I quit Spotify when they signed Rogan, but I remember its early days fondly - it used to have a free and open API. You could get visualisers, lyrics, BPM analysers for DJs, Last.fm integration… what a prime example of rampant enshittification.
this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2026
463 points (98.1% liked)
Fuck AI
8680 readers
989 users here now
"We did it, Patrick! We made a technological breakthrough!"
A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.
AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.
Rules:
- Relevant posts only.
- No bigotry.
- No misinformation.
- No NSFW/NSFL content without being labeled NSFW or being in an appropriately-labeled spoiler tag.
- This isn't a place to talk about the cons and (supposed) pros of AI for different use cases. This is /c/fuck_ai .
- Especially no AI advocacy.
- No AI-generated content. If you want to post examples of AI failing hillariously, there are other communities for that like !ArtificialIgnorance@lemmy.ca .
- Venting is part of the purpose of this community, but don't aim frustration or accusations at other users.
- These rules are a living document that may change in the future.
You can help the mod team by making your reports detailed.
Effective reports:
- "The third image is a well-known anti-semitic trope"
- "Claiming that 'agentic AI' can outperform humans at all jobs is misinformation"
Less effective reports:
- "Breaks rules"
- "Misinformation"
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
The moment they do that, I'm bailing.
I've seen the writing on the wall for a long time, even if not this outcome exactly, that Spotify will only keep tightening its profit driven screws whilst loosening paying customers QOL experience.
Therefore, I've been slowly building up a vinyl collection over the past 15 months or so.
By the time this deadline comes around, I'll have more than enough physical media to give a shit about what Spotify's doing anymore.
I've also got a reasonably extensive library of flac/VBR .mp3's.
The only reason I'm subscribed, is to to find new artists/bands that I like. Then I purchase physical media of their work.
Due to a lot of them being internationally based, I rarely purchase through bandcamp, because their shipping costs internationally are ridiculous.
Me looking at this information with my 1500+ files music collection and my media player: "Spotify? What's a Spotify?"
Incredible they got this far with that shitty app.
Exactly. I'm using a fork, which is AI-generated, but still way better and lighter than the original client: https://spotifast.rocks/
They need to make this provider agnostic somehow. That would be amazing.
Cackles maniacally in Plex lifetime pass and self hosting
I didn't get it. Imagine the sales pitch here.
"Yeah we are going to make your subscription more expensive, but you'll get more slop in return!"
Why?!
Because execs have no clue what users want and live in a parallel world in which people want what execs wish people wanted.
Then they'll be baffled by the low take on their offer and their next step will be to force-enroll existing users on a free trial that won't stop by itself, hoping some of them will just let it run and get milked.
The article lays it out pretty clearly on why if you read it.
It is unclear how these AI-generated songs will affect the royalties Spotify pays to artists. The company is reportedly already negotiating with record labels, but how high or low the payments to artists will ultimately be is not yet known. Spotify is also reportedly struggling to persuade some artists to agree to the use of their music by AI. According to an analyst quoted by the Financial Times, around 8 percent of all Spotify subscribers could be paying this surcharge for AI-generated songs by the end of 2028.
Money, it's always money. That's roughly 25 million subscribers that would be predicted to sign up for AI slop at 5 bucks a month. Combine that with what I'm sure would be looking to pay the artists a lot less and only having to pay for computing resources instead of people, that's still a fuck ton of money for them.
They have to. This is actually good news. It shows they are losing revenue and are desperate. If you still use Spotify that's on you.
"Ai efficiencies will be passed on to the customer!"
Remember this next time billionaires say they'll happily pay onto UBI or whatever.
Because a lot of people don’t care or even like this stuff.
So they will pay more for it, right? Right?
Why would you pay for AI generated music, surely that has less value to people?
Like I don't even totally hate the existence of AI generated music. But it isn't worth anything to me. I can prompt it in seconds. If I wanted some kind of background music generator it would work for that, but I don't see how that is worth any non zero amount of money.
/me waiting for the additional charge on top of that they’ll offer in exchange to flick a “no AI” switch.
There's people willing to pay an extra to listen a butchered automatic cover of a song where Spotify probably doesn't even pay royalties on that?
I thought the market would prefer the opposite: pay extra for a noslop guarantee, with a full monthlysubscription refund if a slop is accidentally inserted in a playlist
Exactly, I would have thought you might have some AI only free/cheaper tier. At least that kinda makes sense as a use case, not that I could see myself ever paying for it
load more comments
(1 replies)
This would get me onto Qobuz at least.
Welcome to the club, there are dozens of us in here already! The water is warm and the sausages are mostly coocked through
Time to violate their ToS again and download my Spotify library to my hard drive outside their app. Might switch to Qobuz permanently this time.
That is just awful and I would never, ever do that to a poor corporation. In fact, I would love if you could share the steps to do this so that I can avoid accidentally downloading my Spotify library to my own hard drive outside their app.
Well, if some sort of evil pirate were to dare to do such a thing, they could use a piece of software called AudiCable to do so. Spotify will know if such a person were to do it, so if this evildoer didn't want to be caught, they might want to download their Spotify library and save it within the app first, then turn off their internet connection and use AudiCable, then perhaps uninstall Spotify so it can't phone home and report the ToS violation.
Yaharrr 🏴☠️
Looks like I'll have to not use Spotify even harder
I don’t get it. I downloaded music on napster, then added kazaa files, then limewire files, then megavideo stuff along with youtube rips, and now i just download a song when I like it. Why did everyone else get these subscriptions? Dont you need internet to hear music? You dont own any of it..
because for some time spotify was cheap, easy and useful so people were happy to pay
it's fast become less of each of these and relies more on playlist lockin
"Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem."
When they first came onto the scene, streaming services offered a fairly cheap and convenient way for people to listen to whatever music they want whenever they want. Prior to this music piracy was widespread because the alternative was paying $10 at tower records for each album or, a little later, $1 per song on iTunes. People didn't pirate music because they cared about owning a copy for themselves, they just didn't want to deal with the expensive and inconvenient alternatives.
Rising subscription costs, increased AI slop, etc may usher in a new Renaissance of music piracy similar to what we're seeing with TV/Movies.
And also, it takes ages to skip between songs, because I have to wait for the stream to load. On my local music player, I can flick between them almost instantly until I hear one I like. And shuffle doesn't repeat the same 20 songs, apparently YouTube Music and Spotify cannot implement proper shuffle, it's too intense of an engineering task.
load more comments
(3 replies)
Spotify already sucks and is crammed full of ads. I mean Pandora may be mid but my ad-free tear remains ad-free. I miss when they were the Music Genome Project though.
Anyone know of Spotify alternatives that have family plans? I have like 4 other people on my plan and I don't want them to get fucked over if I decide to switch. It's the one subscription that I cover in exchange for others paying for other subscriptions that we share.
Qobuz has a family plan, and it's cheaper than Spotify's, at least in Canada.
Lol, why would anyone pay for slop? I wouldn't accept this even if they paid me. I like my music exactly the way the artist made it, that's why he's an artist after all. Damn morons at Spotify...
Always surprised by music critics/industry types using their data as an indication of artist popularity. It has been generations since real music fans moved to a combination of piracy and directly supporting new artists with merch, vinyl and live shows. I suspect most spotify listeners aren't music fans. It is just something they have on as the background soundtrack to their bland consumerist lives.
Also buying on bandcamp. I'd never pirate music from an artist who I know is struggling to make the numbers work - I need them to keep making music.
load more comments
(1 replies)
One weird trick, install Soulseek.
It's one of the worst paid music services already. They need to change their ways or die off already.
I already switched to Symfonium which streams my digital music library. Not ideal for discovering new music but its been working for me!
Then I plan a 100% cancellation
view more: next ›