AI-generated music is appealing to streaming services, not least because it could potentially eliminate royalty payments and boost profits. While providers such as Qobuz are distancing themselves from AI-generated music, Tidal and Spotify already have very lax AI policies. According to a report by the Financial Times, Spotify is now planning a full-scale AI push, set to launch as early as the first quarter of 2027.
The streaming market leader is apparently adding an optional AI package to its Spotify Premium subscription, reportedly costing $4 to $5 per month, which could make the service’s Premium subscription up to 39 percent more expensive. Those willing to pay these additional costs are expected to receive two main new features. First, the ability to have artificial intelligence regenerate existing songs as remixes. And second, the option to generate any song as a cover version by any band, thereby changing the song’s style.
Stop fucking using slopify!
What alternative do you propose?
Soulseek lmao
Soulseek truly is the goat.
I found my band’s album on there and called my mom to tell her I had made it as a musician
Haha, having somebody bother pirating and sharing your music is a good milestone! :)
Folks wanted my music so bad they were willing to commit minor crimes. I’m still touched, brings a tear to my eye.
I am pretty happy with Deezer
deezer nuts
Got em
Qobuz. Deezer is owned by a Russian oligarch.
If anyone else is a classical music nut (I am) I really recommend Hyperion Records. DRM free downloads with a choice of CD, FLAC, aac or mp3, and an average of two monthly samplers (with PDFs for the jewel case!) Oh, and they support actual starving artists and are very independent and all round excellent.
Failing that, I hear Orpheus is good…
Ohh stop, I can’t use them less than zero :)
Why would you pay for AI generated music, surely that has less value to people?
Like I don’t even totally hate the existence of AI generated music. But it isn’t worth anything to me. I can prompt it in seconds. If I wanted some kind of background music generator it would work for that, but I don’t see how that is worth any non zero amount of money.
Drm free from bandcamp and cds for me
This is how I acquire music since a few years back too. More actively seeking out new music instead of eating the algorithm also made music much more fun again.
Once I got rid of Spotify, discovering new music became so so much more rewarding and I could enjoy music again! Couldn’t recommend this approach enough.
Looks like I’ll have to not use Spotify even harder
The streaming market leader is apparently adding an optional Al package to its Spotify Premium subscription, reportedly costing $4 to $5 per month, which could make the service’s Premium subscription up to 39 percent more expensive.
This sentence is nonsensical - if you get an optional addon, then it’s per definition not a price increase.
It’s like if I went to the grocery store, bought the same items as before and then added several more to the cart, and claimed that “my grocery bill has increased”. Apples and oranges.
Homer_so-far.jpg
There are FOSS alternatives to this junk, folks.
I made a video about it earlier this year because I absolutely, fucking hate Spotify with the fire of a thousand suns.
The TL:DW, though, is the apps Metrolist and OuterTune.
Time to violate their ToS again and download my Spotify library to my hard drive outside their app. Might switch to Qobuz permanently this time.
Yaharrr 🏴☠️
That is just awful and I would never, ever do that to a poor corporation. In fact, I would love if you could share the steps to do this so that I can avoid accidentally downloading my Spotify library to my own hard drive outside their app.
Well, if some sort of evil pirate were to dare to do such a thing, they could use a piece of software called AudiCable to do so. Spotify will know if such a person were to do it, so if this evildoer didn’t want to be caught, they might want to download their Spotify library and save it within the app first, then turn off their internet connection and use AudiCable, then perhaps uninstall Spotify so it can’t phone home and report the ToS violation.
I would recommend Qobuz to anyone who wants almost the same ease of use, but with higher audio quality.
What the hell is qobuz?
Edit:
Decided to do a trial, then they asked for a credit card. Meh. I can’t stand this business practice.
I think in the case of Qobuz, asking for your credit card details actually isn’t some dirty tactic to get you to subscribe accidentally. They just have to avoid people creating new trial accounts month after month, because it would become very expensive for them if they didn’t. They don’t have an ad-supported plan by design and pay out $0.018-0.019 per stream (Spotify supposedly pays about $0.003-0.005). So if you listen to 500 songs during your trial, they lose about $9 in payouts alone.
I think, in this case, it’s actually legitimate to use your credit card details in order to verify that you’re actually a new potential customer.
Well it’s just another thing for me to remember and I don’t want to deal with it. 🤷
It’s really good though. I stopped using Spotify about a year ago and switched to qobuz.
It’s not perfect (no podcasts and their generated “daily” mixes are meh), but the quality is top notch, and you can also buy DRM free music through them.
I switched to them because they didn’t have podcasts. Podcasts are a fundamentally different experience and have no place in my music streaming app. At this point, I just host a navidrome server with about 600 albums, but I still use Qobuz to buy music that isn’t on bandcamp (they offer flac downloads for bought music).
Yep. Also switched to Qobuz. I may leave at some point in the future, but I’ll least I’ll be able to take the music I bought with me!
Stopped using Spotify a while back.
It has served a great purpose at introducing me to so many artists over the years. But I’ve been sick of needing an online connection to a service for such a long time.
Now what I do is occasionally visit the playlists I created with hundreds of tracks on them to see what I want to download next over Soulseek, or find on Bandcamp.
Spotify is screwed, SaaS companies are going down due to AI.
Lol, why would anyone pay for slop? I wouldn’t accept this even if they paid me. I like my music exactly the way the artist made it, that’s why he’s an artist after all. Damn morons at Spotify…
I think I might continue using it for music discovery only. For everything else music-related: https://mornye.com/ (mobile and desktop, pulls audio and metadata from multiple providers, rips FLAC and populates metadata, builtin player, syncs library across devices).
Of course, if an artist has bandcamp and I can buy singles I want, I’ll continue doing that as well.
This would get me onto Qobuz at least.
