I don’t get the appeal of Spotify. Pay monthly for music? That’s crazy.
Too little too late
Spotify is such a shit company. I used to get paid (peanuts) on my artist account but they raised the threshold for getting payouts so now I get nothing.
So what happens if the artist is dead?
Freddie Mercury would find it difficult to maintain an active social nedia presence to prove he’s human, being rather indisposed at the present.
And in dark mmo world, soon there will be service to buy “Verified by Spotify” badge or account.
Step 1) create an unnecessary problem
Step2) solve said problem
Step 3) profit???
Go fuck yourselves Spotify
How did spotify create the problem of AI music becoming reality? They are basically a platform. I get disliking their business model (even if i don’t share that opinion) but spotify did not create AI music generation. This is factually wrong
Wtf?? They made tons of the AI slop on their themselves!
The two things are not in contradiction. Identifying human-generated content is essential to AI too. if you feed AI slop back to AI, their output deteriorates quickly. Not saying that it’s the primary purpose of this new feature, but this is making it easier for AI to find human-generated music to train on.
It’s virtue signaling
Picked up a dedicated audio device recently (with another few on the way!), and it feels nice to curate my own offline, add-free, algorithm-free listening experience. Having music myself his been half the fun of this, I won’t be using any streaming app going forward.
It is also super adorable:
Can you sync the music to it wirelessly?
Oh man, wait until you’re camping craigslist ads for used DAPs (Digital audio player, fancy speak for music player)… I got my DX180 for cheap there, then picked up some grados. Decent headphones and a good audio chip is some magic shit.
Wonder if this will work on the innumerable obvious covers of popular songs by no-name bands which get listed as being from the original artists. Probably not, which is why I stopped using Spotify even before so many of their other shitty moves.
Spotify? the company that ran ICE ads?
Among other questionable decisions
Or just don’t use Spotify
Hell yeah
What’s the best alternative? It’s been a while since I used any of them. I checked Tidal recently and it looked like they have an AI slop problem too.
Bandcamp and/or Navidrome.
I use Qobuz now, and they are great, with human-curated playlists and suggestions. So far, I love it.
Hmm. Sadly not available in my country yet (and while I’m sure I could pull some shenanigans to subscribe with a foreign address, I’m going to assume that also means none of our local music labels will be covered, so that’s a non starter.)
I’ll keep an eye on it. But in the meantime, I also gather it doesn’t do podcasts - anyone have any recommendations on where I could be migrating podcasts, from Spotify? Non-US companies only (which for avoidance of doubt, absolutely definitely excludes Apple).
I listened to podcasts on Antennapod for years. It’s open source and free, but there are many other podcast platforms. Used Pocket Cast before too, very good, licensed under MPL 2.0. Those services don’t have Spotify exclusive, but have all others.
Edit: corrected mistake about Pocket Cast.
Pocket Casts isn’t proprietary, it’s licensed under the MPL 2.0
Thank.you for the correction! I’ll fix it in my comment too.
No worries!
Thanks! (And I should say, it was a genuine question :-)). I’ll take a look at them; I don’t listen to any Spotify exclusives (yay!), but there are one or two that I subscribe to their supporter schemes and at the moment I do that through Spotify. I guess that’s my next task, work out if there’s a way to subscribe directly and use something like Antennapod.
New workers’-day-weekend project dropped…
I buy music (mostly from Bandcamp). Now I have a big library and no subscription fee.
I haven’t had it be an issue with Tidal. Tidal doesn’t have a strong autoplay algorithm so it tends to nudge users toward more custom curated Playlists. It has a buggy app, make it difficult to block songs or artists, and no duplicate filter which is frustrating, but I don’t agree that AI slop is a very big issue currently. They seem proactive in fighting it and have always been one of the most artist friendly services.
Download your own music and set up navidrome. For music discovery, go to shows and find out about bands from the scene.
Or set up a listenbrainz.org account to get weekly recommendation playlist, check the accounts of people who listen to similar artists, and click through those addictive spider web charts that show you a bunch of artists who are similar to the one you’re listening to.
There’s also Rate Your Music, which I don’t have an account at but it still seems pretty good.
I’ve always used Pandora. I don’t remember exactly in what way, but it’s significantly different from Spotify. I prefer it, though, but I know that’s just because it’s what I used first.
And with Artist Profile Protection (currently in beta), artists now have greater control over what appears on their profile, which helps to ensure the music you see is coming from them.
From the Artist Profile Protection link:
Music has been landing on the wrong artist pages across streaming services, and the rise of easy-to-produce AI tracks has made the problem worse. That’s not the experience we want artists to have on Spotify, and that’s why we’ve made protecting artist identity a top priority for 2026. Today, we’re announcing a first-of-its-kind solution to a problem that’s affected streaming for years.
How the hell is that something that is only in beta in 2026 and not a standard feature? It’s currently optional, but they better automatically opt in verified “No AI” artists if the label is going to be worth anything. There should not be AI-generated songs from randos getting attached to a “No AI” artist.
Where’s my “No Autotune” label?
Interested in seeing how this will be gamed
Yet another platform with meaningless badges
I’ll never understand Spotify. If it’s such a pain in the ass why do people use it? Napster was big when I was in high school so if I find a song I like, I go download it. Sometimes it’s piracy. Sometimes it’s a legitimate purchase. Whichever is easiest.
Done. The end. It’s mine forever.
As far as discoverability goes it helps that there have been no new music releases in the past couple of decades that I care about.
People are lazy and don’t think very much. Spotify is right there.
Also enshittification: it was better to draw people in, and then they made it shittier and people stay
