Spotify is officially raising its Premium subscription rates in the US come July, following reports of the move in April. The platform is increasing its Individual plan from $11 to $12 monthly and its Duo plan from $15 to $17 monthly — the same jump as last year’s $1 and $2 price hikes, respectively. However, its Family plan is going up by a whopping $3, increasing from $17 to $20 monthly. The only subscribers getting a break are students, who will continue to pay $6 monthly.

Spotify announced the price hikes less than a year after its previous one last July. Before that, Spotify hadn’t raised its fees since launching a decade and a half ago. I guess it was too optimistic to hope the next increase would also take that long, especially with Spotify’s continued focus (and money dump) on audiobooks.

Premium subscribers should receive an email from Spotify in the next month detailing the price hike and providing a link to cancel their plan if they would prefer to do so. Users currently on a trial period for Spotify will get one month at $11 after it ends before being moved up to a $12 monthly fee.

  • sunbytes@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Just a reminder that the Tidal family account at the maximum subscription “grade” costs €16.

    So you and 4x buddies can get very high quality audio for €3.20/mth.

    • dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de
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      6 months ago

      I switched to Tidal recently from AppleMusic and I like it.

      It should be noted if you’re listening through Bluetooth like most people then you can’t get high quality.

      Also, they allow you to copy your music from other services, using a third party service which was great. It does have a charge and annoyingly it is a recurring charge. So I signed up, transferred my music and then cancelled.

      I then sent them a message to say it sucks that they don’t have a one of few for doing this. If you use it and agree I would send them a similar message so they get the idea that most people don’t need continuous syncing.

      • Kairos@lemmy.today
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        6 months ago

        What the fuck kind of service is that? Aren’t there free ones—there were the last time I checked.

      • filcuk@lemmy.zip
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        6 months ago

        The bluetooth remark is a bit misleading, there are codecs that provide better audio, which is even noticeable on Spotify.
        If you have earphones that support LDAC for example (sony XMs are popular where I live), you can even use that with Windows via 3rd party software (search Win A2DP - not free, but can recommend).

        • TheOakTree@lemm.ee
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          6 months ago

          FiiO BTR5 + LDAC + IEMs have been working super well for me. I don’t really use wireless with Windows, but I’m considering payiny for A2DP regardless, as it worked very well and may come in handy eventually.

          • filcuk@lemmy.zip
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            6 months ago

            They’re all proprietary, so it’s less than ideal.
            LDAC is owned by Sony and supported by some Androids.
            Samsung has their own codec, Apple does too - each vendor locked.
            Then there’s Qualcomm’s aptX/HD, which should now be fully supported by Android.

            I don’t use apple, so can’t comment on other options there.

      • sunbytes@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Best way to find out is to search for all of them inside Tidal. I don’t know if you need to make a free account or what to do it.

        They usually have great black Friday deals though. I think I paid like €2/mth for my first year.

  • jpeps@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    For anyone who hasn’t checked their Spotify subscription for a while, I recently discovered a new basic tier created underneath the premium one that is a little cheaper simply by not including the ‘free’ 15 hours of audiobooks. I’ve never used it and don’t intend to. YMMV.

      • jpeps@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Yeah! It’s ‘premium’ in all ways except that audiobook offer. Prettttyyyy shitty behaviour from them.

  • kandoh@reddthat.com
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    6 months ago

    Quality isn’t good enough to justify the price. Apple Music and Tidal have better quality of sound.

    • Lianodel@ttrpg.network
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      6 months ago

      even apart from audio quality, Spotify is just plain terrible as a music library.

      For someone who lives in playlists, it might be fine. But I like to pick and choose albums, sometimes even, songs, and be able to navigate it different ways. Spotify, and unfortunately a whole bunch of the competition, will have three separate lists for “liked” songs, albums, and artists. Only want to save the studio tracks, and not the demos and live versions? Fuck you, it’s all or nothing! And the special edition is the only version we have! enjoy the solid hour of shittier versions of the songs you actually wanted!

  • 3aqn5k6ryk@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Then the rest follow. If Apple music hike their price again, time to dust off my eye patch. Ive already cancelled all my streaming and went with plex, radarr, sonarr.

      • 3aqn5k6ryk@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Music streaming the only one i cant be bothered with since i have family plan with my gf plus discovering new music and new album from fav artist is too much to pass on.

    • Norgur@fedia.io
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      6 months ago

      Life hack: get Plexamp and Lidarr with Lidarr extended scripts. Then sign up for a free month of tidal with a throwaway account. Add said account to Lidarr extended. Add all the artists you want to Lidarr and let Lidarr Extended download all the stuff from Tidal for you. Once it has run out, register with another throwaway adress.

      • yeehaw@lemmy.caOP
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        6 months ago

        Basically doing this already but my only issue is discovery. That’s why I pay for Spotify. I used to have a script set up before the API closed that would run automatically monthly to snag all my liked songs.

        • Norgur@fedia.io
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          6 months ago

          There are cool projects for that on lidarr, or you use things like last.fm. Lidarr extended does have a feature to grab similar artists to the ones you have, leads to much bloat in a very short amount of time, of course.

      • 3aqn5k6ryk@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Thanks mate. Will definitely look at lidar. Maybe its time, some music like doom eternal arent available in apple music and this might push me.

      • ShepherdPie@midwest.social
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        6 months ago

        Does this work with any other services like spotify? I know Tidal is lossless but I already have Spotify and Lidarr.

        • Norgur@fedia.io
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          6 months ago

          No, it works on Tidal and Deezer. Yet, since the throwaway account is free… :P Lidarr can import spotify playlists and fetch the tracks themselves from somewhere else though

  • BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    I was a Google Play Music person and loved it, and then they changed to YouTube. I got mad and tried Apple Music, but as a classical music lover it’s vastly less than ideal for several reasons, so I went to Spotify and realized they liked to shuffle Britney Spears into me listening to lieder, so I went back to YouTube because at least they didn’t do that. But it’s just so basic compared to the absolute perfection that was GPM, and difficult to navigate. I don’t know where to go next. I’ve been buying records on Bandcamp but I also like the streaming service to discover music with.

    • bc93@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Qobuz is the best for classical music, for sure - either that or piracy. I’d probably go with piracy

    • FarFarAway@startrek.website
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      6 months ago

      You could check out deezer. It’s European and they have a classical music section. Not sure how good it is. It’s like $110 for a yearly subscription and they offer hi-fi streaming. Just another option for you to check out. 🤷

      • BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Sounds good actually. I wonder if I can look at their content and see if they have what I want before subscribing? Any idea?

        • FarFarAway@startrek.website
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          6 months ago

          The app won’t let you without signing in, I don’t think, but i think the website does. Try this link or you can go to deezer.com and if you go to the hamburger menu at the bottom it has an “explore channels” option.

          Edit: It’s odd they don’t let people browse I’m a more friendly way. And just so you know, once you sign up, you can search, make playlists, download for offline etc, the mostly same as spotify. When u first sign up, it also give you the option to migrate all your spotify plsylists over. Out of my thousands of songs saved, it did have 2 or 3 that didn’t transfer over due to just not having it.

    • itstoowet@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      I was also a Google music enjoyer and also find the other streaming options pretty crappy. I’ve actually moved over to more curated options like internet radio for when I’m not in the mood for anything specific. Shout-out to NTS, I love you.

    • ezvk@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      You should get back to apple music, they launched an app dedicated to classical music, and it’s by far the best for this type of music. Also it’s lossless 24 bits

      • BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Unfortunately due to licensing there’s a lot of stuff I want they don’t have, and some of it I can’t purchase.

    • TheOakTree@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      Just to let you know, Tidal is not that great either.

      Frequently having issues with downloaded albums, where I go into offline mode, pull up an album, and it says “can’t connect” despite being in offline mode and the album taking up storage space on my phone.

      Also, the discovery and new releases sections aren’t very well made.

      • BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        It doesn’t sound great. Maybe I’ll just use Bandcamp only. It’s just some classical albums are only on certain platforms.

        • Screemu@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          6 months ago

          High chance they’re all on Slsk as lossless files. That and foobar2000 and you’ll be back in control of your music listening habits. Then buy physical from the artists if you want to support them and they offer a way to obtain it.

    • GbyBE@discuss.tchncs.de
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      6 months ago

      If you like classical music, give qobuz a try… High quality audio, large selection of classical music.

    • jeremyparker@programming.dev
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      6 months ago

      If you like to upload your own music (like Google music), iBroadcast is the tippy tops. You can still use bandcamp (with or without yt-dlp) for discovery, and then upload what you like to iBroadcast.

  • BarbecueCowboy@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    I’m all for going sailing but if there are features you want that that can’t quite replicate, it’s also a great time to look at a VPN service with a server in Turkey… Sign up on a Turkish IP and the exchange rate puts you under $2/month USD. This works for a lot of other things too.

    • Nommer@sh.itjust.works
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      6 months ago

      I believe a dude on YouTube for a very popular streamer used an IP from Argentina to get 50 subs for YouTube premium to giveaway for only a couple bucks.

    • douglasg14b@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      You… Are kidding right?

      You would have to be living under a proverbial rock to have no inkling that Spotify is a product still in use, or be willfully ignorant.

      It’s like saying:

      • People still use Google?
      • People still drive cars?
      • People still use Windows?
      • People still go to churches?

      …etc

      Not that I agree that we should use Spotify. But playing pretend that they are small, irrelevant, and have no effect on the industry they are in isn’t doing us any favors when it comes to pushing back against it.

        • douglasg14b@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          fails to see reality

          Reality is shown to them

          Doubles down on their ignorance of reality

          This thread is a textbook example of:

          Don’t argue with morons. They will bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.

          Instead of actually arguing the topic at hand you are trying to drag all repliers down to your level, act in bad faith, and beat them with personal attacks 🤣

          Classic.

        • TheOakTree@lemm.ee
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          6 months ago

          Ah yes, you know so many people that it somehow becomes equivalent to a healthy sample size of the entire human population. Got it.

    • kworpy@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      literally just get audio files of whatever you wanna listen to and plop it on funkwhale

  • Fogle@lemmy.ca
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    6 months ago

    Wonder what it will go to in Canada. Glad I dropped Spotify for YouTube

    • yeehaw@lemmy.caOP
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      6 months ago

      I am the reverse. After the Google play music killing, ytm was worse. Ytm might be killed any time.

  • 3volver@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    The problem is that creators aren’t getting paid their fair share, and these platforms leech off of their creativity. I hate to be “that guy”, but this is where NFTs actually have a use case. Give power directly to the creators of their music by allowing them sell directly to fans. This gives power to the creators and to the listeners who own the NFT. Embracing new technology is a way to break beyond corporate enshittification. We must break past “you will own nothing and be happy” and it seems like blockchain is one of the only ways to do it technologically.

    • DinkleDorph@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      People have a negative image of NFTs because of the speculation and early (crappy) implementations of the technology. It’s just a technology. I think web3 will be the answer to a lot of the corporate enshittification issues we see today. Community owned and operated networks and organizations are the future.

    • mxcory@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      6 months ago

      Why not just use Bandcamp? Even with nfts someone has to maintain the CDN. Alternatively, run your own site.

      • ExperiencedWinter@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Because then they wouldn’t be able to evangelize NFTs. You see this constantly with crypto/NFT tech, a solution in search of a problem

  • Hucklebee@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    About 10 years ago I got rid of most of my cd’s because I thought I would just use spotify. Now I’m slowly gathering a cd collection again from thriftstores (or buy albums in store if it’s newer music and I want to support the artist). I rip them all to flac and add them to my Plex.

    I’ve noticed I listen to music more now. I find new cool songs by artists by listening through whole albums again. Because of the time commitment of ripping and physically flipping through cd’s, I actually care again about the music that I gather and listen.

    • x0chi@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      There should be a app that worked with most music players and with the data suggest new things to try. Something that worked with local players, streaming players, etc. Something like the concept of last.fm but with good suggestions.

      I can’t believe that these days we don’t get one app like that. Even streaming apps with all the data they got from listing hours and still fail around 40 to 60% with my suggestions, and rarely suggest something that I haven’t heard before.

      Nowadays with the state of efficient AI in learning from patterns, and still nothing mind-blowing like a kind of MiniMe that has almost the same tastes but have heard more stuff than you and can recommend as a more educated version of you. That is something that I would want to, hell if it worked so well and to have it, I would have to pay , then I would pay up to a price.

      • archomrade [he/him]@midwest.social
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        6 months ago

        Platform agnostic = you own the mp3/FLACC/ect file, and can play it through whatever client you want

        Platform Locked = you do not own the files, and they are DRM locked to their proprietary media player (see: spotify, kindle, ect)

        Of course there are ways around those locks, but it’s illegal to remove DRM protections (in the us)

        • lud@lemm.ee
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          6 months ago

          You can switch to another service any time you want though.

                • where_am_i@sh.itjust.works
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                  6 months ago

                  BS. One new CD is at least 10$. A good band collection is then a year worth of subscription fees. So, do you only listen to a few bands?

                  Before Spotify I pirated everything. In lossless, ofc. I had 200GB of music, it wouldn’t fit on my ipod classic, and I still was limited.

                  I pirated at least a lifetime worth of Spotify premium and yet when I switched to Spotify I discovered so many more artists like the ones I already liked. If I now tried to buy all the songs I’ve listened to more than once in the last 5 years, I’d go bankrupt.

                  Spotify is way cheaper.

                  (now add ease of discovering new music, listening to whatever your friends want to listen to in a car, collaborative playlists, etc etc)

    • vividspecter@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      I’ll add the old school method of scrobbling to last.fm for discovery still works pretty well too, and you can play music directly there now using Youtube (probably been there for years I assume). Just found some pretty obscure stuff that isn’t even available on the mainstream streaming services, so that’s a win.

      • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
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        6 months ago

        I forgot last.fm existed. I sort of used them years ago.

        They did not handle separate artists with the same name gracefully at all. The page for a riot-grrl adjacent band and an Australian rapper (?) got merged and the fans were going at it on the page.

        Looks like it’s still kind of a problem