That's the problem with subscription services. It's a coercive relationship where the terms are unilateral. As an alternative, I've been buying music from Bandcamp for quite some time now and have a huge library built in addition to the CDs I already owned and ripped to my NAS, which I can stream from anywhere thanks to Jellyfin.
If I miss out on some stuff because it's not easily obtainable, whatever, at least my music is my own and doesn't magically go missing because of some random subscription licensing deal.
My favorite is when I canceled Spotify years ago, and they show this custom playlist like "we'll miss you" and has all these songs to say goodbye with or whatever. But.. due to Spotify's frequent delisting of songs, one or two of the songs were not playable. Gotta love it.
I canceled Spotify after they created an AI clone of King Gizzard. I couldnt think of anything lamer than to try an replace a band like that with an AI rip of their music. Never again.
Cancelled my Spotify subscription as well, although on account of being served generated music several times in automatic playlists.
Actually owning music I listen to now feels great, but I missed the automatic recommendations. Setting up a plexamp server right now, but am looking into jellyfin. I love how it's OS and community supported. Does it have a recommendation system?
Take away the DMCA, plus make copyright infringement only apply to commercial copy operations and not individuals freely sharing the thing P2P. That will spank the likes of Adobe, RIAA, MPAA, and Siemens.
Never subscribe, ever. No streaming, and no cloud.
If you don't have the [unencumbered] file, it's not your media.
Vote for a government that will levy hefty taxes on recurrent revenue model businesses when what is delivered could be delivered permanently in one transaction, like another sin tax.
Vote for defanging DMCA and mandating implementation of open protocols for commercial products; universal machines are not to be golden handcuffs pilfering the people!
This stops when we all decide we're mad as hell, and we're not going to take rentier games anymore!
Title is misleading. This is about the “free” add-on perk to Amazon Prime that was added to make the price raises for Prime somewhat less offensive, similar to Amazon Prime Video.
This is not about Amazon Music Unlimited, which is their computer Apple Music and Spotify.
Not to defend Amazon here, but I think this is talking about the already severely limited streaming benefit of Prime, not the dedicated Amazon Music paid subscription. The former is not really comparable to a actual paid music subscription service.
Yep, this is the same thing they did with the video streaming.
The video thing actually made me cancel prime. The shipping isn't a big deal anymore and I was able to justify the prime as a bonus to the streaming service.
I just want shipping-only again, like it originally was. I never wanted any of the extra slop on the side, and I lost the main benefit I needed of fast shipping.
Now even "prime" shipping is a weeks' promise out to deliver, but boy will they not stop slamming Prime Video and all this extra crap down my throat to try to make it sound like it's such a great value I didn't ask for. (Also: the nerve of the letters in the mail to remind me I haven't opened any of Prime Video?)
I've only placed ~2 orders in all of 2026 so far on Amazon because of the slow shipping garbage, and it took me forever to finally give in and buy it there because every time I sourced elsewhere (like eBay, for small goods like electronics adapters etc) I'd end up with an even slower Amazon dropship to my door.
I'm expecting most everything to go this route eventually. Charging a subscription fee and having ads seems to be a money maker, so most services will get here eventually.
This is also one of the reasons I don't like the direction the video games market has gone. Most games (at least on PC) require Steam or EGS or similar service to access them. At some point, I'm expecting those to transition to a subscription model and/or become very heavy with ads, and then you'll need to deal with ads or subscription fees just to keep accessing stuff you already bought.
The best streaming subscription I've ever paid money for is Mullvad. I run my Radarr box through a VPN so my ISP doesn't complain and hijack my DNS.
I can search for any show, movie, music, or book ever published and have a copy with permanent unrestricted access forever, for free.
Fuck all these subscription services. Approximately none of the money you pay goes to the actors, musicians, authors that actually produced the work, it all goes to Amazon and Netflix and Disney. If the people who make your media don't get paid either way, why bother paying Amazon and Netflix for an inferior product, inferior service, and inferior experience?
Big Streaming has unwittingly fully conceeded the piracy wars to the pirates.
This is Amazon Prime Music, an unasked for add-on to Amazon Prime to (in their minds) justify their raising the cost of Amazon Prime, so they managed to skip step 1. It was never a good value.
If they had just raised the rate and left the service as it was, I'd only have been slightly annoyed at them. But to alter what I had, and then ask that same amount to put things back the way they were? That was a slap in the face.
That's the problem with subscription services. It's a coercive relationship where the terms are unilateral. As an alternative, I've been buying music from Bandcamp for quite some time now and have a huge library built in addition to the CDs I already owned and ripped to my NAS, which I can stream from anywhere thanks to Jellyfin.
If I miss out on some stuff because it's not easily obtainable, whatever, at least my music is my own and doesn't magically go missing because of some random subscription licensing deal.
My favorite is when I canceled Spotify years ago, and they show this custom playlist like "we'll miss you" and has all these songs to say goodbye with or whatever. But.. due to Spotify's frequent delisting of songs, one or two of the songs were not playable. Gotta love it.
I canceled Spotify after they created an AI clone of King Gizzard. I couldnt think of anything lamer than to try an replace a band like that with an AI rip of their music. Never again.
Cancelled my Spotify subscription as well, although on account of being served generated music several times in automatic playlists.
Actually owning music I listen to now feels great, but I missed the automatic recommendations. Setting up a plexamp server right now, but am looking into jellyfin. I love how it's OS and community supported. Does it have a recommendation system?
Hmmm, that's a great question, I'm not actually sure! I don't _think_ Jellyfin has a music curation/recommendation system built-in. I did a quick search and https://github.com/LumePart/Explo came up as a possible self-hosted music recommendation service. ( found on https://github.com/awesome-jellyfin/awesome-jellyfin )
Take away the DMCA, plus make copyright infringement only apply to commercial copy operations and not individuals freely sharing the thing P2P. That will spank the likes of Adobe, RIAA, MPAA, and Siemens.
There is only one way to stop this:
Never subscribe, ever. No streaming, and no cloud.
If you don't have the [unencumbered] file, it's not your media.
Vote for a government that will levy hefty taxes on recurrent revenue model businesses when what is delivered could be delivered permanently in one transaction, like another sin tax.
Vote for defanging DMCA and mandating implementation of open protocols for commercial products; universal machines are not to be golden handcuffs pilfering the people!
This stops when we all decide we're mad as hell, and we're not going to take rentier games anymore!
This is why I have everything on CD, ripped to SSD. Pay once, play forever.
If youtube music pulls this I will literally cancel my sub and delete all of the apps. The music app is the only reason I still have premium.
Title is misleading. This is about the “free” add-on perk to Amazon Prime that was added to make the price raises for Prime somewhat less offensive, similar to Amazon Prime Video.
This is not about Amazon Music Unlimited, which is their computer Apple Music and Spotify.
Not to defend Amazon here, but I think this is talking about the already severely limited streaming benefit of Prime, not the dedicated Amazon Music paid subscription. The former is not really comparable to a actual paid music subscription service.
Yep, this is the same thing they did with the video streaming.
The video thing actually made me cancel prime. The shipping isn't a big deal anymore and I was able to justify the prime as a bonus to the streaming service.
I just want shipping-only again, like it originally was. I never wanted any of the extra slop on the side, and I lost the main benefit I needed of fast shipping.
Now even "prime" shipping is a weeks' promise out to deliver, but boy will they not stop slamming Prime Video and all this extra crap down my throat to try to make it sound like it's such a great value I didn't ask for. (Also: the nerve of the letters in the mail to remind me I haven't opened any of Prime Video?)
I've only placed ~2 orders in all of 2026 so far on Amazon because of the slow shipping garbage, and it took me forever to finally give in and buy it there because every time I sourced elsewhere (like eBay, for small goods like electronics adapters etc) I'd end up with an even slower Amazon dropship to my door.
I'm expecting most everything to go this route eventually. Charging a subscription fee and having ads seems to be a money maker, so most services will get here eventually.
This is also one of the reasons I don't like the direction the video games market has gone. Most games (at least on PC) require Steam or EGS or similar service to access them. At some point, I'm expecting those to transition to a subscription model and/or become very heavy with ads, and then you'll need to deal with ads or subscription fees just to keep accessing stuff you already bought.
The best streaming subscription I've ever paid money for is Mullvad. I run my Radarr box through a VPN so my ISP doesn't complain and hijack my DNS.
I can search for any show, movie, music, or book ever published and have a copy with permanent unrestricted access forever, for free.
Fuck all these subscription services. Approximately none of the money you pay goes to the actors, musicians, authors that actually produced the work, it all goes to Amazon and Netflix and Disney. If the people who make your media don't get paid either way, why bother paying Amazon and Netflix for an inferior product, inferior service, and inferior experience?
Big Streaming has unwittingly fully conceeded the piracy wars to the pirates.
Well then.. I'll gladly stick to Spotify
Make your own mix-tapes, mix-CDs, or mix-mp3s.
SomaFM is streaming music on 46 channels and it is all free (but give Rusty some money if you can).
Just saying.
This is the enshitification path, sooner or later these services have to turn to shit or charge a premium to be sustainable.
Step 1 is to provide a good value, then lure in creators, then lock them in and profit.
This is Amazon Prime Music, an unasked for add-on to Amazon Prime to (in their minds) justify their raising the cost of Amazon Prime, so they managed to skip step 1. It was never a good value.
As expected. This is the default path, happened may times before starting with premium TV channels.
Yup! Amazon Prime Video starts showing ads in January unless you pay $2.99/month xtra (Dec 2023) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38776591 ...
If they had just raised the rate and left the service as it was, I'd only have been slightly annoyed at them. But to alter what I had, and then ask that same amount to put things back the way they were? That was a slap in the face.