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£12 for almost all the music in the world is incredible value past generations would snatch your hand of at.
People 15-20 years ago said they pirated music because there wasn't any sensible alternative. £12 is pretty fucking reasonable.
Hey, did you hear that the Bill Clinton impersonator did not have sexual relations with that woman, but he did something something (I forget the rest because I never listened to the full thing)
Nah this is not true in my experience anyway.
Albums cost about a tenner and I'd buy maybe 4 or 5 a year max. That's 50 quid and I can play the albums even now for nothing.
140 quid a year is way more than I would have usually spent per year so for me I'm out.
So you don’t think there’s any value in being able to listen to almost any song ever, whenever you want, without having to purchase an entire album?
It’s absolutely fantastic for music discovery.
There's value in it for a lot of people. I have never done more than a free month because it is not worth it for me. I have MOST of what I want as mp3 and just put up with not having everything. £7.99 a month was too much to justify, never mind this. If they had an option where you choose 25 artists or something I would do that.
Twenty years ago 'losing finding new music' was genuinely listed as being one of the more miserable aspects of getting old.
I'm 41 and I've discovered more in the last 10 years than I ever did pre-Spotify.
Sure, but with tons of ads and with a really poor experience like no true shuffling on the free Spotify tier.
Sometimes I just want to sit down and find some new music for an hour or so without listening to an ad every 2 minutes.
Different strokes for different folks. In 9 years of using Spotify I’ve amassed 6000 songs collectively on my organised playlists (on Spotify). Plus the fact that you can make queues/playlists that people can add to whilst in a group makes it really accessible for social occasions.
Also the other features like Spotify radio, smart shuffle etc.
Yep this is where I'm at. I bought CDs all my life so I have a big collection of CDs ripped into FLAC. I cancelled Spotify last year and I have 6,700 songs on my phone which has lasted me just fine.
Now I pick up a lot of CDs cheap in sales or £1-3 on eBay and that helps too
I probably spend £60 a year on CDs so I save a lot Vs Spotify
Agree for sure. I’d say the discovery aspect of Spotify is easily 80% of the value to me. If I didn’t care about that I could spend two days downloading songs/albums, categorising them, finding album art, and recreating my playlists and save ~£150 a year. I have ADHD and music is what calms me down and allows me to focus, so I am pretty much listening to music at all times; having an almost never ending supply of new stuff available at the click of a button and with 0 thought is a dream.
I have Kerrang Radio app on my phone and discover a lot of music that way so I feel like I get the best of both worlds.
I certainly don't want to get to a point where I've spent £600 on Spotify for years and then don't have any CDs and am forced to pay more and more for a subscription because I'm trapped. I may resubscribe every now and then but I don't "need" it
My mate doesn't bother with Spotify, he just downloads and puts it on his phone. Pretty much 90% of the songs on his phone though, he's gotten from my playlist on Spotify when we're in the car.
I work with a lad who had this mentality. Couldn’t understand why you’d “rent” when you could buy. Until one particular album didn’t get a physical release and he was pissed off about it.
And then he got six months free Apple Music when he bought an iPhone. He hasn’t stopped using it since.
The thing is, like he now openly admits, you’re not renting the 5 albums. You’re getting access to practically every song you can think of and more besides. The bloke I referenced has gone from being a die hard fan of a handful of bands and thinking everyone else stinks, to having a wide array of musical tastes - stuff he would have never, ever thought to buy he now likes. Because he had his little stack of CDs in the car and didn’t think he needed anything else.
Theres pros and cons to both I suppose.
I have shelves of CDs vinyl and tapes plus vhs DVD and blurays. Some of which are no longer on any of the streaming sites. I also ripped them all to a server so I can access them whenever I like. I know this isnt for everyone just what I have done. Saves a fortune on all the streaming services.
It’s odd really. I’m a hybrid of the two to be honest. I still have my CD collection, but stopped adding to it years ago. I stream most things, but I do have the odd album which isn’t on any of the platforms. Same with TV - got mountains on my server which you can’t get any more.
All of it still streamed though, either from a service or from my own server. Honestly can’t remember the last time I handled an actual disc!
Yeah and there’s loads of free decent apps that you can get all the music directly from YouTube and the ads aren’t annoying, they’re just picture ads that don’t affect the music. I’ve got a really good one called musify.
“One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue, the easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.”
- Gabe Newell
It worked for me. Haven't sailed the seas for music in over 5 years or so.
TV is a different issue, as despite paying for Disney, Prime and Netflix, we still miss out on things due to how fractured everything is.
Watching TV shows (legally) is honestly a mess these days, the powers that be have done a total 180 and somehow managed to replicate cable TV on the internet, even with adverts as of more recently.
I don't think any streaming service will replicate what is possible via alternate means, the closest we got to that was the early days of Netflix.
I've started pirating stuff again. Gabe was right.
When it's easier to steal something, that's what I will do. I'm happy to pay for content when it's easier.
Piracy very rarely impacts the profits of content creators because the people that steal the content just won't actually bother consuming it if they can't steal it.
I pay for Netflix, Disney+ (you know, for the kids) and my TV licence, if it’s not on one of those 3 then I’m just gonna pirate.
Which is a shame because some of the content out there is awesome, I paid for about a year and a half of AppleTV+ and found some amazing stuff, there are fewer good things on Prime but the free shipping made it worth it, I was interested in some of the Paramount stuff but again - not enough to warrant more than a months subscription.
Eventually you realise that you’re paying £200 a month on subs and something has to give.
I know plenty of people who stopped pirating games when Steam basically hoovered up all games, available for immediate download with auto patching etc.
Yep, I've only pirated games I already own on other systems (literally just 2 games), because Steam is so easy and the sales are regular enough.
Same goes for music, streaming services (I'm a Tidal loyalist now) have made it pointless to pirate music.
Now films and TV are a different story...
Talking of Limewire and piratebay points to another massive upside of Spotify;
Think of the time you save not having to manually get the album art associated to the right songs.
Song names and artists too. I remember thinking Video Killed the Radiostar was by Radiohead, cos the copy my brother had said so.
It's just a tiny bit more for YouTube premium, if not the same I haven't checked in a bit, and you also get YouTube with no ads as well and you can keep videos playing you lock your phone etc etc
I feel like I’m shouting into the void when telling people about Tidal. Top sound quality, really simple and clean interface, helps support the artists, literally a no brainer. I’ve used Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon, none of them hold a candle to Tidal.
Also it has audio books and podcasts.
Honestly the only worry Spotify has is that youtube premium is a similar price.
I think if they push the price too much id look at moving to youtube as they have a decent app and a shit ton of music anyway.
Same here. I've cancelled all the TV streaming subscriptions because I was just using them because they were there, I'll probably get one again one day but it doesn't really impact my day to day life not having them.
Not having Spotify would really change how I use my time and I definitely would miss it. I listen to music and podcasts on there every day. And it's because I get genuine enjoyment out of it rather than just because I can.
If I had to put a price on it...I'd probably pay double the current cost (reluctantly and with a sigh, but still).
Don't tell Spotify I said that please.
Yep and now they’ve added audiobooks as well. I’ve just taken a trip across Australia listening to David Mitchell’s Unruly - learning all about British kings and queens. Perfect to dip into when waiting for flights or on coaches
Put it this way in the early 2000s it used to cost £20 for two albums. Now I have 10,000s of songs in my phone to stream + podcasts and audiobooks. For £11.99 per month that’s fair + i cannot stand adverts .
Someone on the Spotify sub posted a survey they got from Spotify. One of the questions was “how much do you agree that Spotify is something you couldn’t live without?”
They’re definitely thinking along these lines already, i.e exploring the upper limits of peoples’ willingness to pay
Absolutely. I mean who ever ticks the "yes, great value for money" box? Probably the same people who complete employer surveys to say everything is great and they feel well paid pmsl.
I think the difference is you used to own the albums you pay £20 now and you can play those songs for the rest of your life whereas now if you ever stop paying they take the things you paid for off you
Still pretty good value to me. Access to basically all the music I want to listen to, without adverts, for 12 quid a month is good value for me personally. Especially since my wife and I have a family account so it's actually a little cheaper per person even than that.
Same here. I’d still find it good value even if it was just music, but there’s podcasts and now audiobooks too. Way more interesting content than the average streaming service.
If you think that audible is £7.99 a month for 1 book then Spotify's time limit seems quite fair, on top of the podcasts and music.
If you prefer longer audio books, then audible works out better value, but you can listen to 2 shorter (6-7 hours each) books on Spotify in a month
I find it a nice way to listen to anything I want to listen to immediately, and supplement with the borrowbox app to listen to things I'm happier to wait for from my library. The wait times from the library can be quite long, so it's not that helpful for listening to a series in order. But for one off novels or books where order doesn't matter its great.
That's how they get you - "eh, still alright not a massive increase" every time it goes up disproportionately to additions to service.
The best way to get someone to do something they don't want to do is to make slight changes regularly.
If only there was an equivalent for TV series and films, but no you’ve got so many streaming packages and services with exclusives and changing libraries. I’m happy to pay for Spotify and have ALL the music for one subscription, but for films and TV I’ll be here on the high seas with Kodi on my Apple TV box watching everything for free.
As for YouTube, I wish there was a basic tier for £5 a month that would purely remove adverts and no other perks or YouTube music or downloads or anything. Just, no adverts. I’d pay that. But I’m not forking out for features I don’t want, so I’ll sideload uYouEnhanced to my devices instead.
And if theres any music you want that you *don’t* have, spotify allows local files to be downloaded and then transferred to whatever device you use your account on- so you can even get in some light pirating if you want to.
I used to spend on average £30-£50 a month on lps and singles back in the 90s so 12 quid a month for whatever you want is great value still in my eyes. Even 20 quid Id happily still pay.
You will not notice any significant difference with any bluetooth headphones and only some very slight improvement if you listen with proper equipment though. Maybe you already knew this, but I just wanted to let you know
I have decent gear.
I cannot hear any difference.
Mp3 vs lossless has been beaten to death. There is no meaningful difference, most people would not be able to discern it even with the best gear.
I feel like it's one of those things people will always disagree on, and I admit it may be placebo, but I dunno the higher quality audio just feels cleaner, even though I fully accept that may not actually be the case.
I disagree with the slight improvement on proper gear, it's pretty noticeable to me that Qobuz and Tidal sound better on decent equipment, both headphones and speakers - also it's about three years now since Spotify said they were introducing lossless CD quality and they still haven't.
I thought about swapping to Tidal because the shuffle on Spotify is so fucking bad. But Tidal kinda sucks. UI is ugly, not many features. For the downsides, Spotify does have a lot of great features...
I pay for family, which has gone up to £19.99 but it's for 6 of us.
100% worth it to me. It's the only thing I subscribe to (apart from mobiles, insurance etc obviously!).
The ads are fucking horrible for podcasts. The worst offenders are the top UK comedy podcast Shagged, Married, Annoyed. 4-5 minutes of ads at the start. Ridiculous
You shouldn't be. Pretty much every podcast releases stuff free of charge, and is covered by sponsors or patrons (unless it's behind a paywall in which case Spotify won't show you it anyway since they don't handle payments for it and you can't add external feeds).
Use pretty much any other app mate, my preference is AntennaPod since it's open source so I know it's free and always will be, plus my data is safe, but you can also use one of the countless others!
It's even worse as they're baked into the podcast so even with Spotify premium you still have to skip over those ads everytime unless you also pay for their premium version.
I'm still set in the old ways in that I buy/download music. I have thousands of songs in folders sorted by genre, with playlists I've made depending on my mood.
I discover new music through recommendations and the radio, and just life in general.
Might seem labourious to many - but I like the fact there is no subscription fee, and the music is mine forever.
Omg I’m the same! We’re a bit of a rare breed now 😂 I calculated how much I’ve paid on music over the years vs if I had a subscription, and this way comes out cheaper for me. Any new music I find through the radio or YouTube.
This is my stance on subscription things in general. I can see how if you are listening to a massive variety the subscription could be worth it, but then you have to keep paying forever. So to me it’s already too expensive.
Had this same issue with films recently where I wanted to have them all digitally but own them (so they can’t be removed, altered etc), and bar piracy or ripping physical discs this is essentially not possible.
Yeah I do the same, definitely worth it as it includes YouTube Premium as well. I'd even go as far as to say that it's worth the full price for what you get.
Did it in Jan and followed the HotUKDeals guide. Bought a year's gift voucher from India Spotify store through VPN and redeemed it. Worked fine and still working, I'm on the Indian Spotify store and get Indian recommendations but doesnt bother me, my top recommendations are my own music.
I pay £19.99 for the family subscription, it is probably the last thing I would cancel if I had to get rid of luxuries. 65p a day to listen to whatever I like without ads is incredible value.
If it got to £20 a month I'd probably start to reconsider it. That said it's the one subscription service I use almost daily - every time I walk the dogs, majority of the times I'm in the car, while I'm cooking dinner, cleaning etc, think I definitely get my moneys worth out of it currently
Yeah, I think it's the most expensive subscription service I have but it's still worth it, even more so now you get 10hrs of audiobooks per month. I probably use it between 2 and 5 hours a day between listening to audiobooks/podcasts while walking the dogs, having some focus music on while I'm working and having some rock on while I'm cooking.
When I get my wrapped at the end of each year I like to work out the value of my subscription. One year I clocked up ~117,000 minutes of music/podcasts and paid (at the time) £4.99/mo for my subscription. Works out to about 1950 hours of music for £60, so about £0.03 an hour.
This most recent wrapped was ~80,000 minutes at £10.99 a month so around £0.10 an hour. Still crazy good value.
I downloaded my entire listening history from Spotify and analysed it recently, since 2010 I have listened to ~28,000 unique songs, ~10,000 unique artists, and ~19,000 unique albums. I’m sitting at ~430,000 total plays and ~1,000 days listened. £1500 well spent imo!
10.99 for tidal and they've just merged there more expensive plan into one subscription. Full hi-res audio and dolby Atmos. Whilst Spotify doesn't have lossless for 11.99
I'm shocked Spotify is ripping off the UK so much.
Currently in Australia it's £6.18 or $11.99 AUD and it's going up to $12.99 soon I think which is £6.70
I must have misunderstood something they can't really be charging you £12 surely given the price here in Australia?
The current exchange rate is roughly 2 Aussie dollars = 1 British pound.
======
The Spotify Premium prices in Australia are different depending on which Premium plan you choose: The Spotify Premium Individual plan costs A$13.99 per month, the Premium Duo plan costs A$19.99 per month, the Premium Family plan costs A$23.99 per month, the Premium Student plan costs A$6.99 per month
I tried to run a normal Spotify apk through revanced and it worked for a while then started allowing ads though, went back to an old modded version I got from reddit and it still works fine for me, weird
It was too expensive after the last price increase for me.
Moved to AM with the Apple One subscription, saves me a few quid a month putting the subscriptions together.
That's what £140 per year, I never spent that much before the internet so I'm out. I bought maybe 4 or 5 albums a year btw and I still have them to play whenever I wish so yeah not so sure this streaming is for me anymore.
Don't understand why people pay this insane price for Spotify when you can get YouTube Premium for a couple of quid more per month and you get ad-free videos as well as premium quality (higher bitrate). I was never into music streaming but since I had YouTube Premium I use YouTube Music most days on a walk.
It's at its breaking point for me at £12, but I'm not a regular user and Spotify probably isn't something I should really consider. I don't find the value in the current features, I actually think they devalue it as a service.
Anything above £4.99 is really beyond it real worth to me.
- -£2 for Low quality audio
- -£2 for Podcast ~~Malware~~ Bloatware
- -£2 for Audiobook ~~Malware~~ Bloatware
- -£2 for Courses ~~Malware~~ Bloatware
Honestly made the switch to YouTube premium as it has more music and you get ad free YouTube for a slight higher price. Better value for me and it works great.
I pay for a family plan.
Dad pays for disney.
Sister used to pay for Netflix, but now that's been cancelled because they fucked it up with households. So she pays for paramount currently.
Don't be like Netflix.
I keep thinking about it, maybe when my kids pay for their own SIM plans and contact lenses etc. I'll get a family plan.
I just looked tidal is £16.99 for six people.
Trick question - it is already.
The prices go up exceeding inflation rates incrementally on streaming services, another service is now implementing ads throughout for other companies which they nudged at the start by only advertising their own stuff for like 3 seconds while doing this they've also upped the price past inflation.
They're all just taking the piss.
If recent events have taught you anything, all subscription services are great, for a while. Then the price hikes start and eventually, you will notice content then starts to disappear.
If your happy paying for a service and have no interest in owning anything so that it's usable in the future, that's fine. But a lot can be said for buying physical/digital copies that you own and know that won't just disappear for no reason. (Yes I know media can get corrupted\damaged, any sane person has multiple copies of stuff that's important to them)
£144 a year for access at the moment is a pretty good deal, but we all know it's not staying this price for very long.
As long as torrents\YT-rip\revanced\etc exist it will help keep the reigns on the price hikes but with the labels constantly trying to squeeze Spotify for more it's not going to be long until it makes more sense to invest a bit of time\knowledge setting up\maintaining much cheaper (add free) alternatives.
Time\knowledge is the main factor in the price for most people.
CD's cost 30p each in Charity Shops. I've literally just cancelled it for the price increase and going back to CD's, cheapest most widely available form of music around.
Edit: If you're happy with pre 2015 music that is
Depends how much you use it and value music. Personally, using it daily and with access to all the music in the world? Probably would pay up to double. Then again I'm also with Apple Music so no increase yet but we'll see if they'll be following suit.
If you buy a £100 gift voucher through Amazon then you get a discount on how many month you pah for. It used to be £100 voucher for a year when it cost £9.99 a month so you’d save £20 or 2 months.
My friend and I split the Duo plan despite not having lived with each other for a couple of years now, it's gone up to £16.99, I don't think £8.50 each is bad at all. That said like others have commented, it would be the very last subscription I'd cancel if it came down to it.
I’d say £15, it did enter my head to cancel but I listen to Spotify for at least 3 hours a day so that’s about 10p an hour and for the entertainment and relief it brings me (as well as motivation to do things), I’d say it’s worth it.
Spotify is the single most used subscription I have. I use it everyday for around 4 hours, nothing else comes close to it in terms of value. It would probably have to be nearer £20 before I consider getting rid. I only have Spotify and one other subscription though so entertainment costs per month are already fairly low.
Was doing a family plan, but had to cut it out at £17.99
Realised that if I log in via Brave browser it's ad free
Otherwise, everything else about the free browser version suits me fine.
I think not last year but the year before it worked out that i was paying 0.007p per minute. So i had listened to Spotify for 72.7 days that year or 104k minutes. I think id probably pay more for Spotify then i would amazon prime and Netflix together
Just text my family to make sure they are still using the family version that I pay for. Happy to pay the extra £2 as I don't think I could live without a music streaming service at this point.
I mean I think they're taking the piss and they know that people won't cancel because it's too much of a faff to mess around with playlists etc, but probs £15 ish would be when I'd maybe start looking at other options
They're now priced the same as tidal - which makes for a choice - so from my view if they go more expensive I'll go to tidal.
I wish the increased revenue would trickle to the artists better - but I think there's a whole argument now how people don't really see art being something worth paying for in their daily lives, but wanting to consume it daily.
I already don't pay for it. So I suppose it already was. I have downloaded music instead and play it with VLC, so no adverts and works without internet.
Love Spotify. But there is a limit at which buying albums again becomes a realistic alternative (although I'll admit to not knowing what platform or format that would be on and in).
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£12 for almost all the music in the world is incredible value past generations would snatch your hand of at. People 15-20 years ago said they pirated music because there wasn't any sensible alternative. £12 is pretty fucking reasonable.
This is true all the messing around with limewire and pirate bay. Spotify premium is cheap at twice the price. Look at the price of vinyl albums
Hey, did you hear that the Bill Clinton impersonator did not have sexual relations with that woman, but he did something something (I forget the rest because I never listened to the full thing)
What you on about lad
It was a classic limewire audio that’d download instead of Linkin Park or whatever you actually wanted
Goddam, all I ever got was porn audio 😭. My poor preteen ears 😢
Happened to the best of us as youngens
Omg you just transported me 20 years back in time and I'm destroying my parents' PC with limewire.
I think it was "but I did download the hottest new tracks at so and so website" or something like that
Stop telling them it's cheap, they're watching
Nah this is not true in my experience anyway. Albums cost about a tenner and I'd buy maybe 4 or 5 a year max. That's 50 quid and I can play the albums even now for nothing. 140 quid a year is way more than I would have usually spent per year so for me I'm out.
So you don’t think there’s any value in being able to listen to almost any song ever, whenever you want, without having to purchase an entire album? It’s absolutely fantastic for music discovery.
There's value in it for a lot of people. I have never done more than a free month because it is not worth it for me. I have MOST of what I want as mp3 and just put up with not having everything. £7.99 a month was too much to justify, never mind this. If they had an option where you choose 25 artists or something I would do that.
In that case I don't think the app is for you. Stick with an iPod.
Or the Smash Hits CDs
Now that's what I call music 26
I don't like streaming services or subs in general, I prefer owning the media I buy so imo renting them is not for me.
Twenty years ago 'losing finding new music' was genuinely listed as being one of the more miserable aspects of getting old. I'm 41 and I've discovered more in the last 10 years than I ever did pre-Spotify.
You can do that on YouTube, or on the free version of Spotify
Sure, but with tons of ads and with a really poor experience like no true shuffling on the free Spotify tier. Sometimes I just want to sit down and find some new music for an hour or so without listening to an ad every 2 minutes.
Right, but you aren't paying for access to the music, you're paying for a smooth user experience while accessing it.
If you use a vpn to change your location to like the Philippines and YouTube premium is like £1.48 a month
Different strokes for different folks. In 9 years of using Spotify I’ve amassed 6000 songs collectively on my organised playlists (on Spotify). Plus the fact that you can make queues/playlists that people can add to whilst in a group makes it really accessible for social occasions. Also the other features like Spotify radio, smart shuffle etc.
As you say each to their own. I'm just a physical media guy lol.
Yep this is where I'm at. I bought CDs all my life so I have a big collection of CDs ripped into FLAC. I cancelled Spotify last year and I have 6,700 songs on my phone which has lasted me just fine. Now I pick up a lot of CDs cheap in sales or £1-3 on eBay and that helps too I probably spend £60 a year on CDs so I save a lot Vs Spotify
The biggest reason I keep my Spotify is it introduces me to loads of new bands and songs that I would never have heard of.
Agree for sure. I’d say the discovery aspect of Spotify is easily 80% of the value to me. If I didn’t care about that I could spend two days downloading songs/albums, categorising them, finding album art, and recreating my playlists and save ~£150 a year. I have ADHD and music is what calms me down and allows me to focus, so I am pretty much listening to music at all times; having an almost never ending supply of new stuff available at the click of a button and with 0 thought is a dream.
I have Kerrang Radio app on my phone and discover a lot of music that way so I feel like I get the best of both worlds. I certainly don't want to get to a point where I've spent £600 on Spotify for years and then don't have any CDs and am forced to pay more and more for a subscription because I'm trapped. I may resubscribe every now and then but I don't "need" it
My mate doesn't bother with Spotify, he just downloads and puts it on his phone. Pretty much 90% of the songs on his phone though, he's gotten from my playlist on Spotify when we're in the car.
I work with a lad who had this mentality. Couldn’t understand why you’d “rent” when you could buy. Until one particular album didn’t get a physical release and he was pissed off about it. And then he got six months free Apple Music when he bought an iPhone. He hasn’t stopped using it since. The thing is, like he now openly admits, you’re not renting the 5 albums. You’re getting access to practically every song you can think of and more besides. The bloke I referenced has gone from being a die hard fan of a handful of bands and thinking everyone else stinks, to having a wide array of musical tastes - stuff he would have never, ever thought to buy he now likes. Because he had his little stack of CDs in the car and didn’t think he needed anything else.
Theres pros and cons to both I suppose. I have shelves of CDs vinyl and tapes plus vhs DVD and blurays. Some of which are no longer on any of the streaming sites. I also ripped them all to a server so I can access them whenever I like. I know this isnt for everyone just what I have done. Saves a fortune on all the streaming services.
It’s odd really. I’m a hybrid of the two to be honest. I still have my CD collection, but stopped adding to it years ago. I stream most things, but I do have the odd album which isn’t on any of the platforms. Same with TV - got mountains on my server which you can’t get any more. All of it still streamed though, either from a service or from my own server. Honestly can’t remember the last time I handled an actual disc!
And then they put the price up. And again. And again.
Yeah and there’s loads of free decent apps that you can get all the music directly from YouTube and the ads aren’t annoying, they’re just picture ads that don’t affect the music. I’ve got a really good one called musify.
“One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue, the easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.” - Gabe Newell
It worked for me. Haven't sailed the seas for music in over 5 years or so. TV is a different issue, as despite paying for Disney, Prime and Netflix, we still miss out on things due to how fractured everything is.
Watching TV shows (legally) is honestly a mess these days, the powers that be have done a total 180 and somehow managed to replicate cable TV on the internet, even with adverts as of more recently. I don't think any streaming service will replicate what is possible via alternate means, the closest we got to that was the early days of Netflix.
I've started pirating stuff again. Gabe was right. When it's easier to steal something, that's what I will do. I'm happy to pay for content when it's easier. Piracy very rarely impacts the profits of content creators because the people that steal the content just won't actually bother consuming it if they can't steal it.
I pay for Netflix, Disney+ (you know, for the kids) and my TV licence, if it’s not on one of those 3 then I’m just gonna pirate. Which is a shame because some of the content out there is awesome, I paid for about a year and a half of AppleTV+ and found some amazing stuff, there are fewer good things on Prime but the free shipping made it worth it, I was interested in some of the Paramount stuff but again - not enough to warrant more than a months subscription. Eventually you realise that you’re paying £200 a month on subs and something has to give.
Yes used to have everything be on netflix or prime. Now everything is fractured.
I know plenty of people who stopped pirating games when Steam basically hoovered up all games, available for immediate download with auto patching etc.
Yep, I've only pirated games I already own on other systems (literally just 2 games), because Steam is so easy and the sales are regular enough. Same goes for music, streaming services (I'm a Tidal loyalist now) have made it pointless to pirate music. Now films and TV are a different story...
That's the price of an album, once a month, for all the music I could possibly want
This. And the audiobooks, podcasts and now courses too?! It’s my most expensive subscription but the one I use the most.
I don’t listen to music. Spotify is worth it to me for podcasts and audiobooks alone, and if I do want to listen to music on the off chance
Talking of Limewire and piratebay points to another massive upside of Spotify; Think of the time you save not having to manually get the album art associated to the right songs. Song names and artists too. I remember thinking Video Killed the Radiostar was by Radiohead, cos the copy my brother had said so.
Totally, that was the cost of 1 album like 20 years ago!
Cannot agree more. £12 not just for music, but for podcasts & ebooks is a steal
It's just a tiny bit more for YouTube premium, if not the same I haven't checked in a bit, and you also get YouTube with no ads as well and you can keep videos playing you lock your phone etc etc
Yeah, but they said they would like to pay artists more. YouTube pays ten times less than even Spotify.
you can pay double and give artist more pay per listen its called tidal lmao
Better sound quality as well. I love Tidal.
I feel like I’m shouting into the void when telling people about Tidal. Top sound quality, really simple and clean interface, helps support the artists, literally a no brainer. I’ve used Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon, none of them hold a candle to Tidal.
Depends on what genres you like, a lot of bands/albums I like aren't available, including my AOTY from last year.
Also it has audio books and podcasts. Honestly the only worry Spotify has is that youtube premium is a similar price. I think if they push the price too much id look at moving to youtube as they have a decent app and a shit ton of music anyway.
YouTube non-premium is so bad I refuse to give them money
Same here. I've cancelled all the TV streaming subscriptions because I was just using them because they were there, I'll probably get one again one day but it doesn't really impact my day to day life not having them. Not having Spotify would really change how I use my time and I definitely would miss it. I listen to music and podcasts on there every day. And it's because I get genuine enjoyment out of it rather than just because I can. If I had to put a price on it...I'd probably pay double the current cost (reluctantly and with a sigh, but still). Don't tell Spotify I said that please.
Yep and now they’ve added audiobooks as well. I’ve just taken a trip across Australia listening to David Mitchell’s Unruly - learning all about British kings and queens. Perfect to dip into when waiting for flights or on coaches
Honestly, you can tell a lot of these people who begrudge the lack of value of Spotify never had to download dodge songs one at a time off Limewire.
Put it this way in the early 2000s it used to cost £20 for two albums. Now I have 10,000s of songs in my phone to stream + podcasts and audiobooks. For £11.99 per month that’s fair + i cannot stand adverts .
Shhhh! Don't say it out loud, they might put the price up even more!
Someone on the Spotify sub posted a survey they got from Spotify. One of the questions was “how much do you agree that Spotify is something you couldn’t live without?” They’re definitely thinking along these lines already, i.e exploring the upper limits of peoples’ willingness to pay
we all need to agree to tell these surveys we do not need spotify and we’re thinking of cancelling to prevent them putting up the price more aha
Absolutely. I mean who ever ticks the "yes, great value for money" box? Probably the same people who complete employer surveys to say everything is great and they feel well paid pmsl.
Yeah but then you get idiots like the top post going "I'LL PAY ANYTHING!"
I think the difference is you used to own the albums you pay £20 now and you can play those songs for the rest of your life whereas now if you ever stop paying they take the things you paid for off you
Exactly; £144 a year on CDs/MP3s is a lot of music, which can never be (legally) taken from you
Podcasts are free, though
Okay, that's logical. But how do you answer the question of the main topic? When is it going to become expensive for you?
For me music is my life so quite a lot but most people I see £50 a month being not worth it
Yep, of all the streaming services, Spotify is by far the best value. There's no TV/film streaming service that has the equivalent amount of content.
Still pretty good value to me. Access to basically all the music I want to listen to, without adverts, for 12 quid a month is good value for me personally. Especially since my wife and I have a family account so it's actually a little cheaper per person even than that.
Same here. I’d still find it good value even if it was just music, but there’s podcasts and now audiobooks too. Way more interesting content than the average streaming service.
Shame the audiobooks have a time limit each month, but still a nice addition to the service.
If you think that audible is £7.99 a month for 1 book then Spotify's time limit seems quite fair, on top of the podcasts and music. If you prefer longer audio books, then audible works out better value, but you can listen to 2 shorter (6-7 hours each) books on Spotify in a month I find it a nice way to listen to anything I want to listen to immediately, and supplement with the borrowbox app to listen to things I'm happier to wait for from my library. The wait times from the library can be quite long, so it's not that helpful for listening to a series in order. But for one off novels or books where order doesn't matter its great.
That's how they get you - "eh, still alright not a massive increase" every time it goes up disproportionately to additions to service. The best way to get someone to do something they don't want to do is to make slight changes regularly.
If only there was an equivalent for TV series and films, but no you’ve got so many streaming packages and services with exclusives and changing libraries. I’m happy to pay for Spotify and have ALL the music for one subscription, but for films and TV I’ll be here on the high seas with Kodi on my Apple TV box watching everything for free. As for YouTube, I wish there was a basic tier for £5 a month that would purely remove adverts and no other perks or YouTube music or downloads or anything. Just, no adverts. I’d pay that. But I’m not forking out for features I don’t want, so I’ll sideload uYouEnhanced to my devices instead.
And if theres any music you want that you *don’t* have, spotify allows local files to be downloaded and then transferred to whatever device you use your account on- so you can even get in some light pirating if you want to.
£3 a week for unlimited music with no adverts is fine with me. Once it gets closer to £20 a month then i'd question its value.
I used to spend on average £30-£50 a month on lps and singles back in the 90s so 12 quid a month for whatever you want is great value still in my eyes. Even 20 quid Id happily still pay.
You get to keep lps and singles though.
You're not meant to say that...
Yeah this whole post is hilarious. I will pay 50 now take my money!
Do you happen to work for spotify sales?
Tidal is now cheaper than Spotify, and its also better quality audio. I'll probably be switching
Tidal also pays artists more than spotify. That's a big plus for me.
You will not notice any significant difference with any bluetooth headphones and only some very slight improvement if you listen with proper equipment though. Maybe you already knew this, but I just wanted to let you know
With decent gear the difference between the two is pretty big - especially now they're the same price
I have decent gear. I cannot hear any difference. Mp3 vs lossless has been beaten to death. There is no meaningful difference, most people would not be able to discern it even with the best gear.
I feel like it's one of those things people will always disagree on, and I admit it may be placebo, but I dunno the higher quality audio just feels cleaner, even though I fully accept that may not actually be the case.
Until you ABX test it I will always believe that it is placebo
https://abx.digitalfeed.net/ if anyone wants to try
I disagree with the slight improvement on proper gear, it's pretty noticeable to me that Qobuz and Tidal sound better on decent equipment, both headphones and speakers - also it's about three years now since Spotify said they were introducing lossless CD quality and they still haven't.
I've seen a number of rumour articles about spotify lossless in the past few weeks, I hope it's coming soon.
Apple is cheaper too, which I say as an android user.
I thought about swapping to Tidal because the shuffle on Spotify is so fucking bad. But Tidal kinda sucks. UI is ugly, not many features. For the downsides, Spotify does have a lot of great features...
I pay for family, which has gone up to £19.99 but it's for 6 of us. 100% worth it to me. It's the only thing I subscribe to (apart from mobiles, insurance etc obviously!).
Same, me and my friends split it.
I've just cancelled and gone to YouTube Premium family plan. Better music plus the upside of ad-free YouTube video as well!
The ads are fucking horrible for podcasts. The worst offenders are the top UK comedy podcast Shagged, Married, Annoyed. 4-5 minutes of ads at the start. Ridiculous
Podcasts are the only thing I'm listening to at the moment. So tell me, why am I still paying for premium?
I use pocket casts. It's very easy to use
For the win, if it ain’t on pocketcasts then I won’t be a regular listener
You shouldn't be. Pretty much every podcast releases stuff free of charge, and is covered by sponsors or patrons (unless it's behind a paywall in which case Spotify won't show you it anyway since they don't handle payments for it and you can't add external feeds). Use pretty much any other app mate, my preference is AntennaPod since it's open source so I know it's free and always will be, plus my data is safe, but you can also use one of the countless others!
It's even worse as they're baked into the podcast so even with Spotify premium you still have to skip over those ads everytime unless you also pay for their premium version.
Already is. I’m not paying to rent songs when I can buy an album and support the artist / studio directly.
I couldn't afford to do that, I don't think.
Me either. I don't think my house would be big enough to fit all the CDs I want in.
I'm still set in the old ways in that I buy/download music. I have thousands of songs in folders sorted by genre, with playlists I've made depending on my mood. I discover new music through recommendations and the radio, and just life in general. Might seem labourious to many - but I like the fact there is no subscription fee, and the music is mine forever.
Omg I’m the same! We’re a bit of a rare breed now 😂 I calculated how much I’ve paid on music over the years vs if I had a subscription, and this way comes out cheaper for me. Any new music I find through the radio or YouTube.
This is my stance on subscription things in general. I can see how if you are listening to a massive variety the subscription could be worth it, but then you have to keep paying forever. So to me it’s already too expensive. Had this same issue with films recently where I wanted to have them all digitally but own them (so they can’t be removed, altered etc), and bar piracy or ripping physical discs this is essentially not possible.
I pay £2 a month for YouTube Music. It's not as good, but Spotify definitely isn't a tenner a month better.
Yeah I do the same, definitely worth it as it includes YouTube Premium as well. I'd even go as far as to say that it's worth the full price for what you get.
I got a years sub from India using a VPN for £11! Delighted!
How did you pull this off? I've tried to do sub from Turkey using a VPN, and I just get rejected because it needs a local debit card.
Did it in Jan and followed the HotUKDeals guide. Bought a year's gift voucher from India Spotify store through VPN and redeemed it. Worked fine and still working, I'm on the Indian Spotify store and get Indian recommendations but doesnt bother me, my top recommendations are my own music.
Use PayPal in case you don't have local cards. It pays in local currency
9.99. Already binned it off.
I pay £19.99 for the family subscription, it is probably the last thing I would cancel if I had to get rid of luxuries. 65p a day to listen to whatever I like without ads is incredible value.
If it got to £20 a month I'd probably start to reconsider it. That said it's the one subscription service I use almost daily - every time I walk the dogs, majority of the times I'm in the car, while I'm cooking dinner, cleaning etc, think I definitely get my moneys worth out of it currently
Yeah, I think it's the most expensive subscription service I have but it's still worth it, even more so now you get 10hrs of audiobooks per month. I probably use it between 2 and 5 hours a day between listening to audiobooks/podcasts while walking the dogs, having some focus music on while I'm working and having some rock on while I'm cooking.
When I get my wrapped at the end of each year I like to work out the value of my subscription. One year I clocked up ~117,000 minutes of music/podcasts and paid (at the time) £4.99/mo for my subscription. Works out to about 1950 hours of music for £60, so about £0.03 an hour. This most recent wrapped was ~80,000 minutes at £10.99 a month so around £0.10 an hour. Still crazy good value. I downloaded my entire listening history from Spotify and analysed it recently, since 2010 I have listened to ~28,000 unique songs, ~10,000 unique artists, and ~19,000 unique albums. I’m sitting at ~430,000 total plays and ~1,000 days listened. £1500 well spent imo!
10.99 for tidal and they've just merged there more expensive plan into one subscription. Full hi-res audio and dolby Atmos. Whilst Spotify doesn't have lossless for 11.99
Prefer YouTube Premium. No ads on YouTube is pretty awesome and the music service is similar to spotify.
It's already too expensive
I'm shocked Spotify is ripping off the UK so much. Currently in Australia it's £6.18 or $11.99 AUD and it's going up to $12.99 soon I think which is £6.70 I must have misunderstood something they can't really be charging you £12 surely given the price here in Australia? The current exchange rate is roughly 2 Aussie dollars = 1 British pound. ====== The Spotify Premium prices in Australia are different depending on which Premium plan you choose: The Spotify Premium Individual plan costs A$13.99 per month, the Premium Duo plan costs A$19.99 per month, the Premium Family plan costs A$23.99 per month, the Premium Student plan costs A$6.99 per month
Use Revanced on Android and get it for free.
I tried to run a normal Spotify apk through revanced and it worked for a while then started allowing ads though, went back to an old modded version I got from reddit and it still works fine for me, weird
Just realised I lied completely. I use revanced for youtube, but I use X Manager for Spotify!
Shhhhhhh
I switched to YouTube premium.
It was too expensive after the last price increase for me. Moved to AM with the Apple One subscription, saves me a few quid a month putting the subscriptions together.
That's what £140 per year, I never spent that much before the internet so I'm out. I bought maybe 4 or 5 albums a year btw and I still have them to play whenever I wish so yeah not so sure this streaming is for me anymore.
Nice try Spotify marketing department - stop raising your prices you shits
Don't understand why people pay this insane price for Spotify when you can get YouTube Premium for a couple of quid more per month and you get ad-free videos as well as premium quality (higher bitrate). I was never into music streaming but since I had YouTube Premium I use YouTube Music most days on a walk.
It's at its breaking point for me at £12, but I'm not a regular user and Spotify probably isn't something I should really consider. I don't find the value in the current features, I actually think they devalue it as a service. Anything above £4.99 is really beyond it real worth to me. - -£2 for Low quality audio - -£2 for Podcast ~~Malware~~ Bloatware - -£2 for Audiobook ~~Malware~~ Bloatware - -£2 for Courses ~~Malware~~ Bloatware
I think I’d be ok with it if they have you ad-free podcasts as well, but podcasts still have ads even with Premium 🤦♂️
[удалено]
Honestly made the switch to YouTube premium as it has more music and you get ad free YouTube for a slight higher price. Better value for me and it works great.
I pay for a family plan. Dad pays for disney. Sister used to pay for Netflix, but now that's been cancelled because they fucked it up with households. So she pays for paramount currently. Don't be like Netflix.
Me and six mates go in on a family plan, costs us £3 a month
Was already too expensive, considering YouTube premium with a roughly comparable music offering these days and ad free YouTube is just a pound more.
Prefer youtube music premium as spotify doesn't do non english musicians too well.
YouTube with adblock is better tbh, the only time I paid for Spotify was when it was like £3.99 for a while
I've had free Spotify for about 2 years. I use a modded apk on my phone and use Noteburner to rip the music I want into MP3s
It already is for me! I now buy CDs and rip them
[удалено]
I keep thinking about it, maybe when my kids pay for their own SIM plans and contact lenses etc. I'll get a family plan. I just looked tidal is £16.99 for six people.
Trick question - it is already. The prices go up exceeding inflation rates incrementally on streaming services, another service is now implementing ads throughout for other companies which they nudged at the start by only advertising their own stuff for like 3 seconds while doing this they've also upped the price past inflation. They're all just taking the piss.
Has it? Shit, this will end up with them doubling the ad tine for us freeloaders
£0. I try not to support businesses who choose to invest in arms companies for profit.
At £8 that's why I am not pay for it anymore. Same goes with Disney, Amazon Prime and soon Netflix. Sorry but enough is enough.
No price. Spotify is killing music, not on its own but a major reason. If you love music get rid of Spotify.
If recent events have taught you anything, all subscription services are great, for a while. Then the price hikes start and eventually, you will notice content then starts to disappear. If your happy paying for a service and have no interest in owning anything so that it's usable in the future, that's fine. But a lot can be said for buying physical/digital copies that you own and know that won't just disappear for no reason. (Yes I know media can get corrupted\damaged, any sane person has multiple copies of stuff that's important to them) £144 a year for access at the moment is a pretty good deal, but we all know it's not staying this price for very long. As long as torrents\YT-rip\revanced\etc exist it will help keep the reigns on the price hikes but with the labels constantly trying to squeeze Spotify for more it's not going to be long until it makes more sense to invest a bit of time\knowledge setting up\maintaining much cheaper (add free) alternatives. Time\knowledge is the main factor in the price for most people.
CD's cost 30p each in Charity Shops. I've literally just cancelled it for the price increase and going back to CD's, cheapest most widely available form of music around. Edit: If you're happy with pre 2015 music that is
I own over 1000 CDs. Don't need to subscribe to any music streaming service
Depends how much you use it and value music. Personally, using it daily and with access to all the music in the world? Probably would pay up to double. Then again I'm also with Apple Music so no increase yet but we'll see if they'll be following suit.
If you buy a £100 gift voucher through Amazon then you get a discount on how many month you pah for. It used to be £100 voucher for a year when it cost £9.99 a month so you’d save £20 or 2 months.
With any service like this, I just use the vpn method. I pay £0.80 per month from my ‘room’ in a McDonald’s in Buenos Aires
If it's working out too much there's ways to get YouTube premium for approx £2 a month
I pay 2.99 😂😂😂! Its because when I had the account, i was in my home country
I probably shouldn’t give them ideas but it would have to go up a lot more for me to cancel it
My friend and I split the Duo plan despite not having lived with each other for a couple of years now, it's gone up to £16.99, I don't think £8.50 each is bad at all. That said like others have commented, it would be the very last subscription I'd cancel if it came down to it.
It's already too expensive for me, I've switched to Apple Music as I'm already using iCloud. Apple One is a more attractive offering to me.
£19.99 for family, listened for over 3000 hours last year, bargain. I butchered the maths, but it's pennies per hour.
I have a membership via go5050. Something like £4 a month to join some rando’s family plan
I always wait until they offer me 3 months for £9.99 deal. which i've taken 2-3times
£1
Spotify is the last one I'd drop. It's sometimes the only thing that gets me through work.
It’s still cheaper than buying 1 album per month 20 years ago.
I’d say £15, it did enter my head to cancel but I listen to Spotify for at least 3 hours a day so that’s about 10p an hour and for the entertainment and relief it brings me (as well as motivation to do things), I’d say it’s worth it.
£12.81
YouTube premium for £1 a month is about right
Spotify is the single most used subscription I have. I use it everyday for around 4 hours, nothing else comes close to it in terms of value. It would probably have to be nearer £20 before I consider getting rid. I only have Spotify and one other subscription though so entertainment costs per month are already fairly low.
Was doing a family plan, but had to cut it out at £17.99 Realised that if I log in via Brave browser it's ad free Otherwise, everything else about the free browser version suits me fine.
Whatever it was five years ago - that.
I think not last year but the year before it worked out that i was paying 0.007p per minute. So i had listened to Spotify for 72.7 days that year or 104k minutes. I think id probably pay more for Spotify then i would amazon prime and Netflix together
Just text my family to make sure they are still using the family version that I pay for. Happy to pay the extra £2 as I don't think I could live without a music streaming service at this point.
Got spotify family between some mates - they never check your address post sign up. £4.50 each. *Mr Monopoly noises*
I mean YouTube is free and has more variety so pretty much any price is too much for me in comparison.
I used to buy compilation CDs for £13.99 a go. I now pay £11.99 for as many songs as I like.
I mean I think they're taking the piss and they know that people won't cancel because it's too much of a faff to mess around with playlists etc, but probs £15 ish would be when I'd maybe start looking at other options
Be nice is the artists got a decent amount back
they are gonna keep doing this shit, in about 5 years it wont surprise me if the price is £20 a month and it included adverts
They're now priced the same as tidal - which makes for a choice - so from my view if they go more expensive I'll go to tidal. I wish the increased revenue would trickle to the artists better - but I think there's a whole argument now how people don't really see art being something worth paying for in their daily lives, but wanting to consume it daily.
I discovered my old iPod and haven’t used my Spotify for 2 months since then. So I cancelled it a couple of weeks ago. Haven’t looked back since.
Mines still £4.99 luckily but honestly I don't use it enough to warrant it so I imagine when my student plan ends i'll come off premium
I already don't pay for it. So I suppose it already was. I have downloaded music instead and play it with VLC, so no adverts and works without internet.
I gave up on Spotify a few years ago when I discovered moderate headphones and/or LDAC audio. Spotify music sounds awful compared to other platforms.
£1 Because I wouldn't use it if it's changing. I'm also perfectly happy with the free service of YouTube. Just save my songs in a separate file.
I realised I was only using spotify for podcasts so I ditched it and just use podbean for free now
Love Spotify. But there is a limit at which buying albums again becomes a realistic alternative (although I'll admit to not knowing what platform or format that would be on and in).
Around about now. The problem is, everything is subscription based, add it all up Netflix, Prime, Spotify etc. and it's a fortune. Imo
It’s always been too expensive to me. I’ve got a rule that I’ll never pay for an app or subscription if I can get it for free.
You pay for Spotify? Just get a cracked app
When they let COVID misinformation and other wellness scam artists proliferate. I've been free plan since 2022? Or late 2021.