• ZeroDrek@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I was worried for a second until I read the article. $1 more/ is not a huge price increase and I’m ok with it considering they haven’t increased the price as long as I’ve been subscribed and I’ve been subscribed for at least a decade. Also, I use Spotify daily…for hours at a time.

  • FireWire400@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Tidal increased their prices recently too, by the same amount. And for that I’m getting the high-quality audio Spotify keeps on promising for over a year TWO YEARS now.

    Don’t get me wrong, Tidal still has its own problems but I don’t get why people still choose to have Spotify over one of its competitors.

    • galaxy@lemmynsfw.com
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      1 year ago

      $10 in 2011 would be $13.56 today.

      Source: https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/2011?amount=10

      Per the article, the service hasn’t changed in price in 12 years, while the platform has certainly received a decent number of updates, new features, new artists, etc.

      If it isn’t worth $11/month to you, don’t pay it? But it doesn’t seem right to insinuate that they’re doing something outrageous by raising prices once in 12 years?

        • TheSaneWriter@lemmy.thesanewriter.com
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          1 year ago

          To be fair (and understand I hate corporations and am speaking through clenched teeth), Costco loses money on those glizzies. They make the majority of their money on their memberships, and have made the bet that they gain more customers than they lose money on cheap hotdogs.

  • dgilluly@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Now I’m even more glad to have ditched the streaming sub model to buy music instead. Of course new releases may follow and go up by $0.10 per song.

    • malloc@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      Is the service you are using allow you to download the music DRM free, or is it only streamable?

      If it’s the latter, might want to reconsider. Just like movies purchased on these platforms (Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, …), the license holder of the intellectual property (IP), usually the record/music company, can pull their content from these platforms at any time and you will not be reimbursed.

      • Kitty Jynx@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I get most of my music off of Bandcamp which is DRM free. The catch it that Bandcamp is mostly independent or small artists. For artists that are not on Bandcamp I usually buy MP3 albums on Amazon which are DRM free.

  • soot_guy@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Nice! Thanks for the heads up. ATT just told me my paperless discount is getting halved, so this is the perfect opportunity to even out my costs. Everyone of these tech companies is making a money grab this summer and I’m fed up

    • zumi@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      That txt from ATT about the paperless discount was so poorly worded. Took me forever to realize I can still get the $10 discount if I switch the autopay to a debit card. It’s only the credit card autopay/paperless that is getting reduced to $5.

      • soot_guy@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The email I just got from them said to expect a rate increase for my august billing cycle of 2.50 a line. So, even switching to a bank account from a credit card won’t help. They were just trying to make me more comfortable while bending me over.

  • trainsaresexy@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    There is a weak defence to be made that they have never raised prices. In the context of our current situation this is just more profiteering.

    Salesforce, up 24% https://www.salesforce.com/news/press-releases/2022/05/31/q1-fy23-results-update/

    Spotify up 14%, 2.8 billion in profits https://newsroom.spotify.com/2023-04-25/spotify-reports-first-quarter-2023-earnings/ Edit: Wrong facts by me here as others pointed out. Spotify is in the hole a few hundred million. Maybe rise is justified? Idk. votes 30/1 at time of edit in case you’re curious.

    Apple, 100 billion in Q2 2023

    The list goes on and on. All of these companies have laid off staff. Spotify laid off 200.

    I’ve never liked the subscription pricing model and have avoided all of these services. I can’t afford hundreds of dollars a year on things that aren’t staple items.

    • daveycee@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Not to shill for Spotify, but the very link you sent shows they made 3 billion in REVENUE, not profit. They actually lost 180 million dollars.

      My guess - these price rises are because the VC tap is getting turned off

      • Gerbler@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Hollywood accounting. None of them make a “profit” because they’re taxed on profits. Now it’s possible that they really are losing 180 million (a lot of startups like uber coast on investors with the assumption they’ll turn a profit at some point) but I wouldn’t take their word at face value.

        • asparagus9001@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Spotify is a publicly traded company. Their financial reports are required to be audited every single year. They really are losing money. There’s no way around that.

          The studios, most of which are also publicly traded, report billions of dollars in profit every year. Hollywood accounting is about using shell companies to move money around (back to the main studio) while ensuring that nobody ever gets paid out on the profits of the movie by the LLC they set up to produce the movie.

          I finally got out of accounting. It’s really hard to commit fraud at any scale when you’re a publicly traded and audited company. People are gonna call bullshit on that but I’m serious. I would be in favor of requiring every “small business” to be audited on a regular basis because I don’t know the exact percentage but I would testify in front of Congress right now that easily over 50% of all the small business clients I ever had were committing fraud somewhere.

          One case that comes to mind is a guy with a small construction company who had funneled over a half a million dollars to his personal house, calling it business expenses. I took this to my boss - who signed a code of professional ethics and has a professional license on the line - and their reply was “he’s defrauding the government out of about a quarter million dollars but we’re not the accounting police and that’s why we don’t sign his tax returns.”

  • soulifix@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Everyone’s ‘okay’ with it until it’s $5 more. Then another $5. Then another $5.

    This is what’s happening with all of these streaming services. They’re all doing the gradual boiling water trick. They know if they turned the dial all the way to hot to make the water boiling, metaphorically speaking, that nobody in their right mind would want to jump in. But if they just turn the dial slowly, let the temperature build up by hiking these prices bit by bit, it wouldn’t cause that much of a stir and people will be complacent with it.

      • Colitas92@infosec.pub
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        1 year ago

        And when someone is short on money or just too tired of keeping track of which services having what media and switching chairs all the time ? remember there is always the way of Jack Sparrow, and go sailing to the 7 seas. ARRRGH!

          • ZodiacSF1969@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I agree with you, but this site is full of people who hate the idea of companies having to make money and just steal shit all the time. It’s a lame attitude to have I think, they believe they are entitled to others work because they don’t like the distribution model.

  • Gravitywell@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Now might be a great time to join the Fediverse alternative FunkWhale. I’ve already built up a collection of nearly 10,000 songs on mine, almost all of which i downloaded from deezer.