I opened Spotify this morning to be greeted by a modal popup with a “sponsored recommendation”.

Why am I seeing ads if I’m already paying for the premium plan!? 😑

  • rubikcuber@feddit.uk
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    1 year ago

    If you’re not paying you are the product. If you ARE paying you are STILL the product. This is how big tech works.

    • sebinspace@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Basically every computer hardware manufacturer is collecting telemetry and sending it home. If you’re using MacOS or Windows, your OS is doing it aswell

      • essteeyou@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Or Android, or iOS, or a Chromebook, or whatever other OS you’re using next year, if it isn’t some sort of Linux/UNIX system… and even some of those might not be great, but at least you can find out.

        • panCatE@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Tbh i have used linux on my home pc for years now and now they are very polished products , except most corporate apps are not there !

        • sebinspace@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I mean… Android and ChromeOS are Linux underneath. MacOS is… related to Unix. Hang on, I need to look up that lineage…

          Also Lineage.

          Edit: MacOS used/uses the Mach kernel, and uses code “derived from BSD”, vague as Wikipedia is. That could mean it’s a whole copy-paste or that it just borrows ideas from BSD.

          • panCatE@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            It has a history in the US anti trust (when the laws really worked)

          • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
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            1 year ago

            MacOS has userland tools from some FreeBSD version (quite obsolete, IIRC). Also there’s a port of bhyve called xhyve for MacOS. Its kernel I wouldn’t expect to have much in common with BSDs.

            • somedaysoon@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              I wouldn’t know about market share, but why would market share be a disqualifier to your statement? GrapheneOS and LineageOS are both massive projects with a lot of users. It should be mentioned for those that might be interested to know that they have an option for privacy. Not saying you were doing this, but I hate the defeatist attitude that everything tracks so why try? It’s wrong.

              I use LineageOS and Linux and FOSS apps/software and selfhost services… if it’s something you care about, you can regain control and privacy over your data.

    • NightOwl@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      You become the product with name, address, and payment details attached to the account for improved demographic data for them to collect. Win win.

    • jarfil@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      But you’re paying for the GOOD recommendations now, not the free bad ones… /s

    • Freesoftwareenjoyer@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      That’s not how big tech works, it’s how DRM works. It is possible to sell music/games/movies in an ethical way, without DRM.

  • QubaXR@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    In the immortal words of James Stephanie Sterling “corporations don’t just want some money. They want all of the money”

  • Eager Eagle@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    It seems you can turn it off by touching “what’s this?” or “learn more” the next time you see one of these.

    Really shitty that they don’t even put this as a setting though.

  • stephenc@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    You are always the product when you do not own physical or digital non-DRMed copies of your media.

    If you can’t reliably and repeatedly play your music in the middle of nowhere 50 miles away from any internet signal, you are the product. Download MP3s and take your music back.

    And people on the lemmy.world instance wonder why we fight for the right to talk about piracy.

  • grue@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The lesson is that corporations will take, take, take no matter what. They will never honor any kind of social contract, and will always abuse anyone and everyone for profit to the maximum extent they are able.

    So stop letting them take advantage of you.

    • HiramFromTheChi@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      And push for legislation that doesn’t allow em to do this in the first place.

      Cause it doesn’t make it right, but on some level it’s hard to blame them for pushing the limits, if there’s no resistance or repercussion. That’s how we ended up in this mess.

      Tech moves fast. Government moves slow. Most of these issues boil down to legislative failures.

      I go hard when it comes to this. Firefox + uBlock Origin, use open source alternatives, don’t communicate outside of Signal, 2FA on everything, you name it. And it’s exhausting at times, not gonna lie. But my effort reinforces my sentiment that it shouldn’t fall to the consumer to put in all this effort just to have some a basic, healthy blend of convenience, privacy, and security.

  • lapingvino@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    That is literally what non-Open Source/capitalism is like:

    • You don’t pay, you are the product
    • You pay, you are the product and you pay for it
  • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Might I add, I hate the way every user-facing UI has devolved into the Youtube Shorts / TikTok “doomscrolling” swipe-UI now. There seems to be absolutely not a single braincell left in UI development to even consider the actual use case of the interface.

    It’s all just:

    1. Monkey see UI to build.
    2. Moneky see TikTok big.
    3. Monkey do.
  • vivadanang@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    no, you pay spotify so they can give Joe Rogan money to make up bullshit every day.

  • cygnosis@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Enshittification in action.

    “Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.”

    Facebook, TikTok, Amazon, it’s everywhere. Once a platform has lock-in from users it turns its attention to vendors. Then once they’re locked in it rakes in the profits until nobody can tolerate it any more and something else takes its place.

  • Ann Archy@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    What I really love about commercials is that if I click on them and order a life time subscription of whatever product they’re selling, I’m still gonna get the same commercials.

    • Misconduct@startrek.website
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      1 year ago

      Or even worse you’ll get more. It applies to everything too. I got a vacuum a while ago and Amazon keeps recommending more. Who tf is out there buying multiple vacuums? Why does Amazon think that someone who spent $50 on a shop vac is now in the market for a $700 Dyson? For stealing so much of our data they sure are shit at advertising… Which is supposed to be the whole excuse for collecting data in the first place lmao

      • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Why does Amazon think that someone who spent $50 on a shop vac is now in the market for a $700 Dyson?

        Because their “algorithms” suck. Their “ML/AI” recommendation engine garbage sucks ass. I have no idea why publications or companies think this is in any way a better form of advertising than just…recommending things related to what you’re watching / reading / listening to…but hey…I guess it at least allows them to spy on everything you ever do anywhere on the Internet and then try to join that up to what you do in real life through phone data, so the ends justify the means I guess.

        EDIT: In addition to it sucking, it’s largely irrelevant and likely prevents some sales from occurring. If I’m listening to a lot of a certain rock band…I’d likely want to know if they’re touring and may be unaware of that fact…but nah, gotta push people to buy another vacuum or whatever instead.

  • theywilleatthestars@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    People defend intrusive advertising by appealing to some sort of social contract (ie you suffer through these things in order to get Spotify or whatever for free) but it’s not a social contract if the platform holds all the cards

    • Kinglink@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Are we getting Spotify for free, if we’re buying premium?

      The problem is you can’t “buy” products any more. Companies see that as interest, and then start to throw additional advertising to see how much they can get away with. Fuck that shit.

      They’ve also run almost any way to do it outside of their ecosystems. If I want to listen to happy hardcore music, I have to hope spotify has it, but it’s rare to find that on most playlists, I’d have to go spend thousands of dollars for the same experience that Spotify offers, and that’s to own every track I’m even curious about.

  • Loom In Essence@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Spotify is garbage. You pay them to basically pirate unlimited music (they pay table scraps). They have no values or integrity, but they do have a greedy business model.

    I buy albums off bandcamp instead. Or from the artist’s site directly.

        • Freesoftwareenjoyer@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Wow, you are right! I was confused about iTunes, because it seems to require an app, but it is DRM-free and so is Amazon Music. That’s great! So I guess only Spotify has DRM.

          • beefcat@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            All the streaming services use DRM, it’s just download stores that are DRM-free. Which makes sense, when you buy an album, you should own it.

            • Freesoftwareenjoyer@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              I see, that makes sense. But I also think that every content that you have paid to access should be DRM-free, so even in a streaming service.

    • ImpossibilityBox@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s personally a catch 22 for me.

      I listen to an absolutely absurd amounts of different artists. A large portion of them simply don’t have albums available for purchase and if they did… I would actually go broke buying all the stuff I listen to.

      Every single day I type in a Combo of 2 random letters and numbers into spotify and listen to the first artist I don’t recognize.

      It really sucks that Spotify doesn’t pay the artists anything reasonable but I haven’t found an alternative that allows me to consume as much different music as I currently do.

      This isn’t even including the podcasts and audio books into the equation.

    • Ktheone@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Honestly it’s a shame that most good music pirating sites have gone to the shitter, literally the only way to actually pirate and own music I could find via searching vigorously was through youtube to MP3 converters.

    • N-E-N@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Greedy business model seems slightly unfair tbh. Spotify struggles to remain profitable and they’ve only raised their prices by like $1 in a decade

      • Final Remix@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Maybe they shouldn’t’ve thrown so much money into the pivot to podcasts, then thrown a bunch of money at that meathead idiot.

      • Loom In Essence@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Just because they’re incompetent doesn’t mean they’re not greedy.

        Also, executives can still be cleaning up even as the company struggles to profit.

        • N-E-N@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          Executives being greedy isn’t the same as a greedy business model

          • Loom In Essence@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            This makes no sense. Greedy execs are the ones who would implement a greedy business model to pursue their greed.

            • EssentialCoffee@midwest.social
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              1 year ago

              What part of the executive compensation package are you taking specific issue with exactly? From what I could see, they’re largely paid in stock and the CEO hasn’t taken a bonus since COVID.

              Or are you just talking executives in general and not looking at what Spotify does specifically?

              • Loom In Essence@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                So they’re incompetent on top of greedy. They’re selling access to everybody’s music and paying peanuts.

      • notatoad@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        yeah, it’s not spotify’s fault that splitting $10/month between all the music you listen to doesn’t pay the artists very much.

        • N-E-N@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          Yea, companies that pay more typically either charge more (Tidal) or have the advantage of a massive profitable company backing them (Apple Music)