The songs you listen to when you are listening on random are often ads. Record companies will do “pay for placement” deals to get songs and artists they promote out there.
They used to call it payola when it was on the radio and it was illegal.
On mobile i’ve got an app that lets me play youtube videos with the screen locked so i use that as well.
It’s a bit annoying cause the app does have ads as well, but only when you open it. If you put a video on and close it (leaving it playing on the background), there’s no ads
My YouTube algorithm is just terrible. It will circle back the same 5-10 videos I have watched or liked some years ago, sprinkle in some rightwing political bullshit, or show only very tangentially related results.
Recent example: an underground artist popped into my head I used to listen to during my school days, and I wanted to go through their album for nostalgia.
Entering the artist and album name gives me two tracks from that album, a handful of other artists who have at some point collaborated, and the aforementioned unrelated or political results. Clicking through some of the videos always cycles back to the same few suggestions.
I even tried this on incognito mode to see if my login bricked the algorithm, but it was equally shitty. Apparently google can’t even get their own content indexed properly, not to mention actual web search.
bandcamp is pretty great. Granted, they are still a for-profit company; a popular community based solution would be nice. But they do let you download lossless file to self-host or just listen on device.
The only complain is the lack of classical music (not modern/contemporary classical) on there. But I would imagine most classical music is public domain by now. I just don’t know where to find them…
Edit: found it: www.classiccat.net or internet archive has a huge collection of classical music.
who is downvoting this? 😂 maybe they live in a poor country, or maybe they’re making an obscure joke. Why would people go past this comment and be like “nope, fuck this person”
This is gong to sound nuts, but subscriptions aren’t a problem for me, auto renewals are. I like to be in control of my finances, so whenever I sign up for something I pick a term I can live with, 1,3, 6 or 12 months, I pay, and I immediately go to the account management screen and cancel.
I don’t care if it’s inconvenient to have to think about it every so often, but I’m in control of the spending and to me that’s what matters.
Is paying via credit card with auto renewals the only payment method companies provide you? That’s pretty bad, I’d say.
Because, considering what you are having to do RN, it means that they can simply change a policy and next time you pay, you might find out the “account management screen and cancel” becomes unavailable.
There has to be a way to pay without having to give your credit card details… e.g. The payment gateway sends a request to your bank; your bank asks you for confirmation for one time payment; you confirm payment; the bank sends acceptance to request; payment gateway captures it and gives you your bill.
See, game pass I’m cool with because it’s an up-front transparent deal that you are buying time to access this library, and the library also changes. There is no pretense of “buying a copy” or whatever.
It’s nice for modern games anyway. For classic stuff that I want to have access to forever, I alreadty have access to that stuff forever. It might stink for the kids who are playing their “classics” right now, though.
Unfortunately, there isn’t really an exit plan. Buying the music outright is not worth it because of how many different artists I listen to so I will probably always be paying for Apple Music or Tidal.
It’s only 4 dollars more a month and I will have a real job to pay for it.
Tfw I paid for a subscription to access my textbook this semester.
Granted, it’s not just a textbook. My Spanish classes use VHL Central, which includes a textbook with videos, audio files, virtually endless practice assignments, and pretty much all of our assignments and course material.
It’s a really great tool, I guess I just wish I could keep access to it after I graduated. (I think you can purchase a textbook, but definitely not the full program.) Ah, well. ¯\(ツ)/¯
That kind of model is unfortunately common for university courses. I had it for my language courses, and a couple of the core maths courses.
The online platform justifies a subscription by providing additional resources, homework grading, etc. Fair enough, honestly, if they want to charge you $15 or something reasonable. But when textbook access gets rolled into the bundle, it tends to inflate the subscription cost and also have the convenient-for-the-publisher side effect of temporary access to the text. Lose-lose, from a student perspective.
I had a course that required we buy a license to Pearson’s service in order to submit homework. $100+ to view a pdf for a semester and submit homework through a buggy form interface. I still hold a grudge against everyone in the department for that decision.
With that model the company can afford to offer far more content than with a pay-once model. With a pay-once model they only generate enough income to be able to offer a book, and maybe a smattering of supplementary material. Go subscription-based however, revenue increases, so output increases and now they can afford to create and maintain a whole lot more while keeping the price affordable to those who need it during the period that they need it.
It’s a similar principle to renting vs buying. If they were to offer all of those materials as a one-off purchase at a price that would allow their business to be sustainable, it would cost more than most are able to afford.
If we go back to one-off purchases, we go back to getting less for life as opposed to a lot for a limited period of time. It’s a trade off, and clearly one that most people are willing to make.
People get so angry (OP) about the way things are just because they’re unhappy in general and looking for something to blame. Not all companies are fair with their subscription models, but most are. Not every company cares about their customers, but most do. Some companies are run by sociopaths, but most are run by normal, nice people.
As everyone else here, I think piracy is illegal and immoral. We should accept that we don’t own our services and software and we should never doubt that corporations have our best interest in mind.
Therefore you should never have a Plex server, never use protonmail, never use AdGuard Home, never use AdGuard DNS for private DNS.
Also you should never use Firefox with UBlock origin sponsorblock and consent o magic.
Lastly you should never ever use re-vanced and x-manager, and God forbid don’t use a VPN
I honestly just don’t use these services, and never recommend them, entirely because they are subscription-based.
As a model, it is largely focused on trapping the user who forgets to cancel. Many also use sneaky ways to avoid a user cancelling in time, and give no warnings.
The only sub I use is Spotify. I share it across my friends and family and like their vast catalog. They also don’t charge for their API so I can integrate it with Home Assistant.
My friends and family agree downloading songs manually sucks.
Piracy is a service issue. I have no problems with subscriptions as long as the price and service outpace piracy.
If the price gets to a point it doesn’t make sense, I go back to piracy.
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