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Comment by knowknow | Hacker News Reader

What’s wrong with Spotify?

If you listen on high-end equipment the audio quality is noticeably worse than many other solutions and depending on your music taste, Spotify often removes content or doesn't have it in the first place.

Music disappearing is really annoying.

Afaik it's not terribly good to the artists. One of my favorite bands left the platform; I'm not there yet but if it happens en masse (or at least enough to effect me noticeably) then I'm out too.

I got a smartwatch with a cell connection, some good earbuds and started going to the gym, then I learned that their watch app is complete garbage. It refuses to play the music I want, either playing something else or nothing at all. It will play it out loud on my phones speaker in the locker instead of through my earbuds. It refuses to download the playlists I want. It refuses to stream the music.

None of that is a problem with the Apple Music app, so it's 100% a Spotify problem.

Also, Music sometimes disappears from my playlists.

"You'll own nothing and you'll be happy": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%27ll_own_nothing_and_be_ha...

For $15 a month I get access to (as far as my tastes are concerned) all the music ever recorded, instantly accessible from anywhere in the world on any device I own.

I recall a commercial from the 90s that sort of poked fun at this exact idea, as being laughably farfetched and "sci-fi".

You're damn right I'm happy.

Meh, the two ideologies are a tradeoff decision.

If you own, you don't pay subscription and can use that money to buy. And in tenuous circumstances you have control.

If you subscribe, you don't pay money to buy massive library. But in tenuous circumstances you don't have control.

Everybody rates the risk of tenuous circumstances differently and so that affects the decision outcome.

+1000

There's absolutely no way in hell I'm going back to hoarding stupid ass CDs or MP3/FLAC files when I can legally have immediate access to tens of millions of titles. I have absolutely zero interest in the "owning" part but I understand some people would prefer it.

ive often thought about a happy middle ground product that would make me consider coming back to spotify... a version of the subscription model, somewhat similar to ebook stuff, where if you are subscribed you can choose X amount of songs that month to "own" forever.

so if you decide you cant pay their monthly fee, you still have full access to your library of songs that you chose to own over the years, and are not subjected to the feeling of being a prisoner to their subscription model if you decide you cant afford it for x amount of time.

this feeling of being a prisoner is the absolute main driver of why i prefer non spotify solutions. i love the actual product otherwise. if i had not experienced the non subscribed version of what my account feels like, i think i would still happily be paying for spotify today.

I use bandcamp intermittently and have often wished that they offered a "subscription" feature like this, whereby they take a certain amount of money from me a month to put into my "bandcamp wallet" or whatever, that I can then use to buy music. I mean to spend a certain amount on music in bandcamp per month but life gets in the way and it falls off the radar. A model like this would definitely keep me more engaged

100% agree. I'll note that the more one gets jaded with individual systems, they like to reach for easy systems that give them more control.

I've never understood the conspiratorial use of that slogan because it's unironically correct. Ownership is economically a cost and a risk and you're generally better off if you can utilize something without owning it or distribute ownership.

I'm much better off using free software than having copies of proprietary software on my shelf and the train is much cheaper than the car insurance.

It's not conspiratorial. It's an accurate and widely broadcasted business model by several companies. Why do you feel something that is present and real should be denigrated as conspiratorial?

It's a shit company that I don't want to support.

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