I don’t understand subscribing to music. Maybe it’s just my age, but this isn’t the '90s where you hear a track you like and that one song is going to run you $20 at Tower Records. I like a song, I pay $1.29 and then it’s stored locally. Also cuts way down on data usage while driving. I struggle to get anywhere close to my 5GB data allowance.

After a dozen years of keeping subscription prices stable, Spotify has issued three price hikes in 2.5 years.

Spotify informed subscribers via email today that Premium monthly subscriptions would go from $12 to $13 per month as of users’ February billing date. Spotify is already advertising the higher prices to new subscribers.

Although not explicitly mentioned in Spotify’s correspondence, other plans are getting more expensive, too. Student monthly subscriptions are going from $6 to $7. Duo monthly plans, for two accounts in the same household, are going from $17 to $19, and Family plans, for up to six users, are moving from $20 to $22.

Spotify’s Basic plan, which is only available as a downgrade for some Premium subscribers and is $11/month, is unaffected.

For years, Spotify subscribers enjoyed stable prices, but today’s announcement marks Spotify’s third price hike since July 2023. Spotify last raised prices in July 2024. Premium individual subscriptions went from $11 to $12, Duo subscriptions went from $15 to $17, and Family subscriptions increased from $17 to $20.

  • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    6
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    1 day ago

    Streaming two days for about 2-3h in Symfonium:

    And Spotify is with streaming some podcasts with video. For the whole month

    • LemmyEntertainYou@piefed.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      17 hours ago

      Presumably Symfonium is streaming lossless files whereas Spotify probably isn’t. That and Spotify is probably caching a lot more.

    • bootstrap@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 day ago

      You must be streaming flac or something from your server then?

      over a whole month of playing music for roughly 8 hours a day i have 10gb of data from symfonium with 320kbps ogg transcoding.

      Either that or you might have music cached on spotify but not using the cache on symfonium?

      • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        edit-2
        1 day ago

        Yup, Flac streamed :p Some of it is cached but I listenend to new stuff.
        And yes, Spotify is mostly cached. But I set the quality to high (audio) and middle (video) on cellular

        I still have not been able to mostly import my library from spotify into Jellyfin so my main way of listening is still within Spotify but I have reached critical mass where I could do it.

            • bootstrap@lemmy.dbzer0.com
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              16 hours ago

              Oh wow your catalogue is that fringe is it? Ive only had to add a few entries and I consider my tastes very broad and pretty niche for a lot of it!

              • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                edit-2
                15 hours ago

                I checked my library of what I managed to download across all my libraries (before Annas archive made Spotify change something in the authentication logic):
                Size: 21GiB
                Files: 3655
                Directories: 3448
                Structure: Artist/Album/song.mp3 (and additionally an lrc if synced liyrics were available)

                So probably 2000-2500 music files in total I need to check with musicbrainz, import if not available, wait for about 7 days, rinse and repeat.

                I was burned out enough after importing the “Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies HQ Project”, the Disney animation collection, the Tom and Jerry animations and matching the Pokémon season 1 and 2 DVD with the localized titles (which have changed) to the TVDB order.

                I really don’t have the endurance to do that for long. Maybe some day but not right now :p

                • bootstrap@lemmy.dbzer0.com
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  3 hours ago

                  Yea I dont think many soundtracks would be in musicbrainz that might be a bit difficult.

                  Lidarr handled my 60k tracks collection like a dream though!

                • Powderhorn@beehaw.orgOP
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  ·
                  8 hours ago

                  I started my mp3 collection in 1997. Metadata was nonexistent, and online databases weren’t yet a thing. (I was mostly downloading 112kbps from IRC F-servs).

                  It is a bitch to get your collection in order, even with a tool like MusicBrainz Picard, but worth it in the end. It took me about a week to actually complete that project. The new stuff I download already has the metadata, so it’s a solved problem.

                  • bootstrap@lemmy.dbzer0.com
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    ·
                    3 hours ago

                    I agree, I think its such a bitch because a music collection is very personal and maybe your tags dont line up with what the general public think.

                    I’ve let Lidarr do the metadata for all my tracks as I would go insane trying to do it myself with the sheer quantity.

                    The tools we have these days to own and manage our own collections is incredible - its a shame so many people still use spotify.