Not amused by Spotify

Just a short post to anyone considering Spotify, don’t.

List of reasons (for me anyway):

Their Linux support is a joke. To access their API you have to agree to have proprietary software installed which can’t legally be bundled with software under the GPL. Their official statement appears to be “use Wine”. My reply: “Fuck that.”

Their monthly fee is several times more expensive than Last FM’s.

The artists get basically nothing from the fee you pay.  (Same is true for other internet radio services though. The MAFIAA keeps most of the money and gives the rest to the Billboard Top 10, so Justin Bieber gets paid for your listening to Alice In Chains.)

Oh yeah, their Android app crashed my tablet several times.

They require you to sign up with the voluntary spyware company called Facebook to get a Spotify account.

I scrubbed and I scrubbed, but they just don’t make water hot enough!

The death of audio CDs?

In #techrights on Freenode, a URL just came up that I feel is worth commenting on.

“CD-format to be abandoned by major labels by the end of 2012″ says the headline of the Side-Line Music Magazine.

My response:

Get ready for the return of Apple FoulPlay, Microsoft PlaysForNow/FailsForSure, and maybe even the “labels” having a repeat of their own incompatible DRM formats. They still kick that one around now and then before it goes away for a while.

Without legitimate products like the CD, a clean copy which the user can make non-corrupt music files from, these companies will be free to return to doing whatever they want to the consumer… They all agree they want DRM.

Apple and Microsoft like DRM because it means you can only use the content with things you buy from Apple and Microsoft. Their DRM scams are even mutually incompatible helping them stay off each others turf in their ongoing collaboration-competition set up.

The record companies like DRM because they’re smoking something that makes them think every new DRM scam they introduce will magically work this time (even when it never does), and that they can work around this by making it illegal to circumvent it no matter how laughable it is, sending people to prison at taxpayer expense (not the expense of tax evaders, such as big businesses) for doing nothing but either using the content they paid for in the manner they choose, or by helping their friends by sharing information that costs nothing to reproduce.

I’m not even sure what to say to this. I’m certainly no proponent of “piracy”. Granted that this is because most works promoted by companies like Microsoft and Apple are too inferior to want to steal, and most “new” music promoted by major labels really sucks. (Send in Justin Bieber!)

I already use Jamendo and Magnatune a lot. I do buy some “major label stuff”, but always on CD so I have a good, high quality, DRM-free copy to encode into non patent-encumbered media formats like FLAC and Ogg Vorbis. And since I’m having a little uncompensated link party here, I use KDE, Kubuntu, and Amarok. Worth mentioning is that Amarok has spectacular Jamendo and Magnatune integration. If you subscribe to Magnatune, part of that money goes to develop KDE.

To sum this up: I’m not a hippie or anything, but I do know a carrot on a stick when I see one. They have something you want (the carrot), and DRM and bought and paid for laws like the DMCA, and soon to be PROTECT IP Act (the stick).

While we’re at it, please sign the Demand Progress petition against the so-called Protect IP act which would allow the US government to destroy the internet to protect old media cartels and intellectual monopolies.