They expect to take from you. You mention middle ground. You don't get to the middle ground by walk halfway towards someone that had no intention of meeting you halfway. But they will take every advantage you give them.
On top of all this, the internet survived way before any of the corporations jumped on board. It'll exist without them. Yet with them around they pushed out the free and fun services and now that no longer exists in any meaningful way because they exist.
I'm a consumer of a product and yesterday I had twice the product for twice as cheap. Today I don't. I have no invested interest to market for the erosion of services on behalf of any private corporation or company. Especially large corporate entities who pay individuals hundreds of millions in contracts. How about standing up for your peers because they ain't your peers
Its acceptable to demand cheaper better products and if they don't budge then you shouldn't either.
Its okay to stand up for your interest.
You don't need to defend these practices especially when these companies go to the effort to capture a monopoly on the services right before they lock it all away.
You keep meeting them halfway they'll keep moving where that is.
I been paying for it and I don’t really see how I’m suddenly getting half the product for twice the cost.
Spotify is a sweet fucking deal for me. I listen to it for like 2500+ hours a year. It’s worth it to pay to not have to listen to ads alone.
What’s really crazy is how you dudes are quick to call people shills and corporate apologists and all this dumb shit when they just get value for the money. If you don’t like it don’t buy it. If you’re so upset about the free version then use something else. Nobody gives a fuck, we aren’t getting a commission here.
Music is a fucked industry. You want to support a band you go their shows and buy some merch same as always.
My point is that we can't just ignore it or believe that just not subscribing is good enough.
These companies corner a market and become the leader in acceptable practices. So you choose to leave Spotify and pick an alternative just means your alternative adopts the thing you left Spotify for.
The only thing that counteracts this erosion of services and features for profit is cultural pressure. Companies would love for people to just not subscribe because its never enough pressure to get the company to change. There needs to be better organization from customers.
There is no erosion of services dude. Why are you typing up essays on a premise that is faulty? If you pay for no ads you’re still getting no ads. It sounds like you’re bitching about free services changing which is wild.
If we all stand together we can bully them into providing top tier free services. That’s what you’re trying to say?
What features are paid users losing with Spotify? If you think you’re entitled to a robust set of features for free then make them and distribute them freely.
Or you could keep whining on forums thinking you’re fighting the good fight I guess.
You played yourself coming all hot over having to read.
You didn't read the post you're on either.
I do contribute to projects when I can. Helping with open source is a fun hobby and does help fight against a lot of this.
What are you doing other than whining about having to read as if anyone forced you and adding practically nothing to a conversation you had no idea about before jumping in.
Let me try to give a voice to the people down voting.
I hope that in the future they make a separate subscription model for each of these services.
$2/month I get the pause feature.
$5/week I get to control my own volume.
$4/month I don't have to loudly shout the brand name of the commercial to go back to my podcast.
This is how websites keep the lights on and you shouldn't be so ungrateful. We all know the pursuit of infinite profits means all these companies will continue to find more ways to squeeze customers. So I'll go down with this ship even though just 5 years ago it was crazy to see a 2 minute unskippable ad but now there's 3 of them and you're an asshole for wanting to remove that.
What would the internet look like if we got rid of how companies advertise to us.
In the future you should consider what you're saying before speaking out against enshitificatin and encroachment of mass marketing into our lives. It feeds. It never stops feeding and I am meat.“
This was your opening statement. Nobody is hot dude and you still have nothing to say about what service is being eroded. You’re popping off with the buzzword of the week and the shit don’t even apply here.
I’ll ask again, what features are paid users losing with Spotify?
Fucking clown shit. Start out complaining you can't read. Finishes up by imagining easier arguments hoping you got a shot at those.
how you acting like you're holier than bitching online about stuff 🤣
Nothing is free. Meta, one of the biggest companies online shows this. They're making money off you every minute.
Internet was made to share things between people. Not to have it all locked behind subscriptions and paywalls. Its forcing information scarcity needlessly for companies. The internet should not be a place for anyone looking to reduce access to information or who lock its features away.