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--- spotify [2025/09/01 10:55] – ultracomfy
+++ spotify [2025/09/03 00:00] (current) – ultracomfy
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 See me? Yeah, it is time for your monthly payment. If you can afford it.
 </WRAP>
+{{page>Templates:Accuracy}}
 So, back in the day you would have bought a disc, a digital album, a cassette or even a record. This could have been a ~15€ purchase and then you'd stick that into the playback device of your choice and you'd be good to go. So imagine this: Instead of buying a disc, you pay 13€ bucks to Spotify and listen to Artist A exactly one time. Then, you log off and don't use Spotify for the rest of the month. At the end of the month it's payout time: First things first, Spotify takes a 30% cut for the amazing service they provide you with, and then the remaining 70% should go Artist A, right? That's the fair thing to do, but Spotify is smarter than that.
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 <wrap lo>Satirical, made up strawman person:</wrap> "But, you know, who cares about local artists, right? Those are all pussies, anyway. If you don't make enough you're not working hard enough. They should improve their music and cut down on unnecessary expenses. Less Netflix, it's a distraction, anyway. **I** make enough money to pay for a monthly Spotify membership and I get all the service I want. I get the music I care about, I can listen to it at 256kbit/s as opposed to the peasantly 128kbit/s (and can definitely hear the difference), the music I listen to is only from people who actually made it as individuals, so I don't have to listen to the riffraff."
-The problem in reality is, unfortunately, that you and I are riffraff ourselves. The same structural mechanics keeping people from getting living wages on Spotify is why you and I are barely making any money in real life. If you can buy a Spotify membership you may not be a Taylor Swift, but you definitely enjoy a good amount of [[privilege]]. And, unfortunately, this privilege is //required//. Good for you that you, as a paying customer, don't have that problem, but for many of us this problem is real. Very real. Some of us have to accept massive cuts in their quality of life if they want to do something as basic as listening to music through Spotify. And this may sound acceptable if you consider that Spotify is a service offered to you, but people have their entire music library on there. If you stop paying for Spotify for //whatever// reason, then that's it for you (Covid happens? Trump tariffs happen? Inflation? Make your pick!). Even the music you downloaded, it's gone, you're //fucked//. You see, unlike a one-time purchase of a CD where you can just keep listening, not only do you have to pay Spotify a fee equal to the cost of a CD, but the money is also given to Taylor Swift //and// the CD is ripped away from you if you don't pay the next month.
+The problem in reality is, unfortunately, that you and I are riffraff ourselves. The same structural mechanics keeping people from earning livable wages on Spotify is why you and I are barely making any money in real life. If you can buy a Spotify membership you may not be a Taylor Swift, but you definitely enjoy a good amount of [[privilege]]. And, unfortunately, this privilege is //required//. Good for you that you, as a paying customer, don't have that problem, but for many of us this problem is real. Very real. Some of us have to accept massive cuts in their quality of life if they want to do something as basic as listening to music through Spotify. And this may sound acceptable if you consider that Spotify is a service offered to you, but people have their entire music library on there. If you stop paying for Spotify for //whatever// reason, then that's it for you (Covid happens? Trump tariffs happen? Inflation? Job loss? Healthcare/Surgery costs? Had to fix your washing machine? Just "didn't get as lucky and were born into a poor household"? Make your pick!). Even the music you downloaded, it's gone, you're //fucked//. You see, unlike a one-time purchase of a CD where you can just keep listening, not only do you have to pay Spotify a fee equal to the cost of a CD, but the money is also given to Taylor Swift //and// the CD is ripped away from you if you don't pay the next month.
 Spotify controls who gets the money - Spotify controls who gets to be in a position of making money - Spotify controls your access to music. Don't like you? Kicked out. Don't pay their small monthly fee? Kicked out.\\
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 And also, you will listen to music the way //Spotify// wants you to. So you will be using //their// audio player, regardless of whether you like it, you will //not// be getting access to the actual audio files to use them in personal/private projects, Spotify controls for you which music they allow or disallow on their platform, and if you want to do //anything// with their music you will use only the tools Spotify gives you to do it. If their tools don't allow you to do what you want to do, then you're a poor sucker. Out-of-line steppers get slammed. External API's are killed. 3rd party playback support is killed. Everything is kept proprietary so that only Spotify has control over how their product is used((Which, to be clear, isn't inherently wrong, but makes the product inherently shitty.)). If Spotify changes their tune in the future and becomes more predatory to the consumers, either through monetization practices or restriction of functionality, then you can be outraged for a bit, but then you will go back to paying the membership again, because that's what you'll do anyway. Or, you go the hard route of migrating to a different platform, which was //designed// by Spotify to be particularly difficult. No inter-compatibility, proprietary standards that others aren't allowed to use, no option at all to change your mind in the future. Once you're in the ecosystem, you're locked into it and if you want out, you will lose //everything//.
+EVEN if you read a page about Spotify online and decide "honestly, yeah, fuck this platform", you'll probably still think to yourself "well, but how am I gonna migrate away from it? There's no way to export your playlists and all", which may or may not ultimately make you think that it's not worth the drama. Every good platform has the kind of inter-compatibility needed to leave you with a choice and to give you the data you need to exist and function independently of the platform... but not Spotify((This is beginning to sound more and more cult-like, they make it hard to leave, too. Hmmmm...)).
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 Uh, what was the justification again? Right! Piracy!\\
-To be fair, it worked for a while - pay ten bucks a month and get “everything” instantly? Nice! Convenience killed piracy, or at least shoved it into the background. But think about it this way: To executives, piracy is a variable to consider in business, not a matter of ethics where we are trying to "do the right thing" or "care about the artists". Spotify is piracy’s corporate replacement: Same lack of ownership, same file restrictions, artists get fucked over, except now you’re paying rent to a gatekeeper who decides what music even exists on the platform. And piracy? Well, it is alive and well. It hasn’t died, it just mutated. People still pirate because Spotify locks away files, removes albums without warning, or doesn’t even carry half the music outside the mainstream. The only real difference is that back in the day you stole from the labels; now you pay the labels monthly, and the illusion of legitimacy keeps you from noticing that, functionally, nothing has changed: You still don’t own anything, but now you're paying money for the privilege.
+To be fair, it worked for a while - pay ten bucks((Oh, those are the old prices, no? Ooops.)) a month and get “everything” instantly? Nice! Convenience killed piracy, or at least shoved it into the background. But think about it this way: To executives, piracy is a variable to consider in business, not a matter of ethics where we are trying to "do the right thing" or "care about the artists". Spotify is piracy’s corporate replacement: Same lack of ownership, same file restrictions, artists get fucked over, except now you’re paying rent to a gatekeeper who decides what music even exists on the platform. And piracy? Well, it is alive and well. It hasn’t died, it just mutated. People still pirate because Spotify locks away files, removes albums without warning, or doesn’t even carry half the music outside the mainstream. The only real difference is that back in the day you stole from the labels; now you pay the labels monthly, and the illusion of legitimacy keeps you from noticing that, functionally, nothing has changed: You still don’t own anything, but now you're paying money for the privilege.
+And, the war is truly on. Ever since Spotify came into being there has been a campaign to keep users docile. When I say that I deeply respect Spotify's business, what I really mean is their PR department and how good they are at whitewashing the Spotify brand. Of course you cannot hide your monetization model, but you can pull a lot of strings to prevent that from ever getting too much attention. The PR department at Spotify is so successful it's almost magical. Nobody talks about any of this. Even amongst the artists being systemically discriminated, there is barely any conversation about this stuff((I know I know, there are exceptions.)). Have we just accepted our capitalistic overlords as a fact of life? At least be mad or something. When we order from Amazon we at least admit that it's bad, that Amazon has serious socioeconomic issues and that you shouldn't buy from there. With Spotify, you are likely to meet someone who accepts that its monetization model is discriminatory, but sees no serious problems with Spotify beyond that. We all have lots to learn from the Spotify PR department.
-And, the war is truly on. Ever since Spotify came into being there has been a campaign to keep users docile. When I say that I deeply respect Spotify's business, what I really mean is their PR department and how good they are at whitewashing the Spotify brand. Of course you cannot hide your monetization model, but you can pull a lot of strings to prevent that from ever getting too much attention. The PR department at Spotify is so successful it's almost magical. Nobody talks about any of this. Even amongst the artists being systemically discriminated, there is barely any conversation about this stuff. Have we just accepted our capitalistic overlords as a fact of life? At least be mad or something. When we order from Amazon we at least admit that it's bad, that Amazon has serious socioeconomic issues and that you shouldn't buy from there. With Spotify, you are likely to meet someone who accepts that its monetization model is discriminatory, but sees no serious problems with Spotify beyond that. We all have lots to learn from the Spotify PR department.
+//If you want, continue reading on [[Spotify (Level 2)]]//