Why YSK: Spotify forces you either to pay, listen to ads or to find unofficial, potentially dangerous versions to use it. It’s better to find a free alternative, both for your wallet and for your peace of mind.
Introducing: ViMusic
Downloads: https://github.com/vfsfitvnm/ViMusic
- Free and open source
- No ads/trackers
- Song lyrics
- Music from both YouTube Music and YouTube
- Weights 2MB or so
- Beautiful UI and amazing UX
Cons: no high kbps streaming support
DO NOT TRY TO DOWNLOAD THE APP FROM ANY SOURCE OTHER THAN THE ONES LISTED IN THEIR GITHUB PAGE. They are malware.
Cool to find a Spotify dev here. I agree with your points, and I’m a happy customer. I will happily support Spotify over the likes of Google and Apple, one of the few market dominant tech companies that hasn’t been swallowed up by one of the big 5. Not sure how they could be considered a monopoly, it’s not like there are songs out there exclusive to Spotify (thank god).
As far as I can tell there is only one big downside to Spotify, and I’m really sorry but I have to use this opportunity to ask, why on earth does it still not support 2FA??
2FA and ad free links for podcasts. I already pay for an ad free experience on Spotify, and sometimes I’ll pay to support someone on Patreon, but I can’t use their link to even just remove the ads the podcast itself issues. I’m not sure where the ads come from every time but it feels like I’m being had.
But ad free music is worth the price, which I was buying before they even hosted pods so it’s hard to complain too much.
I love Spotify and am not considering ditching it, but I also wish it supported higher fidelity playback like Tidal, or even higher bitrate like Apple Music
I’d also add that I wish Spotify paid the musicians better. Even relative to other platforms Spotify is pretty bad about that. Of course if you want to support the musician it’s always better to buy merch and music and stuff directly from them, but that isn’t really an excuse for streaming platforms to pay them so poorly. And I’m not suggesting that Spotify should just give the musician everything of course. They should get their cut too. But perhaps something even slightly more reasonable would be appreciated.
I like Bandcamp because of this, and their app has really improved over the last year with the addition of ques and playlists.