Spotify Hides Song Lyrics Behind Paywall (androidpolice.com) 43
Several users on Reddit have noticed that Spotify has started hiding song lyrics behind a paywall. "This means you won't be able to sing along unless you know the lyrics already, or are willing to look them up in another app," reports Android Police. From the report: Still, you lose the convenience of real-time sync with the track and automatic scrolling. Like skips per hour, it appears Spotify will implement a limit system and accessing lyrics will count against the user's limit, which should ideally reset after a stipulated time.
Spotify usually requests lyrics from songwriters, publishers, and independent artists. However, in most other cases, the company has a working relationship with MusixMatch to provide lyrics, and perhaps Spotify isn't willing to absorb the costs of this partnership. That would explain why lyrics are now paywalled, but as a free-tier user, such changes are chipping away at the service's appeal.
Spotify usually requests lyrics from songwriters, publishers, and independent artists. However, in most other cases, the company has a working relationship with MusixMatch to provide lyrics, and perhaps Spotify isn't willing to absorb the costs of this partnership. That would explain why lyrics are now paywalled, but as a free-tier user, such changes are chipping away at the service's appeal.
Just in time for Amarok 3.0 (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder if its lyrics plugin works, will try. Like Spotify, but from your local collection.
https://blogs.kde.org/2024/04/... [kde.org]
For those not liking the slightly weird look, there's clementine, forked to strawberry. https://www.strawberrymusicpla... [strawberry...player.org]
Go local again.
Pay or move on (Score:5, Insightful)
Pay for the service, or move on to something else. Whining over a free service not giving you what you want is dumb.
The days of FREE! to build subscriber numbers are past. Companies want paying subscribers and actual income, not just subscribers to sell investors on the idea that someday, maybe, they can turn a profit.
Re: Pay or move on (Score:4, Informative)
All the music, ever, in the world, instantly, on any device, with no limit.
"I can't believe they expect us to PAY for this!"
smh
Re: Pay or move on (Score:5, Insightful)
I used to have a app that turned the screen off automatically when I was driving. I had car mode off. Now car mode is on and I cant turn it back off unless I setup car thing. FUCK THAT!.
I want them to leave my setting alone and let me use it the way I want to.
That is why I am starting to consider sailing the seven seas for music again.
Not to mention its not all of the music. Several albums I like are no longer available since spotify likes craptastic live albums and compilation albums that just have a few songs. I can see where I used to have the whole thing since they let you see what they removed.
They do this because its cheaper. Never mind they had more but now have less
So please, continue to sarcastically mock us about paying for it when we are paying more and getting less.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
That's really sad. Have you considered therapy?
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> I want them to leave my setting alone and let me use it the way I want to.
You're not a user, you're a used.
https://english.stackexchange.... [stackexchange.com]
It all comes back to the story of a guy getting a laser printer, and not being able to make it notify that it was jammed...
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> I'm paying for it.
You'll stop when you get less value from it than the fee is worth.
It sounds like they're lazily destroying their value proposition but Subjective Value Theory says that set point will be different than everybody else.
It's still stupid of them to remove features for paying customers. Probably they are losing devs or hiring unqualified people for non-merit reasons. Their shareholders should be pissed.
FWIW when I was a teen I probably spent $100 a months (in 2024 dollars) on music so I c
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That is why I am starting to consider sailing the seven seas for music again.
Because one of the several music services out there is making minor changes to your features you instantly revert to piracy? I'm guessing you are actually *wanting* to go down the pirate route and are simply looking for any excuse to justify it.
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All the music, ever, in the world, instantly, on any device, with no limit.
"I can't believe they expect us to PAY for this!"
smh
Spotify's free tier has ads, just like radio; so they are getting paid for free users and the more they have the more ad revenue potential.
Spotify wants you to pay but whines when they have to pay Apple to be on the App Store; at least Spotify pays artists well.
(For the sarcasm impaired the text after the semi colon is sarcasm.)
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Spotify's free tier has ads, just like radio; so they are getting paid for free users and the more they have the more ad revenue potential.
Yes and no. It's very well known that Spotify's ads don't even remotely cover the cost of licensing material for users. Heck even with ads + premium subscriptions Spotify has been completely unprofitable nearly every quarter of its existence, and still has been unprofitable every year of its existence.
Ads is not a viable business model for them, it exists as a trial to push people to premium subscriptions.
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Spotify's free tier has ads, just like radio; so they are getting paid for free users and the more they have the more ad revenue potential.
Yes and no. It's very well known that Spotify's ads don't even remotely cover the cost of licensing material for users. Heck even with ads + premium subscriptions Spotify has been completely unprofitable nearly every quarter of its existence, and still has been unprofitable every year of its existence.
Ads is not a viable business model for them, it exists as a trial to push people to premium subscriptions.
I agree, and that is the crux of their problem. Spotify free is good enough for most users, especially hen it is used like the old radio model for casual listening or when traveling. Spotify has the advantage of tailoring music to one's tastes,and not having to move up and down the die while traveling; so a few ads in exchange for what is essentially a customized radio experience means there is no compelling reason to upgrade.
Spotify's problem is, if they make the free experience so bad that upgrading is
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All the music, ever, in the world,
Not quite, not even close. More accurate would be "All the music your particular algorithmically defined demographic can be reasonably expected to know about"
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Pay for the service, or move on to something else. Whining over a free service not giving you what you want is dumb.
The days of FREE! to build subscriber numbers are past. Companies want paying subscribers and actual income, not just subscribers to sell investors on the idea that someday, maybe, they can turn a profit.
I have more karma than you have accounts with mod points, buddy...
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Companies want paying subscribers and actual income, not just subscribers to sell investors on the idea that someday, maybe, they can turn a profit.
(Translation) Spoiled investors sucking down premium no-percent loans for years, suddenly found themselves being served Banking whine at 5% instead. Suddenly they remembered profit still matters because math doesn’t give a shit about feelings.
just do like i do (Score:2)
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'Scuse me while I kiss this guy [kissthisguy.com]!
Re: just do like i do (Score:2)
commentsubject (Score:1)
welcome to computers, September, you control them or they control you
ha ha just kidding, by the label you're already implicitly helpless at the wheel, enjoy renting everything and digitally asking Mother May I with every device and feature you "buy"
free tier user (Score:2)
As a free tier user ..you have lost your appeal for Spotify. You are the product...the consumers/clients are the billionaires of the world.
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Usually the purpose of the free tier is to make the site popular enough to be attractive to the paid tiers. I'm not sure how that would work with Spotify though. Who the hell cares what other Spotify users are listing to?
Damn! (Score:2)
"Louie Louie" denied.
Re: (Score:2)
Get her way down low
why pay spotify? (Score:1)
Youtube has all the songs anyway, with videos.
What's the appeal of spotify?
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Re: why pay spotify? (Score:1)
Oh no! (Score:3)
It's like those horrific days in the distant past when music was unusable and pointless.
You know... radio.
What savages we were. Certainly we were incapable of singing along unless somebody published the words in the newspaper.
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It's like those horrific days in the distant past when music was unusable and pointless.
You know... radio.
What savages we were. Certainly we were incapable of singing along unless somebody published the words in the newspaper.
Singing along to what? Today’s lyrical mumbling makes Pearl Jam sound like James Earl Jones.
You know it’s bad when Closed Captioning translation is now a recognized form of comedy entertainment.
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"Today’s lyrical mumbling makes Pearl Jam sound like James Earl Jones."
Okay, now that's a quotable quote, right there. Filing it away.
Also loading up, "Smells Like Nirvana" to revisit a classic.
Dumb (Score:2)
Embedding the lyrics into the file should just be a standard part of any mastering process. But, nooooo, let's instead create of a bunch of useless jobs and make it all purposefully inefficient.
Enshittification is the new way of things (Score:1)
Well, it was the old way of things too, but it's even more so now.
Not your mp3s, not your music. Buy a flash drive or a hard drive and keep them local.
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I don't mind wasting some space on my cell phone for music, and I've got flash drives for the car. I love the drives. They're dirt cheap, so I've set a few up with genres like "Easy Listening" and "Rock" as well as just full-on random. I generally use 320kbps, even though it's overkill. Why not? I don't have to be efficient. Also, I think the artists make out better when I dump the contents of CDs I've bought onto a "car drive". Spotify screws the people who make the music.
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Either way the artists usually get fucked. They get roughly dick from album sales too.
If you want them to get money, download their music, then go see them in concert. If you can find a show at a venue where Ticketmaster isn't eating it all, that is.
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As much as I hate enshittification I'm taking their side on this. Spotify is a business that has never reported a yearly net profit. This is less "enshittification" and more "entitlement de-escalation". Tell me, how much were you paying for your free lyric service on your free tier to a company losing money providing you this service?
Spotify (Score:2)
was crap from the git-go. I still have no idea why anyone uses is, never mind pay for it.
It's Apple Music's fault! (Score:2)
Anytime Spotify loses customers, it's the fault of Apple and Apple Music stealing customers away from Spotify.
Spotify can only be the #1 streaming music service. Any loss is due to Apple. There is nothing Spotify can do that causes it to lose customers without it being Apple's fault. Don't implement a feature user wants? Apple's fault.
tortured souls (Score:3)
Wait... wait... (Score:2)
Entitlement (Score:2)
Wait... people expect a service for free, then go moaning and complaining part of that service is put behind a "paywall"?!
YOU DID NOT PAY FOR IT IN THE FIRST PLACE.
They must get their money from somewhere. In the case of Spotify, it's injecting ads between songs and withholding services they consider premium. Guess what, THEY'RE TOTALLY IN THEIR RIGHT TO DO SO. They must get their income from somewhere, you know. They probably sell what you've listened to in the past eternity to the highest bidder as well.
first world problem (Score:2)
"know the lyrics already" ?!?! Ayfkm? Knowing things is for losers.
Who in their right mind is willing to look up something? ON ANOTHER WEBSITE?! WTF?
Also, what's a "website?".. isn't there and app for that?
Imagine "memorizing" lyrics!! OMG. That is work. Why would I do that if the app will remember for me? Makes sense, doesn't it?
(apologies to the person above who said they actually knew the lyrics)
Social media uses operant conditi
What's worse (Score:2)
Just remember - (Score:2)