79 points by nreece 2 hours ago | 22 comments
  • Spotify is in the process of killing the librespot project that this and most third party Spotify players are built on. I think the golden age of music streaming is coming to an end. I’ve migrated to a self hosted library with streaming and radio for discovery. I hope we’ll see many projects in the space flourish. Many, like Navidrome and the whole OpenSubsonic ecosystem, seem to be doing quite well.
    • > radio for discovery

      Would you be willing to share a bit more about this setup? The only thing keeping my on streaming is the fact that its almost impossible to find new music otherwise. I know LastFM exists but it just doesn't click for me the way that streaming does. I like discovering music organically.

      • > radio for discovery

        was a big question mark I had as well. The Clear Channel and iHeart stations are not known for discovery. Now if you find a college station or by some miracle an independent station you can get some new stuff. My favorite local college station is also ad free. They also have an app which I lean on as it's not the strongest transmitter so their coverage is spotty. Maybe there's other indy stations with apps as well??

        • This radio station is local to the city I live in, and they've been great for music discovery for me, although heavy focus on local artists, but they've put me onto a few international artists as well.

          https://threedradio.com/

          I subscribe to them, have done so for ~10 years I reckon. I don't listen as much as I used to, but I want them to continue existing either way.

          Be aware, the quality of their playlists is incredibly variable, but that's part of the charm. I guarantee you'll hear something you haven't heard before... for better or worse.

    • > I think the golden age of music streaming is coming to an end

      There was a world before Spotify. Though the music labels didn’t much like that world we can easily go back to it.

    • > Spotify is in the process of killing the librespot project

      How could they possibly do that? They cannot prevent people or AI from reverse engineering their APIs.

      • Depends on how much they care. They can take down repos containing any keys, or use heuristics to block clients.
    • >I think the golden age of music streaming is coming to an end.

      Already ended for me. They killed the plan I was on, and then started sending me begging emails to sign up for a new, more expensive one.

      But once I experienced their platform with ads, I just stopped using it entirely.

    • > I think the golden age of music streaming is coming to an end.

      It's just getting started.

      We're going to vibe code the entire enshittified internet to be ours once again.

      The dream of the 90's and 00's is alive again. The indie web is going to become unstoppable.

      We can build anything of size and scale with the limited spare energy we have now. Every product will be reborn without big tech tendrils.

  • Spotify used to use Qt for its desktop client. Good times.
  • Walf
    Fuck Spotify. Even if you don't care about the ethics of Daniel Ek's investments, the platform itself is crap. One of the lowest paying to artists, not paying at all unless they hit a threshold, and the catalogue is filling up with AI slop, which they push on users via 'radio' and 'mix' playlists, so they can pay even less royalties. No, thanks.
    • I've tested Deezer for half a year. The software quality was horrible.

      Had a lot of crashes, it often took many many seconds to change between the songs and often getting stuck, the buffering algorithm was nuts and eating a lot of bandwidth.

      Everything on a standard Pixel. Full 5G coverage was available.

      Alternatives?

      • Tidal is the last streaming service I use, split between that and a jellyfin+arrs setup coupled with buying music from artists directly.

        Fuck Spotify and their rotten leadership. Was amongst the early adopters (2009). I'm sure they won't care for the loss, and I won't miss th when they're gone.

      • Tried Tidal? The one gripe I have with it is no remote control, as in using phone to change what's currently playing on the device connected to my sound system, without it thinking I want to start playing on my phone.

        Apple Music pays artists better, too.

  • [delayed]
  • It supports WinAmp skins too… Dare I say it?
    • It really whips the llama's ass?
  • I hacked the official client apart to hide some bullshit (like podcasts) and fix bugs that were pissing me off. Shared it exactly once and it stopped working within a month. Bugs were still there too

    I stopped sharing after that.

    • Have you seen Spicetify[0]? It allows for this kind of stuff and seems to be a lot more stable than doing it all manually.

      [0] https://spicetify.app/

  • It takes five minutes to make a website look less obviously AI-generated.
    • It takes five seconds to scroll to the bottom and see that it's a Jekyll theme before posting a negative comment
      • Surely they're referring to the llm-isms in the text?
      • A Jekyll theme from the same person as this project, yes.