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While it's nice to have an open source client, please think twice about bypassing the premium subscription/ads to listen for free. Musician deserve to be paid

While it's nice to have an open source client, please think twice about bypassing the premium subscription/ads to listen for free. Musician deserve to be paid for their work, and it's not fair to them to bypass all of the mechanisms to do that. Spotify doesn't pay musicians well, but there are still indie artists making a living from it nonetheless. I hear a lot of people these days complaining about ads, and that's totally fair. But when it comes time to pay for content, those people rarely are willing to pony up. You can see this happening with journalism, music, apps, etc. Similarly, most people hate subscriptions, but you can always buy music directly if you don't want to subscribe! A lot of smaller artists provide ways to purchase their music that give them a large percentage of the proceeds, and you can get the music DRM-free if that's something you care about.

bayindirh 3y ago
It's not bypassing anything. It gets the playlist data from Spotify, and streams the song from YouTube, arguably still providing income for the musicians.
- gnfargbl 3y ago
  YouTube pays less per stream to the rights holders than Spotify, however.
  - bayindirh 3y ago
    I don't know the numbers. What I was trying to point out that there's no nefariousness going on.
    - jsnell 3y ago
      No, you weren't just pointing that out. You claimed that it is "arguably still providing income for the musicians". How is it arguably providing income for tyhe artists given the app is obviously not playing ads?
      - bayindirh 3y ago
        First of all, the tool’s description doesn’t say anything about ads. Second, I’m neither the developer, nor user of the app. Third, I didn’t say definitely, but arguably. I might be wrong, but I’m not endorsing anything here. Lastly, I’m an ex-musician, too and prefer to pay for premium and buy proper albums when I can. So pointing fingers doesn’t do any favor to anyone. Have a nice day.
  - unnamed76ri 3y ago
    I don’t know where you get your info but Spotify just effectively demonetized the majority of music on their platform. They’ve decided they have the right to just stop paying small time artists so they can funnel more money upwards to the record labels.
    - hutzlibu 3y ago
      Sources please?
      - erinnh 3y ago
        https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2024/01/11/spotify-stream-minimum-impact/ https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2024/01/11/spotify-stream-m...
        gallexme 3y ago
        1000 annual listens? That's likely less than 1$/mo revenue the artists get no? Even small time musicians I know have about 1000 listens a month Seems to me just like yt monetization partner program which required like 50€ revenue for payout and 1000 subs+approval for even enabling monetization (some time ago unsure if it's still limited for new accounts ) Unless I'm missing something it mainly just trims out mass produced content
        unnamed76ri 3y ago
        It is similar but different to what YouTube did (which also sucked). How many musicians do you know of that only ever released one song? This isn’t about the streaming revenue for one song (though that is how Spotify tries to frame it). There are 1000s of artist who might have even been fairly successful at one point who have dozens or more songs in their back catalog that don’t have over 1000 streams per year. Add up the lost revenue from all of those together and it isn’t about just a couple bucks anymore. Further, even approaching the argument from how much it means per song is granting Spotify a pass that this is in any way fair to artists. Why should the top 1% of artists take even more money while the struggling musician now gets nothing?
- bitcharmer 3y ago
  If it streams from YouTube then it's not really a Spotify client, is it?
  - bayindirh 3y ago
    It's aptly named SpoTube, to be frank. It describes itself as follows: An open source, cross-platform Spotify client compatible across multiple platforms utilizing Spotify's data API and YouTube (or Piped.video or JioSaavn) as an audio source, eliminating the need for Spotify Premium
- svantana 3y ago
  A very large fraction of music on youtube is also monetized by ads (for free users).
- IanCal 3y ago
  So it shows the ads from YouTube?
vdaea 3y ago
People here all day defending p2p piracy but when you are taking the bandwidth from a multibillion, multinational corporation then you're the devil himself :'( :'( :'( :'(
- __warlord__ 3y ago
  I think the "hacker" part of "hacker news" doesn't mean much anymore.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - extheat 3y ago
    The Hacker in hacker news was never meant to imply black hat/malicious types of hacking. There’s quite a difference between say, tearing something apart, reverse engineering it, breaking into something that _you_ own, versus trying to tear into something you don’t own without a really good reason. At the end of the day it’s about judgement and taste, there isn’t so much a hardline but there is a line on what we consider acceptable and unacceptable areas of exploitation. Beyond the piracy point, I think few could find this exploitative, it seems like a cool open source project that could genuinely offer better and customizable user experience.
    - elashri 3y ago
      What in this project is about piracy? It does not give you free access you cannot have without it.
  - mlrtime 3y ago
    The article is still link here, so I say the hacker part is very much alive. That the comments aren't 100% all aligned is great, I come here for vigorous respectful debate. It helps me reflect on my position on topics. What's the problem?
- jbverschoor 3y ago
  "bandwidth from a multibillion, multinational corporation" that started out as a frontend for the pirate bay. They were probably friends, as both are from Sweden.
drcongo 3y ago
Claiming that the same people who complain about ads are also those who won't pay for services is just wrong.
drewdevault 3y ago
Direct your passion for getting musicians paid to Spotify and the distribution system, not to this. If everyone who uses this software were to use Spotify direct, ads and all, in the long run it would make pennies for the artists at best. You're better off listening to music however you please and buying albums on Bandcamp to support the artists; a lifetime of spotify listening will make less money for an artist you like than buying a single album from them on Bandcamp. Even if you only listen to one artist, 8 hours per day, 365 days a year, they will earn a whopping... 100 bucks from Spotify.
- apwell23 3y ago
  > Direct your passion for getting musicians paid to Spotify and the distribution system, not to this. How exactly do you do this ? What a dishonest comment to support stealing.
  - drewdevault 3y ago
    >How exactly do you do this By reading the rest of my comment. >What a dishonest comment to support stealing. Copying is not theft.
    - apwell23 3y ago
      > By reading the rest of my comment. I did. You made a silly assumption that all artists put their music up on bandcamp. No one even knows what bandcamp is my area.
      - drewdevault 3y ago
        Bandcamp is available in more markets than Spotify. Not sure how that's relevant to my argument, though.
        apwell23 3y ago
        Here is an example of an artist not on bandcamp . This is what i am listening currently on spotify( I have no idea who this is) Odeon Yılları Album by Nesrin Sipahi
tiku 3y ago
But do you need to get paid for each time someone listens to a copy? The artist isn't doing work for me when I listen to a song. Spotify should pay artists when their songs are added, not when listened.
- cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
  It’s not your job to decide what Spotify’s business model is.
  - jbverschoor 3y ago
    You know... I have very little empathy for Spotify. Their whole company is built on pirated music
  - pelasaco 3y ago
    and is your job to say what people should do or not?
    - westhanover 3y ago
      Obviously you have had your feelings hurt. If you don’t work for Spotify, it is by definition not your job.
kossTKR 3y ago
Deserve to be paid by whom though, Spotify already pays nothing? A song with 10000000 (10 million) streams , a pretty big hit and only reserved for big artists will give you 500 dollars before cuts, taxes etc. So not even the biggest artists will make anything substantial.
- apwell23 3y ago
  why are they publishing music on spotify then? I've discovered many artists on spotify and have paid for their live concerts. Curious, how do you discover music ?
  - kossTKR 3y ago
    I also use Spotify and like you have discovered a bunch of stuff. Spotify is just the state of things, the monopoly. Like lots of other current status quos bad for on everyone but investors, old money, the richest but there's no real alternatives. Though i know at least some smaller artists have moved off the platform, but people live in the biggest apps now so it's hard. Soundcloud somehow never really translated and bandcamp just went bad after it was sold to investors. I wonder if the scene is ripe for new platforms that's better for artists.
- superultra 3y ago
  There’s a lot of misinformation on this post. A 10 million stream song will gross about $30-40k. After cuts for an artist, depending on the structure, they might get anywhere from most of that to $5-10k. Not that Spotify is an equitable payment system but let’s be honest about the numbers.
pxoe 3y ago
signing up for a free service (or even just using it without an account with youtube music), and playing music for free, is the easiest way to support a creator, at no cost to you. the bar is so low - support creators with ad money for free, and some people still can't clear it, or refuse to clear it. the complaining is not fair, it's annoying. if you can't pay, or wouldn't pay otherwise, and still opposed to things like ads, that enable you to get something for free - you didn't deserve to get it in the first place. get over it and pay up or shut up. or rather, put your principles to work and refuse to engage with ad-supported content at all. instead of being like "well...i still want it. so let me get it completely for free. even though i could get it for free, but that's not enough for me." the complaints at their core are just 'i got it for free and i'm still not satisfied'. the annoying kind of entitlement that wants something so badly, it doesn't even dare to just refuse itself the thing it wants.
- dotancohen 3y ago
  I feel that your comment is poorly articulated and ignores the primary reasons that many people use adblockers (malware protection). However, your point is very valid and I 100% agree. Compensate with your time or compensate with your money. I personally still have a large collection of compact discs. The sound quality difference is amazing, though people listening to music produced in the last decade might be less affected as that most of that music was engineered to be played over highly compressed lossy streaming and a half cm mono speaker that cannot reproduce anything below 100 or above 16000 hz as found on a smartphone.
  - pxoe 3y ago
    in context of music/video streaming (maybe even youtube and spotify specifically), if there's no malware in video and audio itself of ads that would be getting blocked, that isn't really "blocking malware". juuust a little disingenuous there. even with ads blocked "for malware protection", malware could end up being promoted within content, or just encountered somewhere, and there's more actual malware protection (some is built in to OS). so...it's not about "blocking malware" with blocking ads altogether, is it. especially when a bunch of ads are non-interactive and not even about software but stuff like food and other things. it's more about not seeing ads at all. and sometimes, ad blocking just isn't an "anti-malware" solution in itself. like, if you wouldn't be able to navigate app catalogues and kinda sus out what could be malware or just steer away from untrustworthy apps altogether, ad block isn't gonna help you much there. "native" ads (promotional content) throw an even bigger wrench into that.
pelasaco 3y ago
Please nobody needs such disclaimers. If people are not willing to pay for it, they won't pay it. If they are, they will do.
gumballindie 3y ago
HN has sadly become a bit of a #warezcentral. People demanding free stuff, either to train their ai models or for personal consumption.
- pelasaco 3y ago
  What is more hacker than bypassing rules and paid services? What was phreaking all about?
  - gumballindie 3y ago
    Stealing content is not the type of rule breaking that phreaking was about.
    - pelasaco 3y ago
      you were probably not there or in any warez bbc...
    - HeWhoLurksLate 3y ago
      phreaking was literally theft lol
      - pelasaco 3y ago
        > phreaking was literally theft lol Right? People get so attached to their political views that they dont even notice it. Kevin Poulsen, just wanted to win the Porsche for the poor...
      - quesera 3y ago
        "Theft of services", yes -- but the marginal cost/loss to the provider was effectively zero. In this way, phreaking was exactly like media piracy. But all of the above are entirely unrelated to the meaning of "Hacker" in HN.
  - jug 3y ago
    I think there's a difference between hacking for fun and feeling entitled to and arguing with weak arguments how you should be able to play music for free. This entire thread has absolutely nothing to do with e.g. telling how Spotify can be hacked and everything to do with script kiddies at best wanting to download a binary from GitHub to listen to music for free. But sure, maybe HN is that sad distribution mechanism now and, what's more, we're calling this hacker culture!
westhanover 3y ago
Okay, I’ve thought twice and I don’t care. Is it okay if I use this now?
andrepd 3y ago
If you want to support musicians buy their music on bandcamp or go to their gigs and buy their merch. Don't think you're going to Spotify and doing them a favour by giving them 0.0005$ per play. Spotify is part of the problem, not the solution.
superultra 3y ago
I work in the music industry and am intimately familiar with streaming earnings. While you are technically correct, I would much rather someone use this tool and buy a ticket to a show or an LP that stream over Spotify. In fact, the ad supported tier of Spotify is one of the lesser equitable ways to pay artists. Your intent is good but gatekeeping people to use an inequitable system is not the solution.
- Reubend 3y ago
  > I would much rather someone use this tool and buy a ticket to a show or an LP that stream over Spotify. Sure! But at the end of the day, most of the people doing this will listen to hundreds of artists who they don't purchase tickets from, or buy their music directly. The fact that royalty payment are so low is sad. But if you use this tool, you're lowering them even further to $0.00
  - superultra 3y ago
    Sure, but like the OP, there's a built-in mistaken belief (promoted annually with Spotify Wrapped) that you're supporting the artist by streaming music. I'd rather someone know that they aren't supporting the artist and be aware of that fact than someone think that they're marginally supporting the artist (when in fact they are really just barely supporting the artist). Again as someone that works in the industry intimately: use this tool all you want, and find ways to support the artist.
plagiarist 3y ago
Paying Spotify does not pay musicians. It pays Taylor Swift and Joe Rogan. The musicians I am listening to are receiving fractions of a penny per song.
methou 3y ago
Which would benefit them more? Buying CD or listening on Spotify? I’m have a list of artist I want to pay back to: - the Monty Python - Tom Lehrer - Arrogant Worms - “Weird Al” Yankovic - the Dead South their work helped through different hard times. With latest update Spotify’s Home is one scroll away from instagram story like short videos with a timer bar on it, trying to rush me with a decision on what to listen. OP is the answer to my new routine on consuming music, after which I’ll need more direct ways to support the musicians than using using some Silicon Valley cooked poison.
nonbirithm 3y ago
I get mixed feelings when reading this comment while remembering the many people gushing about how they formed lifelong friendships through what.cd.
m-p-3 3y ago
And not just that, bypassing restrictions put in place by Spotify, and where they make money from removing such restriction is a great way to get their attention and either receive a C&D or them adding further restrictions to break this bypass, making it a cat and mouse game.
ekianjo 3y ago
> Musician deserve to be paid for their work Nobody prevents them from doing live performances, you know?
- Reubend 3y ago
  Live performances are great! But the average person listen to hundreds of different artists through Spotify, and they most certainly don't go to the live performances of all those artists. I'm not advocating for Spotify in particular. If you can support the musicians more directly, that's even better! But it's not fair to pay nothing, block ads, and then keep consuming content without giving anything back.
  - ekianjo 3y ago
    > But it's not fair to pay nothing, When you listen to the radio you pay for nothing. I don't really see where is the injustice here.
    - Reubend 3y ago
      The radio station does pay royalties to the artists. And in case you forgot, they play ads as well. Sure, you can "skip" ads by switching to a different station, but the point remains that they compensate artists.
micromacrofoot 3y ago
if you think musicians should be paid for their work then you shouldn’t be using music streaming at all
scosman 3y ago
“ It is still recommended to support the creators by watching/liking/subscribing to the artists' YouTube channels or liking their tracks on Spotify (or purchasing a Spotify Premium subscription too)” Likes/subscribes are not support. Artists deserve to make a living. I’m supremely frustrated by the current state of TV shows (need 8 subscriptions and still have shows I can’t watch). Music on the other hand is wonderful. Many services to choose from, all including basically all music. Different price points for ads/quality level. We should be delighted to pay $10 a month for unlimited music (or free ad supported) and not ruin a good thing.
- gr__or 3y ago
  It should probably be said that the cuts artists get from the streamers are seen as insufficient and that platforms where you give more directly to artists, like BandCamp, are a better way to support artists you like.
  - scosman 3y ago
    Also: choose a platform that pays artists more. Apple and tidal pay out much more per stream than YouTube/spotify. But any form of paying is much much much better than piracy.
    - karmakaze 3y ago
      I liked the good ol' days when you could buy an LP/CD album and know that you'll have access to the music without depending on subscription services keeping them available. I'm particularly annoyed by Spotify only keeping 'Remastered' versions of tracks that sound smooth/full/pleasing to new-time listeners but shave a lot of character off the original.
      - scosman 3y ago
        You still can buy albums if you want. New, used, digital. Lots of options.
      - 3y ago
madsbuch 3y ago
> But when it comes time to pay for content, those people rarely are willing to pony up. You can see this happening with journalism, music, apps, etc. I think this sentiment is wrong. Personally, I pay for content and services that I find value adding (Kagi, Fastmail, etc.) That said: I am never going to pay for YouTube. The issue is that the entire platform and all of its content is catered to ad-revenue. I could be convinced to pay for a video service like YouTube where everything into its core and legacy has been based around user payments. Likewise I am never going to pay for news services that has adjusted their entire offering and content towards ad-revenue. But until I discover such a platform I am going to keep on my ad-blocker.
- hedora 3y ago
  I actually don't mind ads. They're fine. The classified section of newspapers used to fund journalism in the US. Someone's got to pay Clark Kent, after all. What I do mind is algorithmic targeting. On the ad serving front, it funds an entire industry that does nothing but violate people's basic human right to privacy. On the personalized recommendation front, it provides a strong incentive for publishers to produce click-bait. There's one commercially viable corner of the internet that hasn't been ruined by this: Podcasts. Spotify is trying to ruin that too. Screw them. Also, if you're looking for a decent music service, consider something privacy preserving like Apple Music, or (better) something that uses metadata-based targeting, like Tidal. I find most of my music by following hyperlinks in album / band reviews that were written by actual humans. There's a button for that in Tidal. I've heard Amazon Music has such a button as well. I've also found listening to high-quality (local) radio stations with good DJ's is a goldmine, as are music podcasts. I've also found that non-tailored recommendations (people who like album X like album Y, grouping of opening acts with bands, and, when done right, old-fashioned display ads) also provide a decent signal, since they're typically curated or use the things I just mentioned as signal (instead of using your cookware preferences, or sexual orientation, or whatever). In addition to being the ethical alternative, it turns out that having bands and critics list things that influenced an album or were influenced by an album is a much better way to explore the space of modern music than via payola with a dollop of high-dimensional clustering. So, in addition to the ad blocker, I'm not paying for anything that tries to spoon-feed me payola or clickbait.
larodi 3y ago
I would actually pay extra for proper open-source, minimal win32 client for spotify which runs every damn winbox. This electron apps Spotify been trying to get right for so many years is such a waste of information and cpu cycles sometimes. Can't believe a company which manages such enormous amount of data is so bad at UI
- bitcharmer 3y ago
  There are platforms other than windows. Electron is one of the simpler ways to get software released on multiple operating systems without having to support different builds and architectures.
  - larodi 3y ago
    There are at least dozen libs other than Electron that allow to put some lists and images together and be fully platform independent. I'm not even saying what language. This Spotify app was a prototype which stalled at some point because I guess they have much harsher issues to deal with.
amiga386 3y ago
Personally I recommend you check if your favoured artist is on Bandcamp and buy their music DRM free. The artist will get 85% or 90%, Bandcamp will take 15% or 10% (based on sales volume). As a hypothetical, if you found them selling an album for $5 and you bought it to download on Bandcamp, they'd earn $4.50, which is about the same as streaming their songs about 400 times on Tidal, 1,000 times on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music or Deezer, or 4,000 times on YouTube, Pandora or SoundCloud
dvfjsdhgfv 3y ago
There is negligent connection between my buying a Spotify subscription and the artists I listen to getting paid because of the scheme they devised to support big fish only. So I try to support musicians directly and treat Spotify as a discovery tool (rather lousy I'd say).
vvillena 3y ago
> Musician deserve to be paid for their work I agree. Does Spotify use my money to pay the people I listen to on a given month? They do not. They lump all the revenue together and use it to pay for content in a set of deals with music distribution companies, and some individual artists/podcasters. Which means the percentages are skewed in favor of the big names and labels. A fair subscription music service should be transparent, and even be able to provide detailed information about how much you are paying to the artists you listen to. E.g. if I don't listen to Coldplay, none of my money should go to Coldplay. If the streaming service wants to, they can use part of their cut to pay Coldplay a bit of extra money.
jzb 3y ago
"buy music directly if you don't want to subscribe! A lot of smaller artists provide ways to purchase their music that give them a large percentage of the proceeds, and you can get the music DRM-free if that's something you care about." Amen. If you have the money and really like a band or artist, find a way to put some money directly in their hands if at all possible. One: They're going to see a lot more money this way and be able to make more music in the long run. Two: Music can and does disappear from Spotify and other services due to rights and licensing issues. Three: It's not super-common but sometimes the originals are replaced with remasters or something that isn't quite right to my ears. Robyn Hitchcock's first album ("Black Snake Diamond Role") is on Spotify, last I looked. But it was remastered for digital or whatever and they couldn't find all the original masters - meaning that one of the songs that used to have saxophone doesn't. It sounds entirely wrong now.
- hackernewds 3y ago
  Producers and record labels do provide a service with distribution which artists share their commissions for. The idea that the record labels don't deserve their cuts is confusing, do they also not have employees and artists? Jack Harlow might be one example, but you see the dearth of D2C music and platforms like TIDAL that the marketing and distribution network does matter, and helps good artists take off. Whether you believe mainstream music is "good" or not, is up to your preference
  - jzb 3y ago
    I didn’t say anything about not paying labels. My point was you should buy music rather than counting on it to trickle down from Spotify. Note that many of the artists I’ve been buying from aren’t on major labels, though.
znpy 3y ago
> Musician deserve to be paid for their work If anybody actually cares even one tiny bit about a specific musician they should go to live events, buy the original merchandise and/or buy the CDs. Paying Spotify and similar services is the least efficient way to get money into artists’ pockets.
thenoblesunfish 3y ago
You can and should buy music you like on Bandcamp (or even directly from artists when they offer it), after you've thrown then a fraction of a cent via streaming.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

bayindirh 3y ago

It's not bypassing anything. It gets the playlist data from Spotify, and streams the song from YouTube, arguably still providing income for the musicians.

gnfargbl 3y ago
YouTube pays less per stream to the rights holders than Spotify, however.
- bayindirh 3y ago
  I don't know the numbers. What I was trying to point out that there's no nefariousness going on.
  - jsnell 3y ago
    No, you weren't just pointing that out. You claimed that it is "arguably still providing income for the musicians". How is it arguably providing income for tyhe artists given the app is obviously not playing ads?
    - bayindirh 3y ago
      First of all, the tool’s description doesn’t say anything about ads. Second, I’m neither the developer, nor user of the app. Third, I didn’t say definitely, but arguably. I might be wrong, but I’m not endorsing anything here. Lastly, I’m an ex-musician, too and prefer to pay for premium and buy proper albums when I can. So pointing fingers doesn’t do any favor to anyone. Have a nice day.
- unnamed76ri 3y ago
  I don’t know where you get your info but Spotify just effectively demonetized the majority of music on their platform. They’ve decided they have the right to just stop paying small time artists so they can funnel more money upwards to the record labels.
  - hutzlibu 3y ago
    Sources please?
    - erinnh 3y ago
      https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2024/01/11/spotify-stream-minimum-impact/ https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2024/01/11/spotify-stream-m...
      - gallexme 3y ago
        1000 annual listens? That's likely less than 1$/mo revenue the artists get no? Even small time musicians I know have about 1000 listens a month Seems to me just like yt monetization partner program which required like 50€ revenue for payout and 1000 subs+approval for even enabling monetization (some time ago unsure if it's still limited for new accounts ) Unless I'm missing something it mainly just trims out mass produced content
        unnamed76ri 3y ago
        It is similar but different to what YouTube did (which also sucked). How many musicians do you know of that only ever released one song? This isn’t about the streaming revenue for one song (though that is how Spotify tries to frame it). There are 1000s of artist who might have even been fairly successful at one point who have dozens or more songs in their back catalog that don’t have over 1000 streams per year. Add up the lost revenue from all of those together and it isn’t about just a couple bucks anymore. Further, even approaching the argument from how much it means per song is granting Spotify a pass that this is in any way fair to artists. Why should the top 1% of artists take even more money while the struggling musician now gets nothing?
bitcharmer 3y ago
If it streams from YouTube then it's not really a Spotify client, is it?
- bayindirh 3y ago
  It's aptly named SpoTube, to be frank. It describes itself as follows: An open source, cross-platform Spotify client compatible across multiple platforms utilizing Spotify's data API and YouTube (or Piped.video or JioSaavn) as an audio source, eliminating the need for Spotify Premium
svantana 3y ago
A very large fraction of music on youtube is also monetized by ads (for free users).
IanCal 3y ago
So it shows the ads from YouTube?

vdaea 3y ago

People here all day defending p2p piracy but when you are taking the bandwidth from a multibillion, multinational corporation then you're the devil himself :'( :'( :'( :'(

__warlord__ 3y ago
I think the "hacker" part of "hacker news" doesn't mean much anymore.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- extheat 3y ago
  The Hacker in hacker news was never meant to imply black hat/malicious types of hacking. There’s quite a difference between say, tearing something apart, reverse engineering it, breaking into something that _you_ own, versus trying to tear into something you don’t own without a really good reason. At the end of the day it’s about judgement and taste, there isn’t so much a hardline but there is a line on what we consider acceptable and unacceptable areas of exploitation. Beyond the piracy point, I think few could find this exploitative, it seems like a cool open source project that could genuinely offer better and customizable user experience.
  - elashri 3y ago
    What in this project is about piracy? It does not give you free access you cannot have without it.
- mlrtime 3y ago
  The article is still link here, so I say the hacker part is very much alive. That the comments aren't 100% all aligned is great, I come here for vigorous respectful debate. It helps me reflect on my position on topics. What's the problem?
jbverschoor 3y ago
"bandwidth from a multibillion, multinational corporation" that started out as a frontend for the pirate bay. They were probably friends, as both are from Sweden.

drcongo 3y ago

Claiming that the same people who complain about ads are also those who won't pay for services is just wrong.

drewdevault 3y ago

Direct your passion for getting musicians paid to Spotify and the distribution system, not to this. If everyone who uses this software were to use Spotify direct, ads and all, in the long run it would make pennies for the artists at best. You're better off listening to music however you please and buying albums on Bandcamp to support the artists; a lifetime of spotify listening will make less money for an artist you like than buying a single album from them on Bandcamp. Even if you only listen to one artist, 8 hours per day, 365 days a year, they will earn a whopping... 100 bucks from Spotify.

apwell23 3y ago
> Direct your passion for getting musicians paid to Spotify and the distribution system, not to this. How exactly do you do this ? What a dishonest comment to support stealing.
- drewdevault 3y ago
  >How exactly do you do this By reading the rest of my comment. >What a dishonest comment to support stealing. Copying is not theft.
  - apwell23 3y ago
    > By reading the rest of my comment. I did. You made a silly assumption that all artists put their music up on bandcamp. No one even knows what bandcamp is my area.
    - drewdevault 3y ago
      Bandcamp is available in more markets than Spotify. Not sure how that's relevant to my argument, though.
      - apwell23 3y ago
        Here is an example of an artist not on bandcamp . This is what i am listening currently on spotify( I have no idea who this is) Odeon Yılları Album by Nesrin Sipahi

tiku 3y ago

But do you need to get paid for each time someone listens to a copy? The artist isn't doing work for me when I listen to a song. Spotify should pay artists when their songs are added, not when listened.

cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
It’s not your job to decide what Spotify’s business model is.
- jbverschoor 3y ago
  You know... I have very little empathy for Spotify. Their whole company is built on pirated music
- pelasaco 3y ago
  and is your job to say what people should do or not?
  - westhanover 3y ago
    Obviously you have had your feelings hurt. If you don’t work for Spotify, it is by definition not your job.

kossTKR 3y ago

Deserve to be paid by whom though, Spotify already pays nothing? A song with 10000000 (10 million) streams , a pretty big hit and only reserved for big artists will give you 500 dollars before cuts, taxes etc. So not even the biggest artists will make anything substantial.

apwell23 3y ago
why are they publishing music on spotify then? I've discovered many artists on spotify and have paid for their live concerts. Curious, how do you discover music ?
- kossTKR 3y ago
  I also use Spotify and like you have discovered a bunch of stuff. Spotify is just the state of things, the monopoly. Like lots of other current status quos bad for on everyone but investors, old money, the richest but there's no real alternatives. Though i know at least some smaller artists have moved off the platform, but people live in the biggest apps now so it's hard. Soundcloud somehow never really translated and bandcamp just went bad after it was sold to investors. I wonder if the scene is ripe for new platforms that's better for artists.
superultra 3y ago
There’s a lot of misinformation on this post. A 10 million stream song will gross about $30-40k. After cuts for an artist, depending on the structure, they might get anywhere from most of that to $5-10k. Not that Spotify is an equitable payment system but let’s be honest about the numbers.

pxoe 3y ago

signing up for a free service (or even just using it without an account with youtube music), and playing music for free, is the easiest way to support a creator, at no cost to you. the bar is so low - support creators with ad money for free, and some people still can't clear it, or refuse to clear it. the complaining is not fair, it's annoying. if you can't pay, or wouldn't pay otherwise, and still opposed to things like ads, that enable you to get something for free - you didn't deserve to get it in the first place. get over it and pay up or shut up. or rather, put your principles to work and refuse to engage with ad-supported content at all. instead of being like "well...i still want it. so let me get it completely for free. even though i could get it for free, but that's not enough for me." the complaints at their core are just 'i got it for free and i'm still not satisfied'. the annoying kind of entitlement that wants something so badly, it doesn't even dare to just refuse itself the thing it wants.

dotancohen 3y ago
I feel that your comment is poorly articulated and ignores the primary reasons that many people use adblockers (malware protection). However, your point is very valid and I 100% agree. Compensate with your time or compensate with your money. I personally still have a large collection of compact discs. The sound quality difference is amazing, though people listening to music produced in the last decade might be less affected as that most of that music was engineered to be played over highly compressed lossy streaming and a half cm mono speaker that cannot reproduce anything below 100 or above 16000 hz as found on a smartphone.
- pxoe 3y ago
  in context of music/video streaming (maybe even youtube and spotify specifically), if there's no malware in video and audio itself of ads that would be getting blocked, that isn't really "blocking malware". juuust a little disingenuous there. even with ads blocked "for malware protection", malware could end up being promoted within content, or just encountered somewhere, and there's more actual malware protection (some is built in to OS). so...it's not about "blocking malware" with blocking ads altogether, is it. especially when a bunch of ads are non-interactive and not even about software but stuff like food and other things. it's more about not seeing ads at all. and sometimes, ad blocking just isn't an "anti-malware" solution in itself. like, if you wouldn't be able to navigate app catalogues and kinda sus out what could be malware or just steer away from untrustworthy apps altogether, ad block isn't gonna help you much there. "native" ads (promotional content) throw an even bigger wrench into that.

pelasaco 3y ago

Please nobody needs such disclaimers. If people are not willing to pay for it, they won't pay it. If they are, they will do.

gumballindie 3y ago

HN has sadly become a bit of a #warezcentral. People demanding free stuff, either to train their ai models or for personal consumption.

pelasaco 3y ago
What is more hacker than bypassing rules and paid services? What was phreaking all about?
- gumballindie 3y ago
  Stealing content is not the type of rule breaking that phreaking was about.
  - pelasaco 3y ago
    you were probably not there or in any warez bbc...
  - HeWhoLurksLate 3y ago
    phreaking was literally theft lol
    - pelasaco 3y ago
      > phreaking was literally theft lol Right? People get so attached to their political views that they dont even notice it. Kevin Poulsen, just wanted to win the Porsche for the poor...
    - quesera 3y ago
      "Theft of services", yes -- but the marginal cost/loss to the provider was effectively zero. In this way, phreaking was exactly like media piracy. But all of the above are entirely unrelated to the meaning of "Hacker" in HN.
- jug 3y ago
  I think there's a difference between hacking for fun and feeling entitled to and arguing with weak arguments how you should be able to play music for free. This entire thread has absolutely nothing to do with e.g. telling how Spotify can be hacked and everything to do with script kiddies at best wanting to download a binary from GitHub to listen to music for free. But sure, maybe HN is that sad distribution mechanism now and, what's more, we're calling this hacker culture!

westhanover 3y ago

Okay, I’ve thought twice and I don’t care. Is it okay if I use this now?

andrepd 3y ago

If you want to support musicians buy their music on bandcamp or go to their gigs and buy their merch. Don't think you're going to Spotify and doing them a favour by giving them 0.0005$ per play. Spotify is part of the problem, not the solution.

superultra 3y ago

I work in the music industry and am intimately familiar with streaming earnings. While you are technically correct, I would much rather someone use this tool and buy a ticket to a show or an LP that stream over Spotify. In fact, the ad supported tier of Spotify is one of the lesser equitable ways to pay artists. Your intent is good but gatekeeping people to use an inequitable system is not the solution.

Reubend 3y ago
> I would much rather someone use this tool and buy a ticket to a show or an LP that stream over Spotify. Sure! But at the end of the day, most of the people doing this will listen to hundreds of artists who they don't purchase tickets from, or buy their music directly. The fact that royalty payment are so low is sad. But if you use this tool, you're lowering them even further to $0.00
- superultra 3y ago
  Sure, but like the OP, there's a built-in mistaken belief (promoted annually with Spotify Wrapped) that you're supporting the artist by streaming music. I'd rather someone know that they aren't supporting the artist and be aware of that fact than someone think that they're marginally supporting the artist (when in fact they are really just barely supporting the artist). Again as someone that works in the industry intimately: use this tool all you want, and find ways to support the artist.

plagiarist 3y ago

Paying Spotify does not pay musicians. It pays Taylor Swift and Joe Rogan. The musicians I am listening to are receiving fractions of a penny per song.

methou 3y ago

Which would benefit them more? Buying CD or listening on Spotify? I’m have a list of artist I want to pay back to: - the Monty Python - Tom Lehrer - Arrogant Worms - “Weird Al” Yankovic - the Dead South their work helped through different hard times. With latest update Spotify’s Home is one scroll away from instagram story like short videos with a timer bar on it, trying to rush me with a decision on what to listen. OP is the answer to my new routine on consuming music, after which I’ll need more direct ways to support the musicians than using using some Silicon Valley cooked poison.

nonbirithm 3y ago

I get mixed feelings when reading this comment while remembering the many people gushing about how they formed lifelong friendships through what.cd.

m-p-3 3y ago

And not just that, bypassing restrictions put in place by Spotify, and where they make money from removing such restriction is a great way to get their attention and either receive a C&D or them adding further restrictions to break this bypass, making it a cat and mouse game.

ekianjo 3y ago

> Musician deserve to be paid for their work Nobody prevents them from doing live performances, you know?

Reubend 3y ago
Live performances are great! But the average person listen to hundreds of different artists through Spotify, and they most certainly don't go to the live performances of all those artists. I'm not advocating for Spotify in particular. If you can support the musicians more directly, that's even better! But it's not fair to pay nothing, block ads, and then keep consuming content without giving anything back.
- ekianjo 3y ago
  > But it's not fair to pay nothing, When you listen to the radio you pay for nothing. I don't really see where is the injustice here.
  - Reubend 3y ago
    The radio station does pay royalties to the artists. And in case you forgot, they play ads as well. Sure, you can "skip" ads by switching to a different station, but the point remains that they compensate artists.

micromacrofoot 3y ago

if you think musicians should be paid for their work then you shouldn’t be using music streaming at all

scosman 3y ago

“ It is still recommended to support the creators by watching/liking/subscribing to the artists' YouTube channels or liking their tracks on Spotify (or purchasing a Spotify Premium subscription too)” Likes/subscribes are not support. Artists deserve to make a living. I’m supremely frustrated by the current state of TV shows (need 8 subscriptions and still have shows I can’t watch). Music on the other hand is wonderful. Many services to choose from, all including basically all music. Different price points for ads/quality level. We should be delighted to pay $10 a month for unlimited music (or free ad supported) and not ruin a good thing.

gr__or 3y ago
It should probably be said that the cuts artists get from the streamers are seen as insufficient and that platforms where you give more directly to artists, like BandCamp, are a better way to support artists you like.
- scosman 3y ago
  Also: choose a platform that pays artists more. Apple and tidal pay out much more per stream than YouTube/spotify. But any form of paying is much much much better than piracy.
  - karmakaze 3y ago
    I liked the good ol' days when you could buy an LP/CD album and know that you'll have access to the music without depending on subscription services keeping them available. I'm particularly annoyed by Spotify only keeping 'Remastered' versions of tracks that sound smooth/full/pleasing to new-time listeners but shave a lot of character off the original.
    - scosman 3y ago
      You still can buy albums if you want. New, used, digital. Lots of options.
    - 3y ago

madsbuch 3y ago

> But when it comes time to pay for content, those people rarely are willing to pony up. You can see this happening with journalism, music, apps, etc. I think this sentiment is wrong. Personally, I pay for content and services that I find value adding (Kagi, Fastmail, etc.) That said: I am never going to pay for YouTube. The issue is that the entire platform and all of its content is catered to ad-revenue. I could be convinced to pay for a video service like YouTube where everything into its core and legacy has been based around user payments. Likewise I am never going to pay for news services that has adjusted their entire offering and content towards ad-revenue. But until I discover such a platform I am going to keep on my ad-blocker.

hedora 3y ago
I actually don't mind ads. They're fine. The classified section of newspapers used to fund journalism in the US. Someone's got to pay Clark Kent, after all. What I do mind is algorithmic targeting. On the ad serving front, it funds an entire industry that does nothing but violate people's basic human right to privacy. On the personalized recommendation front, it provides a strong incentive for publishers to produce click-bait. There's one commercially viable corner of the internet that hasn't been ruined by this: Podcasts. Spotify is trying to ruin that too. Screw them. Also, if you're looking for a decent music service, consider something privacy preserving like Apple Music, or (better) something that uses metadata-based targeting, like Tidal. I find most of my music by following hyperlinks in album / band reviews that were written by actual humans. There's a button for that in Tidal. I've heard Amazon Music has such a button as well. I've also found listening to high-quality (local) radio stations with good DJ's is a goldmine, as are music podcasts. I've also found that non-tailored recommendations (people who like album X like album Y, grouping of opening acts with bands, and, when done right, old-fashioned display ads) also provide a decent signal, since they're typically curated or use the things I just mentioned as signal (instead of using your cookware preferences, or sexual orientation, or whatever). In addition to being the ethical alternative, it turns out that having bands and critics list things that influenced an album or were influenced by an album is a much better way to explore the space of modern music than via payola with a dollop of high-dimensional clustering. So, in addition to the ad blocker, I'm not paying for anything that tries to spoon-feed me payola or clickbait.

larodi 3y ago

I would actually pay extra for proper open-source, minimal win32 client for spotify which runs every damn winbox. This electron apps Spotify been trying to get right for so many years is such a waste of information and cpu cycles sometimes. Can't believe a company which manages such enormous amount of data is so bad at UI

bitcharmer 3y ago
There are platforms other than windows. Electron is one of the simpler ways to get software released on multiple operating systems without having to support different builds and architectures.
- larodi 3y ago
  There are at least dozen libs other than Electron that allow to put some lists and images together and be fully platform independent. I'm not even saying what language. This Spotify app was a prototype which stalled at some point because I guess they have much harsher issues to deal with.

amiga386 3y ago

Personally I recommend you check if your favoured artist is on Bandcamp and buy their music DRM free. The artist will get 85% or 90%, Bandcamp will take 15% or 10% (based on sales volume). As a hypothetical, if you found them selling an album for $5 and you bought it to download on Bandcamp, they'd earn $4.50, which is about the same as streaming their songs about 400 times on Tidal, 1,000 times on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music or Deezer, or 4,000 times on YouTube, Pandora or SoundCloud

dvfjsdhgfv 3y ago

There is negligent connection between my buying a Spotify subscription and the artists I listen to getting paid because of the scheme they devised to support big fish only. So I try to support musicians directly and treat Spotify as a discovery tool (rather lousy I'd say).

vvillena 3y ago

> Musician deserve to be paid for their work I agree. Does Spotify use my money to pay the people I listen to on a given month? They do not. They lump all the revenue together and use it to pay for content in a set of deals with music distribution companies, and some individual artists/podcasters. Which means the percentages are skewed in favor of the big names and labels. A fair subscription music service should be transparent, and even be able to provide detailed information about how much you are paying to the artists you listen to. E.g. if I don't listen to Coldplay, none of my money should go to Coldplay. If the streaming service wants to, they can use part of their cut to pay Coldplay a bit of extra money.

jzb 3y ago

"buy music directly if you don't want to subscribe! A lot of smaller artists provide ways to purchase their music that give them a large percentage of the proceeds, and you can get the music DRM-free if that's something you care about." Amen. If you have the money and really like a band or artist, find a way to put some money directly in their hands if at all possible. One: They're going to see a lot more money this way and be able to make more music in the long run. Two: Music can and does disappear from Spotify and other services due to rights and licensing issues. Three: It's not super-common but sometimes the originals are replaced with remasters or something that isn't quite right to my ears. Robyn Hitchcock's first album ("Black Snake Diamond Role") is on Spotify, last I looked. But it was remastered for digital or whatever and they couldn't find all the original masters - meaning that one of the songs that used to have saxophone doesn't. It sounds entirely wrong now.

hackernewds 3y ago
Producers and record labels do provide a service with distribution which artists share their commissions for. The idea that the record labels don't deserve their cuts is confusing, do they also not have employees and artists? Jack Harlow might be one example, but you see the dearth of D2C music and platforms like TIDAL that the marketing and distribution network does matter, and helps good artists take off. Whether you believe mainstream music is "good" or not, is up to your preference
- jzb 3y ago
  I didn’t say anything about not paying labels. My point was you should buy music rather than counting on it to trickle down from Spotify. Note that many of the artists I’ve been buying from aren’t on major labels, though.

znpy 3y ago

> Musician deserve to be paid for their work If anybody actually cares even one tiny bit about a specific musician they should go to live events, buy the original merchandise and/or buy the CDs. Paying Spotify and similar services is the least efficient way to get money into artists’ pockets.

thenoblesunfish 3y ago

You can and should buy music you like on Bandcamp (or even directly from artists when they offer it), after you've thrown then a fraction of a cent via streaming.

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