'Spotify is a JOKE': Spotify Premium user slams app after she got kicked out of audiobook mid-listen
www.dailydot.com
A Spotify user found themselves disappointed after discovering that the audio streamer's audiobook only comes with 15 hours.

Oh Spotify, when will you stop trying to push people to the high seas 🏴‍☠️

  • Hugh_Jeggs@lemm.ee
    7·
    6 months ago

    Headline contains -

    Opinion of random member of the public

    The word “slams”

    I’m not reading it because I’ve probably wiped better journalism off my arse this morning

        • sabreW4K3@lazysoci.alOP
          1·
          6 months ago

          Barely paying musicians is a choice. In fact even the whole audiobook setup is a choice. Give me the epub and TTS and I’d be happy as Larry.

        • Melody Fwygon@beehaw.org
          1·
          6 months ago

          They could certainly “clearly pass the cost” of this on to the user by not offering Audiobooks to users who didn’t pay for the “+ # of Audiobooks” tier of Spotify Premium; instead of this horrible enshittified crap where it cuts you off midsentence like a greedy telecomm provider would. Or perhaps their limitation should be on how many titles you can listen to concurrently in a certain time period. (So if you open X books; that’s it; you have to shelve one or wait it out)

          It certainly means that Spotify did a bad job at negotiating their rights to these audiobooks as well. That matters too; because that makes the product worse; and that should never have been allowed to happen. If they couldn’t have offered it nicely, they could’ve just not offered it at all or added it to a higher service tier so that the cost is diverted better.

        • ryper@lemmy.caEnglish
          1·
          6 months ago

          Its just unreasonable to expect spotify to be able to afford that when they already barely pay musicians.

          The audiobooks help them pay even less for music:

          With the introduction of the stand-alone audiobooks offering, Spotify is now able to pay lower music-licensing rates for the music-and-audiobook bundle, introduced in the U.S. in November 2023. The 2022 settlement agreement between the National Music Publishers Assn. and streaming services includes a carveout for bundles (such as Amazon Prime and Apple Music + Apple News), which the new audiobook offering falls under. Such plans lower the mechanical licensing rates the company pays in the U.S. Spotify’s lower royalty rates are retroactive to March 1, 2024.

          However, NMPA president-CEO David Israelite had strong words for the move when contacted for comment by Variety. “It appears Spotify has returned to attacking the very songwriters who make its business possible,” he wrote. “Spotify’s attempt to radically reduce songwriter payments by reclassifying their music service as an audiobook bundle is a cynical, and potentially unlawful, move that ends our period of relative peace. We will not stand for their perversion of the settlement we agreed upon in 2022 and are looking at all options.” The NMPA and streaming services resolved a years-long standoff over royalty rates with a Copyright Royalty Board ruling in 2022, and agreed upon a new rate of 15.35% for the 2023-2027 period.

  • darkphotonstudio@beehaw.org
    1·
    6 months ago

    Oh Spotify, when will you stop trying to push people to the high seas

    Spotify is worse than piracy. It’s a robber baron.

  • 0xtero@beehaw.org
    1·
    6 months ago

    So, is this the type of SLAM you’d typically see in a moshpit? Or are we talking about wrestling slams?

  • stallmer@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    1·
    6 months ago

    Pro tip: get audiobooks from your library…along with paper books, ebooks, games, movies, etc.

  • Luvon@beehaw.org
    0·
    6 months ago

    “the 15 hours customers get free with premium equates to two audiobooks” Is the average audiobook really that short!

    For eragon it would takes months to finish.

    The hobbit is 10 hours.

    Think most of the books I’ve listened to have been over that length, but I don’t use Spotify. Self hosting for the win. No time limits in prologue

    • key@lemmy.keychat.orgEnglish
      0·
      6 months ago

      They probably have a bunch of 1 hour ‘books’ that mess with the average as shorter is cheaper to help pad out their numbers.

      Looking at my personal library, the median length audiobook is The Last Wish at a tad over 10 hours. So it’d be equal to 1.5 books going by that, not the worst marketing exaggeration I’ve ever seen.

    • onoki@reddthat.com
      1·
      6 months ago

      If you read the article, the main point was that Spotify doesn’t inform about the limits clearly. Not the pricing.

      Even now Spotify site says: “Spotify Premium: Listen without limits”. Clearly there is a limit, but the limits are only mentioned after the first subscription button if you scroll far enough.