Why YSK: Spotify forces you either to pay, listen to ads or to find unofficial, potentially dangerous versions to use it. It’s better to find a free alternative, both for your wallet and for your peace of mind.

Introducing: ViMusic

Downloads: https://github.com/vfsfitvnm/ViMusic

  • Free and open source
  • No ads/trackers
  • Song lyrics
  • Music from both YouTube Music and YouTube
  • Weights 2MB or so
  • Beautiful UI and amazing UX

Cons: no high kbps streaming support

DO NOT TRY TO DOWNLOAD THE APP FROM ANY SOURCE OTHER THAN THE ONES LISTED IN THEIR GITHUB PAGE. They are malware.

  • tinsukE@lemmy.world
    51·
    1 year ago

    Potential bias: I’m a developer at Spotify.

    “Spotify forces you either to pay, listen to ads or to find unofficial, potentially dangerous versions to use it.”

    I don’t think the company forces you to do anything. It is their business model, how they can provide copyrighted music to you and have a share of the pie too.

    I’d say the very idea that Spotify is forcing you to pay with time and attention or money so you can have music conveniently streamed to your devices is a testament to the company’s success. It created this business model and fulfilled an apparently basic need to the point you think that charging for it is unfair.

    But “forcing” is too much. You can always buy discs, digital downloads and so.

    • Cybermass@lemmy.world
      2·
      1 year ago

      I mean the streamers have to get paid too, you might hear artists complain about how much money Spotify takes but as someone who has released lots of music on Spotify they do pay you, pretty decently too! Lots of artists are making hundreds of thousands a year from just Spotify and the business itself is profitable, which allows pretty much anyone to upload their music and try their dream.

      That is valuable in it of itself, without services like Spotify many of the artists I listen too would probably have given up on music for a boring IT job, like I did.

    • Granbo's Holy Hotrod@lemmy.world
      1·
      5 months ago

      Spotify took an existing thing and made it convenient and worse at the same time. How long before we are just listening to AI music? Since their cost is the artists…it’s only a matter of time.

      • Senokir@lemmy.world
        0·
        1 year ago

        I’d also add that I wish Spotify paid the musicians better. Even relative to other platforms Spotify is pretty bad about that. Of course if you want to support the musician it’s always better to buy merch and music and stuff directly from them, but that isn’t really an excuse for streaming platforms to pay them so poorly. And I’m not suggesting that Spotify should just give the musician everything of course. They should get their cut too. But perhaps something even slightly more reasonable would be appreciated.

    • bloodsangre7@lemmy.world
      0·
      1 year ago

      I think the important thing is to keep Spotify from being the only way you can stream music. While I agree you can buy discs or digital downloads, these are fundamentally different methods of consumption from streaming.

      Stopping Spotify purchasing the exclusive rights to stream prevents a monopoly where, if you want to stream, you are ‘forced’ to use Spotify and pay/listen to ads there. Keeping artists’ options open allows the most customer-friendly streaming service to win out as consumers choose which streaming service gives them the best product to listen to who they want