[HN Gopher] Please continue supporting iOS/Android streaming SDKs
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Please continue supporting iOS/Android streaming SDKs
Author : pjmq
Score : 107 points
Date : 2022-09-05 15:38 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (community.spotify.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (community.spotify.com)
| [deleted]
| claaams wrote:
| I was looking for motivation to cancel. Thanks.
| rvz wrote:
| Sorry! It's their platform and they can kill all third party apps
| whenever they want to.
|
| I find it extremely risky to build an entire business out of
| someone else's unofficial API.
|
| To Downvoters: I'm trying to help you here.
|
| Did you not see the top comment about Embrace, Extend, Extinguish
| tactic that Spotify and many other companies have used for their
| API's? [0] Similarly, If your app is in trouble [1] and the
| upstream provider suspends access to the APIs, your business is
| totally finished, but not if you are a larger company providing
| the API (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc)
|
| So don't depend or build your entire business on someone else's
| API. [2]
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32725714
|
| [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/snap-cuts-off-
| yo...
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4093796
| pduszak wrote:
| official APIs*
| urbandw311er wrote:
| It was not unofficial.
| bob1029 wrote:
| I don't know if I even need to continue supporting Spotify
| anymore.
|
| Between Discogs and YouTube, I am having no trouble discovering
| and acquiring high quality content that can be used arbitrarily.
| For a period of time, I thought that old-school CDs were actually
| dead. Today, I get regular emails from la-la land records about
| incredibly esoteric 90s cartoon soundtracks that I can purchase
| _new_. I believe that there has never been a better time to get
| into physical media. I 've got a lot of stuff on hand that you
| _cannot_ listen to on Spotify. You won 't even find some of these
| artists or "labels" in there.
|
| Spotify also puts me in a really bad mood when they decide
| certain content is no longer permitted for playback. Every time
| this happens I spend about 3 hours ripping my most recently-
| favorited tracks via audio driver trickery, just in case it
| happens again.
|
| The only value proposition for me is that their app is ubiquitous
| and can be controlled from any device. If I could find something
| similar to the Spotify application experience that I could point
| at my own backend, I think I might go for it.
|
| And, I totally get the other target audience: People who just
| want some mindless background music or podcast while they drive
| or do cardio. Spotify is _amazing_ at this, but it 's not really
| a big selling point for me. Definitely not enough value for me to
| pay a monthly subscription fee.
| lelandfe wrote:
| > You won't even find some of these artists or "labels" in
| there.
|
| Indeed! All of Traumprinz / Giegling are not on any streaming
| service (but are often wonderful)
| https://www.discogs.com/label/144751-Giegling
|
| Some artists do limited runs, eg a handful of cassettes. Here's
| one that was a 50 count run of USB sticks:
| https://www.discogs.com/release/14433973-Benton-Volume-Two
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Don't even need Audio driver trickery. All you need is a
| desktop PC, and a 3.5mm jack cable with male ends on both
| sides, about $5 on Amazon. Plug the headphone jack output into
| the line in and hit Record. Quality is decent enough, and its
| so stupidly easy that it becomes obvious why Audio Copy
| Protection DRM never had a chance.
| mkup wrote:
| HDMI capture on desktop via USB-C to HDMI adapter can give
| even better quality, audio is transmitted digitally via HDMI.
| Fatnino wrote:
| Theres also the bit where Spotify traffic is zero rated on
| tmobile.
|
| But net neutrality, blah blah blah.
|
| I strongly lean towards spotify instead of YouTube for music
| solely because of this.
| mjr00 wrote:
| > Spotify also puts me in a really bad mood when they decide
| certain content is no longer permitted for playback.
|
| As far as I know, this is rarely Spotify's choice; usually this
| is done by an artist, or more commonly their distributor,
| intentionally pulling their music from platforms.
| tartoran wrote:
| Well, that's because they get paid in peanut dust and
| breadcrumbs
| mjr00 wrote:
| True but it's also really cheap to get/keep your music on
| there if you want. Distrokid is $20/year, CDBaby is $5 one-
| time per track/album, and if you just want Spotify
| specifically you can do it through Amuse for free (with
| slow release times and # of track limitations), or onerpm
| if you're willing to give away a % of the royalties.
| aaaaaaaaata wrote:
| That means someone isn't using the other playback or
| download method that pays more.
| dotancohen wrote:
| I just signed up for Spotify recently, and was completely
| flabbergasted to discover that an album that I've been
| listening to for over thirty years was rerecorded by the
| original artist, and the original album is now unobtainable.
| This rerecording is horrible, unlistenable, and I fear that
| this is the version that will be recognized in legacy because
| it is all that Spotify makes available.
|
| No, Spotify as a business is not to blame here. But the
| concept of storing our media in a fashion which allows it to
| be erased or altered (e.g. in the cloud) has consequences.
| siquick wrote:
| If you haven't tried already it's worth looking at Bandcamp.
| There are a lot of new CDs (and tapes and vinyl) for sale on
| there from independent labels.
| teawrecks wrote:
| I was tired of Spotify's dominance in the music streaming space
| vs how poor their UI is, how little they pay artists, and how
| anticompetitive they grew vs other services (ex. last.fm
| scrobbling).
|
| I switched to buying tracks from artists, using Plex to stream
| the tracks from my home server, and using Tidal to stream
| tracks I don't have yet. What's nice is Plex also supports
| Tidal integration, so I have all my music in one place.
|
| It's not a perfect experience, but if I'm going to put my money
| toward a subpar experience, I'd rather it go to an underdog.
| Also, Tidal supposedly gives a slightly larger fraction of the
| profits to artists. Ironically, from what I could find online,
| Napster apparently gives the largest fraction.
| Bombthecat wrote:
| Tidal will sooner or later cut plex out too...
| teawrecks wrote:
| Maybe, if they don't want me as a customer anymore. I
| almost exclusively use their service via plexamp, and I'm
| sure they know that.
|
| IMO it's in all but the largest streaming service' best
| interest to allow more ways for customers to access their
| service. It's their best chance at disruption. I don't see
| tidal cutting off plex until tidal feels dominant, or the
| plex userbase is too small. As long as Spotify and Apple
| are competitors, I don't see them feeling that level of
| dominance, but the number of people using plex tidal
| integration probably isn't huge...which is why I'm
| mentioning it in this thread!
| dehrmann wrote:
| It's probably related to licensing, either because it makes it
| too easy to embed songs where you'd ordinarily need a separate
| license or because it makes it too easy to rip to the stream.
| gaius_baltar wrote:
| That's why torrents will survive for the foreseeable future.
| People got clever about avoiding these bait-and-switch schemes
| now that spending 5 min torrenting and 150 MB of storage per
| album became the easy, safe and private approach again.
|
| Podcasts are a different case, however. Best option is just drop
| the ones that do not provide a RSS feed and let these authors
| linger.
|
| I'm just tired of streaming companies, both audio and video.
| azinman2 wrote:
| This is a link to a complaint. Can someone either point to the
| official announcement or go into detail about what was allowed
| and what changed?
| crtasm wrote:
| Shutdown on 1st September:
| https://developer.spotify.com/community/news/2022/07/15/mobi...
|
| related:
| https://developer.spotify.com/community/news/2022/04/12/libs...
| darepublic wrote:
| YouTube has better music selection and with a little setup you
| can get the same quality of life features as Spotify.
| pjmq wrote:
| But you can't legally build music apps atop YouTube/YouTube
| music from what I can see.
| tinkerbill wrote:
| https://github.com/xou816/spot still works for me.
|
| I use that on my Pinephone to play music.
|
| If/when that stops, to continue playing music on my Pinephone
| will require migrating to a self-managed collection.
| Disappointing but doable.
|
| Can anyone recommend DRM free music providers?
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > Can anyone recommend DRM free music providers?
|
| I have some download from Bandcamp.
|
| +CD-ripped music from physical media I own.
| laurentlbm wrote:
| I switched to Tidal a few months ago after getting sick of them
| pushing podcasts non-stop and some other annoyances. Tidal is
| fine, but I do miss all the user-created playlists from Spotify.
|
| I also still sometimes buy music through Bandcamp if it isn't
| available on Tidal or if I want to support the artist.
| teawrecks wrote:
| FYI plex has tidal integration. I use it so my personal track
| library and tidal can be accessed from the same place.
| tpmx wrote:
| Where is the Tidal 3rd party streaming API/SDK? Or any API at
| all, for that matter?
|
| (Certainly not here: https://tidal.com/browse/artist/4481527)
| cyberpunk wrote:
| Tidal does seem to have some integrations (at least roon and
| volumio)
|
| MQA is largely snake oil; they do have some nice sounding
| masters though.
|
| Apple Music now has hires audio also. I'm yet to decide
| between the two. Apple Music is edging Tidal out for me due
| to the quality of their curated playlists
| tpmx wrote:
| Roon and Volumio both label themselves as audiophile audio
| players. I guess that's why I hadn't heard about any of
| them.
|
| Also, the term audiophile has turned into a red flag, at
| least to me.
|
| Isn't Apple Music hi-res/lossless audio (ALAC) also snake
| oil when compared to high bitrate psychoacoustic codecs
| such as those used by e.g. Spotify Premium?
|
| https://www.macworld.com/article/346595/no-one-actually-
| need...
| cyberpunk wrote:
| Yeah, there's a lot of nonsense around. I still _really_
| like the sound of my grados &tube amp though, even if a
| lot of that is a kind of self delusion ;)
|
| A lot of the hires stuff around hasn't just been ripped
| from CDs though, or is mastered differently and to my
| ears some tracks clearly sound better than from CD but
| it's all subjective.
|
| Audiophiles aren't hurting anyone but their bank
| balances, and we get some nice headphones trickling down
| to those of us happy enough with <1k a set ;)
| rocket_surgeron wrote:
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| The article calls all lossless compression snake oil.
| Personally, I do like Dolby Atmos on Apple Music -
| especially for Classical.
| tpmx wrote:
| Personally I was convinced by double-blind tests done
| about 20 years ago. It's been a while, but I think it was
| by heise.de (with the c't magazine).
| cyberpunk wrote:
| I think if you have spent the time, money and research
| getting good sounding equipment that you like, it's kinda
| automatic to also pick a streaming service which claims
| to offer higher quality even if you're aware that you're
| imagining it.
|
| I have about 2000 gbp worth of headphone gear (I'm not an
| audiophile, but I do like good sound) and I managed to
| convince myself tidal sounds better than Spotify..
|
| Is it bullshit? Probably but at the end of the day,
| there's a tenner difference and meh, it's far less
| important than my amp or cans.
| tpmx wrote:
| _I have about 2000 gbp worth of headphone gear (I'm not
| an audiophile, but I do like good sound)_
|
| ;-)
| cyberpunk wrote:
| _cough_ yeah fair point. Some of the people I know have
| 8000 gbp power amps on each one of their speakers though,
| so I recon I'm still in the clear ;)
| BenGosub wrote:
| Does this mean that full song play from the API doesn't work
| anymore, or it's about something else?
| pjmq wrote:
| essentially yes. You can use the web SDK to play songs but it's
| a very poor experience. Native apps can no longer play full
| songs.
| BenGosub wrote:
| Is it temporary or permanent?
| Aachen wrote:
| I'm surprised that was possible in the first place. How were
| there no clients that implemented Spotify then? I'd have
| loved to use something less shitty than the Spotify player,
| both on Linux where they keep breaking things that used to
| work and on Android where offline mode is a joke.
|
| The only third party Spotify player apps I saw were remote
| controls that just talked to a connected "device"
| (potentially on localhost).
| BenGosub wrote:
| I would call the experience anything but shitty. And yes,
| there are numerous of apps building on top of this, I
| maintain an app in production that use it.
| pjmq wrote:
| There were tons of unofficial clients, mostly open source
| efforts as Spotify didn't allow for any monetizable
| components in apps so it never made much sense to build a
| business off the back of it.
| anotherhue wrote:
| 1. Embrace - come build on our open APIs! Make us more relevant!
| All welcome! It's not going to be like Twitter.
|
| 2. Extend - That's a nice feature you've got there, shame if
| someone were to copy it.
|
| 2a. Hey podcasts are much cheaper to produce than songs, we can
| make our own, and people will spend their time listening to those
| instead of expensive licensed music. Buy all the podcasters,
| control what they say! Selection for Societal Sanity!
|
| 3. Extinguish - you keep calling the APIs that make us pay
| licensing fees. We can't push our own content if we don't control
| the UI. Albums are expensive, you should REALLY try our cheaper
| playlists. No? Then good riddance.
| [deleted]
| jrib wrote:
| I switched from google music to spotify because google made it
| impossible to use google music from an account on a custom domain
| with google home.
|
| Spotify is okay, but I wouldn't hesitate to move if something
| else is out there that has better value.
| pjmq wrote:
| What boils my blood the most about this is the fact Spotify lured
| developers in the early days, filled out their functional gaps
| and got free feature validation through those developers, bought
| and shuttered the Echonest to ensure devs would mostly only build
| for Spotify and its (Premium) subscriber base and then invested
| nothing into the developer ecosystem after that, instead chipping
| away at the existing tools and stopped responding to developers
| emails.
|
| It feels like Spotify showed music devs a green pasture and then
| corralled them into a slaughter pit (so to speak).
| matkoniecz wrote:
| This seems standard and entirely predictable progression of
| events, given that everything depended on proprietary,
| centrally controlled software and enormous pile of contracts?
|
| Has anyone expected anything else?
| pjmq wrote:
| You're not wrong. But if Spotify doesn't want to allow
| developers to be lab rats for wild and whacky ideas that are
| too risky for them to try themselves but could eventually
| either become or reveal the next big thing, they're leaving
| themselves _wide_ open to major disruption.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| I hope so! Not entirely is it true, network effects may be
| really powerful here. And "negotiate with 18383838
| copyright holders" is not a small task.
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| This was a financial executive decision for sure. A lot of
| those tend to be hostile towards paying customers.
| effingwewt wrote:
| This is why I can't understand the whole streaming garbage. There
| one day, gone the next.
|
| I never could understand how people can just rely on always
| having internet, or the service, available.
|
| I get my podcasts from whomever's webpage and just listen when I
| have time and delete when done if not worth keeping.
|
| Hopefully this will be a learning experience for younguns. My own
| kids love spotify. They pay for premium (meaning I do), but still
| always complain.
|
| I will say some of the playlists they listen to have turned me on
| to some really cool music. I see that as their only value to me,
| personally, but I still download them to have a listen at-will.
|
| I truly feel so bad for all the devs who put so much time,
| effort, and money into something to be yanked. But I also can't
| imagine my project hinging on the whims of a random company.
| daveoc64 wrote:
| > This is why I can't understand the whole streaming garbage.
| There one day, gone the next.
|
| It's a rental model.
|
| If Spotify ever shuts down, I can switch to any of its
| competitors quickly enough and I have lost nothing.
|
| > I never could understand how people can just rely on always
| having internet, or the service, available.
|
| I've been using Spotify for over 10 years, and I cannot recall
| a single time where I've been unable to use the service due to
| being offline and the offline features of their app not
| working. Not that I am ever offline much these days.
|
| >Hopefully this will be a learning experience for younguns.
|
| Most young people (and most users full stop) are going to be
| using the official apps, web app, or supported third-party
| devices and aren't going to notice a thing.
| rlpb wrote:
| I tend to listen to the same music that I like. Additions to
| my regular listening collection are fairly slow. So it isn't
| quite the same for me. If it were the nineties, I'd buy an
| album every few months. I could stop paying, and still have
| my music.
|
| Admittedly, Spotify is good for instant access and discovery.
| But it costs more than what I would otherwise be spending on
| buying albums.
| [deleted]
| pjmq wrote:
| As of September 1st, Spotify concluded its half-decade-long
| effort to stop developers from building experiences that allowed
| streaming outside of their own first-party apps.
|
| Starting with libspotify and then switching off their streaming
| SDKs earlier this month. An alternative to both was promised but
| none ever materialised.
|
| As a result, hundreds of apps still using this SDK out of
| necessity, have gone dark.
| hadrien01 wrote:
| Doesn't libspotify still work, albeit unofficially, because of
| old integrations in cars and other devices?
| leephillips wrote:
| It's been working for me, installed on a Linux computer
| attached to my sound system:
|
| https://lee-phillips.org/spotifyRemoteLinux/
|
| Bottom line is I can use the official Spotify client on my
| phone to get music from my stereo without using bluetooth.
| pjmq wrote:
| It died in May if the Spotify dev announcement page is to be
| believed. AFIK both the streaming SDKs and libspot used the
| same APIs under the hood so if it wasn't dead before...
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