I can’t tell if you’re being serious or not but they gave Joe Rogan a platform and pay him a lot of money for it. Probably other stuff too if they support that.
He’s the male Gwyneth Paltrow selling brain pills instead of Goop. He promotes alt-right and far-right conspiracies. He told people not to get the COVID vaccine. If he just interviewed people – even people from all sides – I’d be fine with it. Problem is he promotes dangerous conspiracies and usually ignores fact checking. He’s using his influence and authority to do harm. And worst of all, I think he just does it for the ratings.
Out of all the things that Spotify is shitty for that’s the least of my worries about them, and I fucking hate right-wing shitheads. People would rather see the artists they love starve if it gave them convenience to enjoy their art without actually paying for what they do.
It’s honestly kind of baffling to see people go up in arms enough to side with fucking Disney “in support of artists” because AI is supposedly stealing from them and the same people go on with their lives and put on Spotify and feel self-righteous. People fucking suck.
and the same people go on with their lives and put on Spotify and feel self-righteous
Yeah but consider that for me for example, I was previously giving exactly 0 to artists. Now I give whatever tiny amount my odd song played here or there pays out. Which is more than previously.
Is it a lot? No. Do I listen to a lot of music? Hell no. Did I buy any music before as a result? Fuck no. And now I sometimes listen to some. Plus the music I listen to I couldn’t buy in physical anyways (low-fi or synth background noise while coding), and wouldn’t know where to buy digital even if I wanted to. Previously I just used a noise generator, btw.
It’s probably not a good idea to assume that 100% of listeners on spotify would have invested that same amount of money into physical sales.
I have a car thing, I use it at my desk for media controls. It is pretty great.
But the product description was pretty clear that you needed premium to use it. The same goes for using any third party Spotify client. Shouldn’t have expected otherwise.
Public companies obviously intentionally want to make everything as shitty as possible, just to extract money, but lets accept the hypothetical that subscriptions will actually be banned. Wouldn’t that be great?
You would basically be treated the same as Tier 1-3 ISP’s, pay for the cost of the routing to the company. That phone plan that costs ?? €/$ a month becomes “Pay as you use it”. Flat fee per gigabyte / message etc. These plans were at least here in Finland, and I think my phone bills were around 4-5 EUR a month and a cap that you cannot exceed that month, though smartphones and data plans weren’t a thing. Now everything is a subscription.
Now back to hardware vs software. You obviously pay for the software also when buying the hardware, but for whatever reason the user doesn’t own any kind of rights around it. This has obviously become much worse the past few years (TV’s have ads etc). I really don’t think that the issue is anything you listed, the issue is that greedy companies want to use the subscription model rather than play fair. Phones and modems are EOL at best in a year. I have a PFSense router that cost me less than a router from my ISP used and it’s EOL and security is something I don’t have to worry about.
Modems and routers have most of their features dedicated to home networking and are not usually made by the ISP. Them connecting to the internet is one of the smallest features they have. The other features are related to offline networking and tight security, you can actually just plug an ethernet cable to the wall and get connection from your ISP. Same as using a modem and putting it in “bridge mode”, which will completely bypass the features of the modem/router.
The issue here is that the companies don’t want to provide value, they just want to extract as much money as possible, which is wrong. Laws and regulations are desperately needed and even something as radical as banning subscription services for user devices would be a net positive. Renting Tier 1-3 operator infrastructure for your router/modem to work is completely different than “You have the device and the software, but we block you from using it, since you don’t pay”, which in my opinion is ransomware, not subscriptions.
For right to repair and owning these devices, I completely agree with you.
So what use is a consumer modem without an internet service?
You can still use it to network with other computers over the telephone network. Heck you don’t even need to do that via the actual telephone service you can just run some wire.
But I think what was actually meant by OP is “tied to a specific subscription service” as well as “disables features that don’t need a subscription service when you aren’t subscribed”.
Phones, arguably, don’t perform their primary function without cell services.
You can use them as e.g. smart home remote. The cellular modem is going to go unused (at least apart from emergency services) but that’s only a small portion of the hardware, and modems were only ever locked to subscriptions (at least over here) if the phone is subsidised by that subscription. I don’t think they even do that any more, they replaced it with minimum contract durations. In any case even back in the days you could unlock it after some time or coughing up some money.
that’s why I think it should be root-able, serviceable, and speak in standard open protocols
Yep I wish rootability was included in the new EU regulations, it would solve so many issues at once. OTOH: It would solve the issue for people who are tech savvy enough to do such things, gotta be careful with our own elitism there. Enjoying consumer rights should not hinge on being a grease monkey.
Every single modem and cell phone I’ve ever owned have worked without a subscription to anything. My internet and ability to make cell calls were limited after my subscription ended, but the devices themselves were easily repurposed to other uses.
You misunderstand. I have no knowledge about how smart you are. You could easily be smarter than me. What im saying is you need to reassess your tone and delivery, because it, and your edit only shows me and others that you are arrogant and therefore unable to properly assess other points of view.
Address the possibility that i have a point on your own time, after your ego-required final comment to me. Whether you will address youself or remain as you are, it’s completely up to you.
But the point is that the description of the product clearly stated it needs a subscription to function. You literally buy it with that understanding. If you didn’t read the description then it’s 100% on you.
Whether it should be legal or not, or whether it’s ethical or not, is a different discussion. But the product wasn’t disingenuous about how it works, so complaining about how it works exactly as advertised is a bit silly.
Look out! Communists are coming for your toothbrush. Better vote for harsher penalties for modifying stuff you bought. The DMCA still allows throwing away or disconnecting the computer locking you out of your heated seats.
Seriously, what does this do that a phone doesn’t? Am I missing something? Even early Android/iOS devices could run Spotify in their time (although not always anymore). What does this do?
Whenever I’m driving, my phone is almost permanently mounted as a GPS. I also own the car thingy, it has very intuitive hardware buttons and a dial on top of being touch screen. This way I can leave my phone on the GPS screen and adjust Spotify controls on the car thingy without taking attention of the road.
The only real shitty thing I would argue is that you NEED Spotify premium not just to control your Spotify, but also to control youtube/mp3 player/ any other media that you would want to play through your phone.
This is not true but basically true. Those who subscribed to the early access mailing list were able to purchase it for $25 instead of the $50 MSRP. I bought one when they first came out and I absolutely love it. I can definitely see OP’s frustration from it not working unless you have premium, that’s pretty bullshit.
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