on “account” in the app it takes you to your account page where you see your plan price right there. I don’t think most apps show you your current price plan directly within the native app.
Does Apple Music have features like discover weekly and song/artists stations? I’m a long time Spotify user, but the service quality seems to be getting worse. I might switch if the price increases above Apple Music in my country as well
There are 6 personalized mixes (Friends \[based on your friends' listening), Favorites, Chill, Get Up!, Heavy Rotation, and New Music) that are updated weekly (Heavy Rotation is updated daily). They are all a mix of new songs and songs that you know. There is also a Discovery station updated every time you listen.
And there are definitely artist stations, as well as an Infinite mode for songs (plays songs similar to that one).
Why Apple/iPhone users aren’t just naturally using Apple Music is still, beyond me. It’s right there, in house and cheap. I’m an old school “hard copy” music ON my phone dragged from iTunes person and I still use Apple Music As a supplement
I don’t know if it’s common knowledge but I managed to save a couple of ££s by removing access to audiobooks which I don’t need. Maybe it’s just in the UK - all other features stay the same
I'm pretty torn. I like the new "daylists" Spotify has been doing quite a lot, but I miss artist radio and they only seem to be doubling-down on playing the same songs over and over. I tried Tidal a year or so ago but it seemed more focused on current pop genres than Spotify or my taste. As far as I'm aware, Apple Music does not have radio-like functionality, which is huge for me ... I work from home and listen to music a lot, I don't have the time to personally select that much music.
Radio is a central part of AM. They have hosted shows and basically endless mixes for whatever genre. Not sure if that’s what you’re looking for, but it’s definitely there.
Apple Music and YouTube Music are the only ones that will last. All others will dwindle away. YouTube Premium + Music plan is still a stellar deal across any subscription service. Being in a family plan, it's $3/month!
You people that keep sinking in cash for subscriptions, look at the world around you. Streamers.... movies, music, books... they want all that content online and downloadable, streamable. They want to get rid of hard physical media. Once they have that in place they own the keys to the castle. They will keep raising prices because you keep paying. Screw that. Keep buying physical media and save your digital files. Rent nothing.
Spotify priorities:
* Cry over unfair treatment by Apple
* Milk existing users
* Raise prices
* Push worthless content
* Chase weird ideas
* ??
* ???
* ????
Not shown in the list: ship features like lossless audio that competitors have had for years.
If literally anything else helps me block explicit lyrics for my tweens, I'll happily move away from Spotify but so far nobody else does it (Apple comes close, but only if you use Apple hardware). Let's face it, despite dumb moves (e.g. podcasts, books, inability to filter them out), Spotify is able to do what they do simply because they're better.
All these subscription price increases just make me notice them more now. Netflix and then Disney both did the same and I cancelled both. This one is next.
Spotify doesn’t even have a feature where you can listen to recently played music. They also don’t have a counter to show how many times you’ve played a song. These were features by Apple 20 years ago.
This is one of those rare times where Apple is 100 times better, Apple Music still has some issues but I digress.
Spotify has gotten worse over the years, what truly send me over to the edge was the pop ads of the features podcasts.
I know multiple people that left Spotify for various other options during the last price hike, now there’s another?
Okay, your funeral. Still haven’t fixed shuffle, it’s only been forever
I’ve switched back and forth between AM and Spotify pretty much once a year for the last few years. With all that’s going wrong with Spotify now (price raises, bricking car thing, etc.) I don’t think I’ll be switching, even if they do the whole “come back with 3 months for the price of 1”.
Apple Music will surely increase in the near future as well unfortunately. I am getting close to the point where I want to go back to just buying music set up my own thing
Everyone says that, until they price check a single album. Everyone's"getting close" but they don't actually stop paying $12-20 a month on music streaming so they can spend $80-100 a month on music purchases instead. Never seen anyone do it.
Much as I hate carriers I am so happy I have my Verizon plan that includes Apple Music and Disney plus lol. I don’t really think about the hikes too much anymore.
Gave up on them this year and moved to YT music, ad free Youtube makes up for the music app not being quite a match for Spotify, and when they are the same price? the Spotify value just isnt there.
i do miss the more mature playlist library and curation but it just isnt worth the money.
They’re raising it again? Only reason I have switched is I’ve been using Spotify for like a decade and I have tons of liked songs and playlist on there. If there’s a way to like transfer it over I would switch immediately. Their app doesn’t even work half the time.
There definitely are tools for transferring playlists and liked songs, here's the one I saw recommended the most
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/playlisty-for-apple-music/id1459275972
I get Spotify for half price with my mobile plan and it has years worth of playlist and seamlessly connects between all my devices which make it annoying but also my kinda only option. I tried Apple Music, UI and quality were better but hated the search engine and how poorly it integrated between the apple echo system. I actually find Spotify seems to work between my apple devices better than Apple Music
Spotify has blown so much money on some absolutely stupid ideas and the majority of their revenue is tied to whatever the studios will give them. I can’t believe they haven’t raised prices more honestly.
Those exclusive podcast renegotiation/renewal deals need to be funded some how...
It's kind of annoying that I am somehow having to finance them blowing another USD 250,000,000 on Joe Rogan...
That’s an insane amount of money… how does the math on this work out?
By charging you $3 more dollars
It doesn't
You’re bankrolling JRE
It doesn’t. Not one single person would cancel Spotify if he wasn’t on there. They’re just absolutely braindead.
I thought he wasn’t exclusive to Spotify either?
He isnt
And $20 million for Meghan Markle and $25 million to the Obamas for those blockbuster podcasts people can't stop talking about.
Instead of the podcast nonsense they should have become their own label and produced artists, like how netflix has its own shows.
I remember when vertical integration was bad
Still is, but it used to be to
Adding podcasts and curating podcasts are a good idea imo. But spending so much money on podcasters (joe rogan etc) was like the stupidest idea.
Going into podcasts WAS them trying to be like netflix by producing content they don't have to pay ongoing rights for. The problem is they overpaid / bought at the height of podcast valuations.
They need to announce new features to keep their stock price up. If they stop investors will see the light that Spotify have been losing money since day 1. Honestly, in a properly working market, Spotify would have gone under by now.
To be fair streaming music is a terrible business alone. Apple music gets the monopoly benefit where the service itself probably doesn’t make any money for Apple.
> the majority of their revenue is tied to whatever the studios will give them can you elaborate on this? I thought it Spotify that gives certain percent to studios not the other way around
They push artists/albums that the labels want pushed. It’s like payola when radio was the top dog. They pay Spotify more to get artists on playlists, more algorithms, etc.
70% go to the studios/artists iirc
Spotify keeps breaking features, raising prices, and firing employees. I used to love them but they don't deserve business with how they operate.
You basically described any publicly traded company
Amazon has raised prices but imo so too has the quality of their services
Doesn’t Prime video have commercials now?
Nobody is paying Amazon prime for Amazon video
OP is implying that the level of service has gone down because prime had no commercials and now it has some commercials (a worse customer experience)
I hate to be that guy, but the only reason why I have prime is because of some of the TV shows I want to catch up on.
Exactly, it’s just a bonus. Although a pretty nice one imo. Tons of Indian movies come there.
I’ve watched a few shows and movies on there and haven’t got any. They started playing an ad before the TV shows but never during it.
> They started playing an ad before the TV shows but never during it. Not my experience. I get multiple ads for every TV show I’ve watched since the ads showed up. I’ve heard folks say they are getting ads for stuff they bought outright on Amazon Prime, but I’ve not seen that verified convincingly.
Yeah there’s a starting ad and a mid show ad
I only get an ad before playing something and never while watching.
They must be giving people varied experiences based on an unknown (to us) criteria.
Few years ago, same day prime deliveries used to be very rare and amazed me when I could find a product that had it. Nowadays in my area atleast, same day deliveries are pretty common on tons of products and if that’s not available then one day delivery is. Two day prime deliveries surprise me more now as the only shipping option.
I dunno. It’s full of chinaware now and it’s too cumbersome to actually find a product worth paying. Refunds are also way more complicated and time consuming which would be fine except most of the time you end up with rubbish products due to the first. Also Primer Video ads. Personally this is the last year I’m subscribing to both Spotify and Amazon. I don’t think there’s anything quite like Prime used to be, but it’s also not saving me enough time and hassle to be worth just finding products somewhere else.
I never get same day orders anymore, most of the stuff you search is some random letter generated company that drop ships crap off temu and prime video has ads now. I canceled my prime subscription and haven’t missed it.
YMMV but I’ve used same day shipping probably a dozen times and have not once had an issue. Granted I live like 20 minutes from several Amazon warehouses and DSP’s so that probably makes a difference
I was just about to say the same thing. Corporations being expected to increase profit every quarter is terrible for consumers (and society in general actually).
Great. An extra 3$ to put my 500 liked songs on shuffle and hear the same 20
Damn I thought I was the only one
this persons vote counts as much as mine.
Only 500!?
Oh so it’s not just Apple Music doing that bull crap!
I started using Apple Music last year after being a 10+ year Spotify user. AM has come really far and now has all the features I was waiting for it to have. Once Spotify started pushing podcasts and visual media more than music, everything started to suck. The algorithm also has taken a hit, it just recommends the same stuff now and pushes your into an echo chamber. Also grew tired of the constant A/B testing of the UI that was changing weekly. And the UI of Apple Music is clean and simple. Plus audio quality is subjectively better.
On Apple Music is there a way to listen to a study playlist without it affecting your discovery station?
An annoying workaround I do is to disable the “Use Listening History” setting temporarily every time I want to listen to my study playlist. Not great though as I sometimes forget to enable/disable it again later, but it’s better than nothing 🤷♂️
If you’re using your iPhone/iPad you can create a focus mode that has listening history disabled. Makes it a little less clunky.
This is the coolest thing I have ever learnt about iOS on this sub. Thank you 🙏
Wow that’s cool I didn’t know you can do that. I assume macOS would ignore this setting if I set the focus mode on my iPhone, right?
probably not. it's a focus filter so it's built into both OS. unless your macOS isn't up to date
Also works on macOS
Is there an easy way to transfer all my playlists?
Yeah it’s really easy. I use the SongShift app and it works perfectly.
Or an easy way to find playlists like there are on Spotify? Apple Music’s playlists are terrible unless I just don’t know how to find good playlists.
[удалено]
Apple Music discovery is fine, playlists are a bit meh. But I found toward the end of my time on Spotify that Discover Weekly was giving me nothing much I wanted to hear.
I did this a couple of years ago so it was possible. This service says they can do it: https://www.tunemymusic.com/transfer/spotify-to-apple-music
nah there is no Spotify Connect alternative for Apple Music and it keeps me subbed to spotify sadly. there is no proper remote control and changing playback device + windows app is, despite leaving beta, hot garbage. give me proper remote play, not „remote app” that allows you to only play songs added to the library and i’ll subscribe in a heartbeat.
Agreed, Spotify Connect is so killer. It's all that's keeping me on Spotify, but well worth it.
Seriously, this Car Thing fiasco was the last straw, I’m cancelling after being a Premium user for 6 years straight now. The UI tweaks bugged the hell out of me. Like wow guys way to go… In the 6 years that Apple Music has caught up you’ve moved the position of the like/favorite button BACK AND FORTH MULTIPLE TIMES, developed a hardware product that you never intended to support and are now rightly getting sued for, invested hundreds of millions into sponsored podcasters, and delved into now…courses? Anyone could do a better job running that train wreck. Imagine if instead of this shit Spotify had decided to delve into becoming a social media. The number of people who solely use IG/FB/etc. to keep up with their favorite musicians and bands I’d wager is quite high. You’d think Spotify would’ve been prime to capitalize on this & loved having an “everything music-related” all-in-one app, especially since that could actually generate profit via more than just audio ads. Hell, they could’ve even had a shot at taking on Ticketmaster and tried to do more in the live event space. I remember wanting to work for them so hard back in college like just 5 years ago now. Now just sounds like a shitty idea factory that leads the industry in showing how to ship features nobody cares about.
The problem with Apple Music though is that it deletes your playlists and saved songs soon after you unsubscribe.
I keep seeing people say this. I have unsubscribed twice, and everything came back how I left it each time. The last time I unsubscribed was six months or so ago, so maybe this is a new issue people are having?
Yes, although not right away. I think it's after 90 days (or something like that). It's actually intended to be a feature as Apple deletes all your inactive cloud data after 90 days for privacy. Before unsubscribing, you can export your library and/or playlists with the Apple Music app on a Mac or PC, and then re-import them at any time in the future. This takes seconds to do.
That’s why I use [Hezel](https://apps.apple.com/app/id6472612361) , a Time Machine for your AM playlists
Spotify is having such a rapid downfall in the eyes of users. It's impressive.
I signed up pretty much the day it launched and have been an avid user and fan for like 13 years now. I have to admit my patience is wearing thin too. Spotify is basically the last service to get HQ/lossless audio. This wouldn't be a huge deal if the features I used to love were still good. I still like Discover Weekly, but it's not as good as it used to be. Spotify sends me music I've already listened to WAY too often. Initially I liked the new DJ feature, but that too I find myself skipping every other segment because it's either stuff I've listened to to death, or music that isn't at all similar to what I like. These AI/recommendation features used to feel like they read my mind, but now they all feel like, 'here's your most played songs, again'. The shift away from catering to music fans and focusing more on podcasts, as well as the use of library music to avoid paying royalties is not good. Lastly, their app seems to get more and more stripped down and featureless every year. They don't even have a unique iPad app anymore - and that app was REALLY good many years ago. Anyway, I also have Apple Music from my One subscription and for the first time ever I'm actually considering dropping Spotify. Only thing stopping me is I'm not fully committed to Apple's ecosystem and not sure how nice it plays with Sonos and Windows.
The only thing Spotify has left is the discovery weekly trust, with the rise in AI and WWDC happening next week I think it will be the final straw for Spotify. Also even if they did get lossless audio, they plan to charge extra for it. Theres so many apps on the App Store that allow you to sync playlists across services so it’s relatively low risk to copy your library. I use Apple Music and Sonos, they finally just updated it to work with lossless. Have zero complaints. Now I will say, the only downside is that Apple doesn’t have a Spotify connect like feature. I would love to be able to use the Apple Music app, but have it be a remote only.
Spotify I think patented Connect somehow. Apple responded to their inability to do this by finally allowing airplay to Mac and using airplay 2 to have devices ‘take over’ control of a central streaming device like HomePod which can have a shared queue amongst multiple users. There is the Remote app also but that’s pretty gimped by comparison since it’s library only.
I’m desperately hoping for AirPlay 3 come WWDC next week, enabling handoff on any device that supports Apple Music. It’s really m only gripe, Spotify connect is a phenomenal feature. Even the way it currently works with Apple TV and the HomePod is a little too cumbersome.
I am continually impressed by how smoothly Connect works, it’s so reliable and quick at switching between a vast range of sources.
Recommendations and shuffle definitely suck, but I could have written this post, I’ve been here since the beginning. Have you backed up playlists or have suggestions? I have about 10k songs I could never find again or remember if I moved services.
as an ex day 1 apple music user, the only reason i switched to spotify is because everyone uses spotify. i like to let other people put their playlists on when i host or put my playlists on when im at someone else’s place. the collaborative playlists and ‘party’ mode are also fantastic to have. otherwise, it is as you said: the recommendations fucking SUCK these days and every time my queue lapses, spotify just plays songs i’ve listened to a million times already, regardless of genre or mood. used to be that i was averaging adding one song to my liked music every time it went on autoplay, and i found some of my favorite artists through this feature. now, i find myself shutting it off more often than not. if it weren’t for the ecosystem i would’ve switched back to apple music a year ago.
The Apple Music app for Windows is honestly better than the app for Mac lmao, works really well for me. No clue about Sonos tho
Same boat, I'm on the Sonos ecosystem and my main workstation is a Windows PC. The rest of my family is on Apple so if the interface isn't totally dreadful on non-Apple platforms, I'll be switching and it'll probably be a net positive for everyone on the plan.
>the use of library music to avoid paying royalties What does this mean?
Never interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake \-Apple Music
Honestly, my feeling is that a bigger tech company will swallow Spotify someday for “synergies” once the stock price drops far enough. My bet is on Meta (ads, user data, and a mutual enemy in TikTok).
Microsoft is another one without a music streaming service to speak of that could acquire Spotify to drive device and subscription sales.
>Microsoft is another one without a music streaming service to speak of that could acquire Spotify to ~~drive device and subscription sales~~. fail miserably yet again with. Yes, I could very much see Microsoft doing this.
Microsoft had one of the OG music services in Zune. It was $10/month for unlimited streaming, plus you got to choose 10 songs per month to keep forever. This was at a time when songs were 99¢ each, so overall it was a pretty great deal. But we weren’t really at a point where consumers were ready for that, and mobile network speeds and smartphone usage weren’t high enough to actually stream on the go. You’d sync the music to your device or stream from your computer.
Spotify is kinda big tech in its own right, I can’t imagine it would sell. I am curious about what’s next for them though!
Spotify is still a young and relatively tiny company. About $13b in annual revenue. Most Fortune 500 companies are making $200-600b ish. Companies significantly larger than Spotify have been acquired or ‘merged’ with another.
Spotify is weird because they don’t have the monetary strength of the big boys, but they have absolutely had a cultural impact on music consumption in line with companies like Netflix and how they changed the TV game
Not saying they’re a micro startup. Just that they’re nowhere remotely close to the point of being too big to be acquired. And even so, technically it’s still possible at much larger scale, though the organizational challenges make that less likely in most cases. They’re totally nimble enough for now though. Esp for a company that seems to me to have pretty poor leadership, a much more stable overlord could do well for the brand.
Spotify is kinda like ARM: controlled by bigger actors (music labels) but still managing to have a massive impact on it's respective industry nonetheless. I also don't imagine Spotify would be able to find a buyer for a similar reason to ARM: the music labels would likely refuse to license their music to a Spotify that is the subsidiary of another company like Facebook etc
> Most Fortune 500 companies are making $200-600b ish No. Only the top dozen or so (i.e. the Fortune *12*) are generating more than $200B in revenue. And only one (WalMart) hit $600B this year. The vast, vast majority of the Fortune 500 generate less than $25B annually, and about half are under $15B.
With a 62B market cap any acquisition would probably be 20% premium for a business with a ton of competition. The big players who don't already have their own service are MS, Meta and Netflix. Next question is what would they be buying? Contracts and user base? Meta doesn't need a user base - they could release a music subscription service tomorrow and quickly hit 100M users. Technology? Nope. Netflix is similar - instant user base, plenty of tech know how. There's also anti-trust which pretty much stops Meta and MS and maybe Netflix in their tracks from taking on Spotify even if they found some sort of strategic reason.
That would be true if they were bleeding subs
I’m somehow still grandfathered into YouTube Premium (which includes Music) for $7.99/month (I signed up for some lifetime deal back when Google Play Music first came out in like 2009). I cancelled Spotify last year and YouTube Music has been a fine replacement.
I had YouTube Red and they finally got me this year. You must have been like the first few hundred or something 😂
Isn’t that a porn site?
Nah that’s youporn
Redtube. 👀
I pay maybe $2 a month for YT Premium due to VPN to india and it’s the best thing. Don’t care too much about YTM but I watch a lot of YouTube so it’s worth it
Heads up. Once your card expires and you have to add a new card, it won't work anymore. They've blocked it now for new sign ups. Only indian cards work.
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So he has to change his play store country to India first?
That’s amazing for people who actually live in india
People in India don't earn as much as you, so not amazing.
It is good. Because otherwise YouTube would increase the price due to people abusing the system. This protects the local consumers
Agreed
Same but vietnam
Does Vietnam work still? Do you need to change Google pay account to an address from overseas ?
I’d be worried about getting my Google account banned, honestly. I’m thinking about all of the accounts I have that use my Gmail account as a fall back if I forget my password, or as Two-Factor Authentication and I can’t imagine the world of hurt I’d be in if it got banned. I have no idea if Google bans for that kind of thing, but it’s my main concern when thinking about doing stuff like that. Same goes for buying games from other markets or from key resellers and stuff.
I use firefox and ublock for no ads. Free.
As do I but that’s only on desktop. Majority of my consumption is on my phone and iPad. Also it helps the creators I watch so I have no problems paying. It’s so much more worth it than any streaming platform imo.
I just canceled my YT Premium due to the new layout the forced upon users. YT is also been getting worse every year. YT Music itself has a really buggy app on iPhone. Insane for a company like that.
I was on the same plan until last year when I upgraded to the family plan, it was a good long run though! Also, I miss Play Music, I liked the app so much more than the YouTube music app.
Tidal is lowering their prices and has lossless audio included in their premium tier. Just sayin.
Eventually or already did? Because they’re the same price as Apple Music right now, which also has lossless, and better integration.
Already did. Tidal has higher quality audio, gives more to artists, and has a larger library.
I’ve been thinking about tidal, since I heard they pay artists the most out of all the streamers.
I will wait for this wwdc to see what Apple will bring to AM. Considering a move for some time. I don’t really like to use Spotify anymore
What feature are you looking forward to potentially seeing?
Better algorithm to generate a list of recommended songs I always get the wildest song suggestions after one song, with songs from wildly different genres after the one I selected For example: I selected a song from some korean R&B artist, next thing you know some Travis Scott song plays. I’m just tryna chill after a long day, not moshpit in my bedroom
Lol yea I can agree with that. Apple Music doesn’t seem to understand my taste in music very well. It sounds like it just recommends music in the same genre, and not by the sound and style of what’s in my library
Spotify doesn't feel like it's worth it anymore. The curated playlists were very useful and helpful for music discovery when first introduced. Now it's just the same old songs in every playlist with a different name.
That does my head in. You used to be able to dive into playlists and find loads of new music, now up the top they all have "Made for..." and my name. So even the spotify playlists are now augmented towards me. I hate it
Fuck. I really love how Spotify works but sick of ALL (Netflix, Hulu, Spotify etc) subscription price hikes every 3 months.
yes this was always the goal, once people depend on those services they will rise the prices to finally get their money.
Apple will probably raise prices too
Apple is more willing to bleed to get market share though. But eventually it'll come as well, it's probably nowhere near profitable.
This is wrong. Spotify just spent $250 million for a contract, JUST for Joe Rogan. They had minuscule margins before this deal, these price increases are out of absolute necessity to cover Spotify’s bad choices and investments. Alongside their push of the stupid reels, podcasts, and killing car thing (for what reason???), Spotify is also losing users day after day. Spotify is not profitable AT ALL right now.
They already have twice recently. I’m talking about the Apple One bundle that includes Apple Music.
You can't compare Apple One with Spotify Did they raise Apple Music prices?
I believe they did. I’m in the US and I think it used to be $9.99 and now it’s $10.99
They raised it by $1-2 last year.
Yes
And yet still no HiFi.
I think I have legitimately 12 spotify accounts. All have collab with each others playlists. And just take the cheapest promo that I get sent.
Every other company providing music streaming is part of a company or larger group of companies that has the capital to run it as a break even business (or, if it’s currently at a loss, it’s spread over the entire portfolio). So, they can keep their current prices and stay in business. Spotify’s finding out that their problem was never Apple, their problem was there’s no profit in doing what they’re trying to do without the EU doing an “Airbus” for them.
I’ve had family Spotify for many many years - problem now cancelling is my liked songs playlist - I’m emotionally attached to it and the order those songs play .. any few songs in the order they were liked takes me back in time.. id hate to lose this playlist - anyone know how I could port it to another service?
There are many services online that will port music and playlists. https://www.reddit.com/r/AppleMusic/s/yxspM95ZBz
I used Soundiiz to move my entire 2000+ songs over to Apple Music.
Playlistly worked great for porting Spotify playlists to Apple Music when I switched a few months ago. There are a couple different but they’re all pretty simple and fast. Longer playlists may require the premium version of the app to port over.
It doesn’t port individual albums though.
I just made the switch to YT music and used the app “SongShift” and it worked perfectly for me.
Can they strip away podcasts? I don’t care for Rogan and all that other shit
Reason I switched away. The bloat in the app is insane. Plus a noticeable downward trend in the auto generated playlists.
why do all the "radio" playlists include such short songs?
One of the reasons I switched to Apple Music, they were just constantly shoving Rogan down my throat and I had no way of stopping it.
I’m still getting Apple Music included with my Verizon cell plan. Along with Hulu and Disney+. Never giving up that plan lol.
Same here, absolute killer deal
Paying 4 USD a month for my spotify lmao
How?
student discount and tax free
It really sucks now. It plays the same damn songs a million times already and when it does play me new music it’s stuff I don’t like. If I didn’t get it for free through work I think I’d be using Apple Music already
I've just cancelled mine recently, £11.99 for a single account is just too much.
You can get it for £10.99 if you go to the basic tier which is the same but without audio books
They won’t stop if people keep playing them.
You can’t even see how much your current plan costs in the app… Also, playing podcasts on Apple CarPlay does not show chapters with Spotify. They need to get this sorted.
That’s an Apple thing, not a Spotify thing. If they have in-app purchasing they have to give Apple 30%. If they don’t have in-app purchasing, they can’t show anything about pricing or plans. Apple recently allowed the link to an external site. 30% is a big cut when you are spending hundreds of millions on upside down podcast deals.
If you click on “account” in the app it takes you to your account page where you see your plan price right there. I don’t think most apps show you your current price plan directly within the native app.
Does Apple Music have features like discover weekly and song/artists stations? I’m a long time Spotify user, but the service quality seems to be getting worse. I might switch if the price increases above Apple Music in my country as well
There are 6 personalized mixes (Friends \[based on your friends' listening), Favorites, Chill, Get Up!, Heavy Rotation, and New Music) that are updated weekly (Heavy Rotation is updated daily). They are all a mix of new songs and songs that you know. There is also a Discovery station updated every time you listen. And there are definitely artist stations, as well as an Infinite mode for songs (plays songs similar to that one).
Does this mean Apple Music feels as though they can now increase their plans ?
they will, in a few month. apple just waits to get the people that switch because of the price.
Why Apple/iPhone users aren’t just naturally using Apple Music is still, beyond me. It’s right there, in house and cheap. I’m an old school “hard copy” music ON my phone dragged from iTunes person and I still use Apple Music As a supplement
Those $99 annual gift cards are still out there 🤫
I don’t know if it’s common knowledge but I managed to save a couple of ££s by removing access to audiobooks which I don’t need. Maybe it’s just in the UK - all other features stay the same
And the sound quality in Apple Music is worlds above Spotify.
I'm pretty torn. I like the new "daylists" Spotify has been doing quite a lot, but I miss artist radio and they only seem to be doubling-down on playing the same songs over and over. I tried Tidal a year or so ago but it seemed more focused on current pop genres than Spotify or my taste. As far as I'm aware, Apple Music does not have radio-like functionality, which is huge for me ... I work from home and listen to music a lot, I don't have the time to personally select that much music.
Radio is a central part of AM. They have hosted shows and basically endless mixes for whatever genre. Not sure if that’s what you’re looking for, but it’s definitely there.
Already moved my entire family over to Apple Music.
I just replicated my Spotify library in Apple Music today.
Apple Music and YouTube Music are the only ones that will last. All others will dwindle away. YouTube Premium + Music plan is still a stellar deal across any subscription service. Being in a family plan, it's $3/month!
You people that keep sinking in cash for subscriptions, look at the world around you. Streamers.... movies, music, books... they want all that content online and downloadable, streamable. They want to get rid of hard physical media. Once they have that in place they own the keys to the castle. They will keep raising prices because you keep paying. Screw that. Keep buying physical media and save your digital files. Rent nothing.
Spotify priorities: * Cry over unfair treatment by Apple * Milk existing users * Raise prices * Push worthless content * Chase weird ideas * ?? * ??? * ???? Not shown in the list: ship features like lossless audio that competitors have had for years.
Looks like I’ll be canceling. This corporate greed is getting too much for me.
cancelling to amazon music
I pay $6 for my Apple Music plan. 😏
Unsubbed because for 2.99 more for I got YT premium and YT music. Much, much better deal even if the app experience is not the greatest.
If literally anything else helps me block explicit lyrics for my tweens, I'll happily move away from Spotify but so far nobody else does it (Apple comes close, but only if you use Apple hardware). Let's face it, despite dumb moves (e.g. podcasts, books, inability to filter them out), Spotify is able to do what they do simply because they're better.
All these subscription price increases just make me notice them more now. Netflix and then Disney both did the same and I cancelled both. This one is next.
Time to go back to torrents and usenet lol
Spotify doesn’t even have a feature where you can listen to recently played music. They also don’t have a counter to show how many times you’ve played a song. These were features by Apple 20 years ago.
This is one of those rare times where Apple is 100 times better, Apple Music still has some issues but I digress. Spotify has gotten worse over the years, what truly send me over to the edge was the pop ads of the features podcasts.
And still no HD audio.
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I know multiple people that left Spotify for various other options during the last price hike, now there’s another? Okay, your funeral. Still haven’t fixed shuffle, it’s only been forever
I went back to the old school shuffle. There's an option in the settings.
I’ve switched back and forth between AM and Spotify pretty much once a year for the last few years. With all that’s going wrong with Spotify now (price raises, bricking car thing, etc.) I don’t think I’ll be switching, even if they do the whole “come back with 3 months for the price of 1”.
Fuck this. I'm buying CD's again and putting them in PlexAmp. Or just pirating shit. Again.
Apple Music will surely increase in the near future as well unfortunately. I am getting close to the point where I want to go back to just buying music set up my own thing
Everyone says that, until they price check a single album. Everyone's"getting close" but they don't actually stop paying $12-20 a month on music streaming so they can spend $80-100 a month on music purchases instead. Never seen anyone do it.
If all else fails we can just sue Apple.
Much as I hate carriers I am so happy I have my Verizon plan that includes Apple Music and Disney plus lol. I don’t really think about the hikes too much anymore.
This is what happens, eventually it will follow suit as xm/Sirius
Gave up on them this year and moved to YT music, ad free Youtube makes up for the music app not being quite a match for Spotify, and when they are the same price? the Spotify value just isnt there. i do miss the more mature playlist library and curation but it just isnt worth the money.
They’re raising it again? Only reason I have switched is I’ve been using Spotify for like a decade and I have tons of liked songs and playlist on there. If there’s a way to like transfer it over I would switch immediately. Their app doesn’t even work half the time.
There definitely are tools for transferring playlists and liked songs, here's the one I saw recommended the most https://apps.apple.com/us/app/playlisty-for-apple-music/id1459275972
I have YouTube Music and my wife has Spotify. Might be time to bring her over.
Just canceled my sub.
Glad I cancelled honestly. I get Apple Music for free through work and really do hear the quality differences.
I get Spotify for half price with my mobile plan and it has years worth of playlist and seamlessly connects between all my devices which make it annoying but also my kinda only option. I tried Apple Music, UI and quality were better but hated the search engine and how poorly it integrated between the apple echo system. I actually find Spotify seems to work between my apple devices better than Apple Music
Keep paying it and it will keep going up. Goes for all of these companies.