Maybe it's just my age, but I never understood buying single songs. I listen to whole albums. They were crafted and assembled as a set. It feels like buying one scene of a movie, or one chapter of a book.
this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2026
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Sure but you can listen to whole albums on stuff like Spotify.
Some bands are truly one hit wonders though..
There are several albums I listen to as a complete work. But you can't tell me that albums with one good track and a bunch of detritus weren't a thing.
But why listen to just one song? It seems a waste to sit down, put on headphones or fire up the stereo, all for only a few minutes of music.
What makes you think it is just one song? In the 1980s it was a mix tape that took the good tracks from several albums. With computers it is a playlist. Or more often it is a play random tracks from my large collection until I hit stop.
I do listen to just one song once in a while when that is all I have time for, or when some song comes to mind that I want to hear. However mostly it is a playlist that I created.
There are a few albums that are related collection and work best listened together, but most are just a bunch of songs and you can listen in any order.
I was playing a role to try to make a point to the OP.
I guess that's certainly a thing to do. But not all albums are journeys, and thus, one buys individual tracks because the rest of it sucks.
I mean, I can just choose a track on my phone or computer, hit play and have music. I don't currently have a speaker setup.
That's no way to enjoy music. You can hardly hear anything on that tinny little phone speaker.
The computer speakers aren't terrible, and my earbuds acquit themselves decently when using my phone. Would I like some nice 8" speakers and a subwoofer? Sure. Not realistic in a van.
I was trying to be subtle, but that doesn't seeme to be working.
The point is, lots of people enjoy music lots of different ways, for lots of different reasons. Just because you don't use subscriptions doesn't mean they aren't valid and useful to anyone who isn't you.
In short: Don't gate keep
You're tying your access to music to a subscription. That feels wrong to me.
Why do your feelings about how others pay for things matter to anyone?
Why does it even matter to you?
You could argue it matters because spotify has impacted the music industry negatively as a whole. Why would I want people giving their money to a company like that to make the problem worse?
Regardless of whether I personally use the service or not, other people funding it contributes to the downfall of something I like just for a bit of convenience.
I wouldnt make the same argument for every other streaming service because they all have different levels of ethics they abide by but spotify.... no good ethics I can see.
Streaming isn't the problem. The lables screwing over the artists on their streaming cut is the problem. Stop supporting the lables.
Why are you taking personal offense that I said I didn't understand the behaviour of others? This is a petty hill to die on.
Look, people waste money on plenty of things, myself included. It just feels like being at the mercy of a company to listen to music is a poor choice.
Judgmental attitudes ar an accepted cancer of online discourse. And I try to point it out sometimes.
Are you not judging me without context?
Paradox of tolerance
Sometimes hypocrisy is necessary
OK. Listen to what you like, I'll listen to what I like, and we can go about our days.
There you go. Good on you
I'm not an asshole, just an opinionated prick.
So are we all
Music has changed. Its more about single tracks with shorter playtime now because of the algorithms calculating the payout for the artist.
Radio only plays a few dozen songs or only "classic" stuff, so I never get to hear new stuff. Having streaming audio was always my way to find new music. That said, Spotify has started doing the same, just playing the sponsored songs and the themes they have generally only play stuff I've heard a million times. Rarely "b-sides" or new stuff based on my actual interests.
I miss the days of the original Pandora service with its database of music elements, and it would go across genres to find things with similar elements and didn't have any influence from the recording industry sponsoring songs because they were actively destroying their own industry fighting to kill off streaming, instead. I found a bunch of new stuff I never would have heard otherwise. It totally changed my listening habits.
So with the streaming services consolidating and raising prices as a result, I likely won't stick with it anymore. My music library is too large to store locally on my phone and I like variety rather than making playlists. I'm thinking of setting up my own streaming server, but music discovery is still an issue I need to solve.
I've got nearly 2,000 tracks and a few dozen albums that take up 25GB on my phone. Too large to store locally suggests a lot of ballast you never listen to.
I'm sure that more money is going towards the artists /s
Welcome back to the land of yo-ho-ho, because these fuckers are overly greedy.
The Supreme Court said it’s cool to pirate for llms so there’s nothing wrong with it anyway!
You can only pirate with VC backing.
Ask Anna's archive
TIDALs continued awesomeness suggests suitable alternatives.
Spotify pays Joe Rogan how much? And pays artists how little?
TIDAL does music.
I changed a few years ago, and all I miss are the integrations.
I'm lucky that I have decent speakers & dac on my desktop, and decent IEMs. So I can listen to music where I want.
But I can't buy a "tidal speaker" in the way I could buy a "Spotify speaker".
But I'm arrogantly confident enough to waste some money solving this with home assistant, some rpi/nucs, and some speakers. I feel I don't need (I actually don't want a vendor locked in) "just works" solution, and I'm happy rolling my own.
Pandora is still $10
Welcome to inflation. If a price isn't going up regularly someone is getting ripped off.
When my boss gives me a raise I always compare that to the yearly inflation rate - it has more than once turned what looks good into a loss for me. (I might accept it once in a while, but I'm looking for new jobs soon if they don't fix)
I feel like the main thing these subscription services need to do is keep it chill. The fastest way to get me to question whether a service is worth it or not is if the monthly cost keeps being thrown in my face. Grandfather in old prices for a lot longer or something to keep people hooked longer. That's probably why I'll never be a C-level exec.
Spotify's been fine but it's just obnoxious at this point and THEY are pushing me to look elsewhere at this point.
Maybe it's just my age -- I presume you were born in 1987 -- but subscriptions are anathema to me. I rarely buy $10 in music in a given month, so there's no value there to me. Add in the AI tracks, and, well ... what would I be paying for?
Individual plans are a rip-off yeah, Spotify is one of the only services I subscribe to and that's because I have a family plan, so it's not so easy for me to just cancel it, when others are relying on it. It works out at €3.40/month ($3.95) per member. The value there is really good.
Spotify lets you just listen to anything, I can put a playlist on and it will keep going forever and I have discovered many tracks I would have never listened to, or even known they existed. Buying music is great, but only when you know exactly what you want, I'm not a big music person, I like listening to it, but I don't really have a dialled in taste. Spotify is great for that.
There will obviously be a tipping point though when they inevitably raise the price too far and I will abandon ship.
My millenial is showing with my username :D
We're at a spot where we've more or less switched off subscriptions with a few exceptions (some of which enable us to not have OTHER subscriptions in the first place). Spotify is in a weird place where our kids have a playlist of music they like and they're more or less the primary user of our Spotify playlist now. I've got all of my music self-hosted and my intention with this latest news is to try and bring the kids' music over too.
When I had stepkids, I very quickly turned to piracy for their shows to avoid the endless "I need this because I saw it in an ad" routine. They were allowed to watch TV all night, and each morning was "what demand are they going to have now?"
Streaming two days for about 2-3h in Symfonium:
And Spotify is with streaming some podcasts with video. For the whole month
You must be streaming flac or something from your server then?
over a whole month of playing music for roughly 8 hours a day i have 10gb of data from symfonium with 320kbps ogg transcoding.
Either that or you might have music cached on spotify but not using the cache on symfonium?
Yup, Flac streamed :p Some of it is cached but I listenend to new stuff.
And yes, Spotify is mostly cached. But I set the quality to high (audio) and middle (video) on cellular
I still have not been able to mostly import my library from spotify into Jellyfin so my main way of listening is still within Spotify but I have reached critical mass where I could do it.
Using a free listener supported radio app that is curated by human DJs has been how I’ve enjoyed music for years now. Examples are KEXP, The Current and Radio Paradise.