Technology

They will be blown away by the quality increase they get🤭

(Pirate tend to share/prefere best quality content, while Spotify offers only 256kbit mp3 as far as I remember (or is it 320kbi now?))

You're way better off with your own music collection. That is what I have. I use Tauon music box it handles large playlists well.

Already using Spotify to pirate music.

One more reason if you're still buying music, to start buying physical albums again while you still can.

CDs aren't age-gated and you can rip them to FLAC yourself. Vinyl also isn't age-gated because it's analog, and although it's a longer and more drawn-out process than just ripping a CD which will only take a few minutes as because vinyl is an analog format, you gotta record it in real-time, and then manually split the raw waveform up into separate tracks, manually input metadata, and manually generate a cuesheet from the split-up tracks before finally exporting*, you can still needle-drop LPs to FLAC as well.

*This isn't as big an issue with 78s, 45s, and EPs (which are 33-1/3rpm singles last time I thought) as it is with LPs as there isn't as much playback time on them, and at least 45s and EPs are singles rather than a full album like with LPs so you only have one song per side, and I assume 78s are singles as well, as 78s max out at 5min per side.

Bandcamp, Soulseek, Navidrome, ListenBrainz.

Has been a pretty solid Spotify-replacement stack.

Just a friendly reminder that the OSA was never about safeguarding kids from seeing porn.

Are the government seriously worried about a child being exposed to Break Stuff or So What on Spotify?

Tidal is pretty good these days. Qobuz too

And Bandcamp

Personally I could never get into the whole Spotify and Pandora thing. I want to listen to what I want to listen to and when I want to listen to it, without ridiculous restrictions and rules. YouTube has honestly been the far better choice for music for me.

Spotify fans?

You should already be doing that anyways with the phantom artists scandal, thousands of fake artists made with AI so Spotify doesn't have to pay real people.

I know bandcamp has its issues but I check there first for good flacs, I'll even settle for mp3s. I look REALLY hard. Not there? Ahoy.

Edit: Other places I try to buy first to support artists:

• https://www.junodownload.com/
• https://us.7digital.com/

I showed it something else with cheeks and now I'm on 15 watchlists.

I have a non-uk account but at the first sight of age verification I will delete my account.

I’m confused. Is every app in the UK requiring face scanning? I thought it was just adult content.

I'm returning to car boot sales to buy cubic meters of CDs.
That, and BandCamp.

Welcome back 🏴‍☠️🦜