• ZeroDrek@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I was worried for a second until I read the article. $1 more/ is not a huge price increase and I’m ok with it considering they haven’t increased the price as long as I’ve been subscribed and I’ve been subscribed for at least a decade. Also, I use Spotify daily…for hours at a time.

  • FireWire400@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Tidal increased their prices recently too, by the same amount. And for that I’m getting the high-quality audio Spotify keeps on promising for over a year TWO YEARS now.

    Don’t get me wrong, Tidal still has its own problems but I don’t get why people still choose to have Spotify over one of its competitors.

  • trainsaresexy@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    There is a weak defence to be made that they have never raised prices. In the context of our current situation this is just more profiteering.

    Salesforce, up 24% https://www.salesforce.com/news/press-releases/2022/05/31/q1-fy23-results-update/

    Spotify up 14%, 2.8 billion in profits https://newsroom.spotify.com/2023-04-25/spotify-reports-first-quarter-2023-earnings/ Edit: Wrong facts by me here as others pointed out. Spotify is in the hole a few hundred million. Maybe rise is justified? Idk. votes 30/1 at time of edit in case you’re curious.

    Apple, 100 billion in Q2 2023

    The list goes on and on. All of these companies have laid off staff. Spotify laid off 200.

    I’ve never liked the subscription pricing model and have avoided all of these services. I can’t afford hundreds of dollars a year on things that aren’t staple items.

    • daveycee@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Not to shill for Spotify, but the very link you sent shows they made 3 billion in REVENUE, not profit. They actually lost 180 million dollars.

      My guess - these price rises are because the VC tap is getting turned off

      • Gerbler@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Hollywood accounting. None of them make a “profit” because they’re taxed on profits. Now it’s possible that they really are losing 180 million (a lot of startups like uber coast on investors with the assumption they’ll turn a profit at some point) but I wouldn’t take their word at face value.

        • asparagus9001@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Spotify is a publicly traded company. Their financial reports are required to be audited every single year. They really are losing money. There’s no way around that.

          The studios, most of which are also publicly traded, report billions of dollars in profit every year. Hollywood accounting is about using shell companies to move money around (back to the main studio) while ensuring that nobody ever gets paid out on the profits of the movie by the LLC they set up to produce the movie.

          I finally got out of accounting. It’s really hard to commit fraud at any scale when you’re a publicly traded and audited company. People are gonna call bullshit on that but I’m serious. I would be in favor of requiring every “small business” to be audited on a regular basis because I don’t know the exact percentage but I would testify in front of Congress right now that easily over 50% of all the small business clients I ever had were committing fraud somewhere.

          One case that comes to mind is a guy with a small construction company who had funneled over a half a million dollars to his personal house, calling it business expenses. I took this to my boss - who signed a code of professional ethics and has a professional license on the line - and their reply was “he’s defrauding the government out of about a quarter million dollars but we’re not the accounting police and that’s why we don’t sign his tax returns.”

  • soot_guy@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Nice! Thanks for the heads up. ATT just told me my paperless discount is getting halved, so this is the perfect opportunity to even out my costs. Everyone of these tech companies is making a money grab this summer and I’m fed up

    • zumi@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      That txt from ATT about the paperless discount was so poorly worded. Took me forever to realize I can still get the $10 discount if I switch the autopay to a debit card. It’s only the credit card autopay/paperless that is getting reduced to $5.

      • soot_guy@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The email I just got from them said to expect a rate increase for my august billing cycle of 2.50 a line. So, even switching to a bank account from a credit card won’t help. They were just trying to make me more comfortable while bending me over.

        • zumi@lemmy.sdf.org
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          1 year ago

          Weird. My txt said the following:

          “Hi, it’s AT&T. As early as Oct. 2nd, the AutoPay and Paperless discount for customers paying by credit card will decrease from $10 to $5 per line. If you prefer to use your credit card, no action is required to receive a $5 discount.”

          Sounds like your offer is different. One quick tip if you are looking for other ways to save on AT&T. If you sign up for AARP you can get an additional $10 off of the top plan in addition to the paperless discount on AT&T.

  • Zummy@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Switch to Apple Music. It has all the music Spotify has, the music is higher quality (all the way up to the highest quality you can get), exclusive radio shows you can’t get on Spotify, handmade playlists that are curated by a real human, a completely separate classical music site included at no extra charge, and more all for $10 bucks a month.

      • Zummy@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        So Apple uses ALAC, which is it’s own version. Do you mean how much data is used when streaming? If so, I’m not sure. If you mean what’s available it’s:

        High Quality (AAC 256 Kbps)

        Lossless (ALAC up to 24-bit/48 kHz)

        Hi-Res (ALAC up to 24-bit/192 kHz)

    • OceanSoap@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      You don’t have to pay to listen to him, that’s free. The paying comes to skip the adverts.