The ads urge listeners to “join the mission to protect America” by becoming U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, but users of the music streaming giant have taken to social media and Spotify’s website to complain, and announce their withdrawal from the audio platform.
I made a tool to help with this. It sends encrypted Signal alerts when ICE shows up in your area based on community reports. Honestly been struggling to get the word out because everyone thinks it’s spam, but it’s legit and people are using it. iceheadsup.com Please check it out or share with someone it could help.
Damnit. Ok.
People still using Spotify?
Welp, no more Spotify for me
My tax dollars at work
Just canceled and deleted my account. Swore I’d never do that, years ago.
If you’re not gonna start your own media server or don’t know how, tidal is the way to go
Fine, I’ll be that guy - if you’re not already boycotting Spotify for half-a-dozen other reasons, you’re probably not going to for this.
You never know what the final straw will be for any given individual
Welcome warmly anyone who joins the fold – no chastisement, only positive feedback for a positive step.
Plus not everybody sees every news story.
Exactly what I was going to say. With so much shit going on all the time and so many awful companies making even worse decisions, it’s easy to miss what cartoon villain-esque business companies are getting up to at any moment.
Agreed, no chastisement here, just pointing out that it’s a bit ‘preaching to the converted’. Though as someone in this thread considered it a final straw, clearly it was of some use.
It is for me. I’m glad I ran across this article.
I boycott nearly everything else already. I’ve kept Spotify as a little treat even though I’m not a fan of their business practices. But this is it for me. It will be a tough adjustment, but I can’t support companies who support fascism.
Its a line that’s crossed. Podcasts and what not aren’t government. I’m generally ok with the idea that individuals spewing shit from their mouths is one thing.
Taking money from the regime in exchange for helping the regime to clamp down on human rights? That’s crossed a line. Disney learned the hard way and now Spotify will too.
Say what you will about capitalism, but I do deeply appreciate the fact that “learned the hard way” involves purely economic decisions and no actual threats of violence
I don’t remember who said it, but some billionaire equated boycotts with terrorism.
Exactly. Better late than scared back to the other side…
I was subscribed just so my Music Assistant could have my playlists and my kids liked the ease. I’ve exported those lists and just canceled.
I stand corrected.
does using a modified version that makes them no money count? asking for a friend
Is good but is also both illegal and traceable since Spotify definitely knows your IP address. Probably among the riskiest ways to get your streaming on
It’s been the most stable way for ages, and at most they’ll just ban the account. Either way I don’t know of anyone getting banned bc of this exact version. Maybe if you chat with spotify support and admit it they’ll care, but I highly doubt it’s illegal to block ad requests (or telemetry), adblock isn’t illegal and it’s no different to that.
Regarding my IP - every website I ever visited already knows it. If you’re not on static IP it’s insanely easy to change, rendering an IP ban useless.
edit: to make it simpler - there is no law that says you have to accept requests from an ad server, just like there is no law forbidding you from blocking them. And breaking ToS isn’t illegal by itself, at least over here.
I wonder how deeply integrated the ads are. Can a PiHole stop them?
Should be able to. Web players + adblock used to be a foolproof solution, I didn’t keep up with it though. I guess they could get some podcast ads and a few banners in.
Love my pinhole but it can’t stop YT ads
Yeah but they’ll just ban you. They’re not going to break down your door.
IF they care. I’m not talking about mobile apps here, you control what network requests go through or don’t. I don’t remember anyone getting arrested (or banned) for blocking ads.
edit: for clarity I’m talking about a specific patch on pc compared to modified apps on android
It’s better, but they gain something by collecting and selling
youryour friends data.The patch blocks sending analytics. Besides, without anything tied to the account, they’d only get your taste and that’s it. Kinda worthless in my opinion (without the ability to serve you ads)
Absolutely. People are insanely slow.
Also often only leaving a service or similar if it personally affects them negatively, otherwise just seeming angry but literally changing nothing.
I’ve been wanting to for a few years now as the service gets worse (where is my playlist radio?) but have been complacent. This is the last thing to push me over my limit. I’ll be transferring my decade-worth of playlists this weekend.
I was thinking of re-subscribing, but I am probably not going to now.
You’re wrong actually. I’m unsubscribing as we speak.
Was your reason, like some of the others stated, that it was the nature of the ads?
Yes.
It’s a line that was crossed. Fascist mouthpieces, while yes are very likely funded by regime allies or themselves directly, at least allowed for plausible deniability. Which is something I strongly support - innocent until proved guilty.
An advertisement recruiting for ICE is directly accepting money from the regime for suppressing human rights. There is no plausible deniability. None. Zero. Zilch. Nadda.
Military recruitment ads were different too, as it was supposed to be for the national interest to have a military to respond to INTERNATIONAL threats. (Obviously… That one is changing quicker than I’d like). It’s also usually not directly from the president himself.
But ICE, the FBI and other feds are nothing more than anti-human rights. They always have been, and it’s a very clear line I draw at monetarily supporting.
I mean I’ve been feeling the urge to for awhile now, it’s just a lot of work to move the family to something else. This is renewing my interest in sitting down and spending the time to do it.
You say that, but me moving my family plan over to Qobuz barely even interrupted the album that we were listening to - just waited for the track to end, and then switched services. Much better sound quality, much better curated recommendations, no more supporting fascist arseholes. No time like the present, do it.
Yeah I just have to sit down and move everyone’s playlists over.
Nahh, all those other reasons are kind of hidden from the average person who doesn’t read music or tech news, most of them probably have no idea that Spotify sucks. I’m sure there’s even people hearing the ad right after witnessing ICE violence firsthand
I fall into this camp. I’ve been using YT Music more than Spotify for a while now and I haven’t paid attention to any controversy since they added Joe’s podcast. “Recruiting for ICE”, however, is one of those things that will spur me to instant action.
.
Does it count as boycotting if I use the service for free with an ad blocker?
I thought people were already boycotting Spotify?
Man, y’all are weak-willed.
Are these the same users that that vowed to boycott Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Substack? Or are these the same users that vowed to boycott when Spotify started banking Joe Rogan and other rightwingers?
I’ve stopped using all of the above years ago, I’m no hypocrite, but I also know the number of people who will drop Spotify over this are a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of its massive user base. Nothing will ever change when it comes to big social media/tech companies like this because too many people don’t actually care.
People care, but seemingly not enough to actually follow through and drop their subscriptions.
You have to be willing to cause yourself some inconvenience in order to do what’s right.
PSA: It’s not just Spotify.
"But the recruitment ads have been running on more than one music or streaming platform, with fans flagging concerns with the ads on Hulu, Max, YouTube, and Pandora, over the past six months. "
"In August, DHS confirmed to The Independent that it would be running advertisements on YouTube, Max, Amazon Prime Video, X, LinkedIn, and other internet platforms. "
“Similarly, Spanish-language channels such as Univision and Telemundo have also run ads featuring Kristi Noem urging “illegal aliens” not to come into the country. “Join the mission to protect America with bonuses up to $50,000 and generous benefits. Apply now join.ice.gov and fulfill your mission,” says one ad.”
Amazon video and X would be surprising NOT to see on the list.
Okay, post your selfhosted and open-source/non-corporate alternatives here!
I have personal experience with FunkWhale . You upload music and it lets you stream or download. Simple, functional, nice. But missing fun features out of the box like sharing, scrobbling, and recommendations.
I’ve heard good things about Navidrome and Airsonic.
Considering setting up Jellyfin.
Plex or Plex amp.
For those that don’t know: host on home computer, stream, or download to phone (think download needs paid.)
Plex is freemium and only partly open source correct?
That makes me very nervous.
What parts/features are walled off?If downloading requires $$, then I guarantee it’s just a matter of time before you lose access to “your” music.
Is there a pure open fork?
Plex is freemium in the sense that the software walls off certain features. But the content is always hosted by you; Plex doesn’t actually control any of your media. You’re not hosting it on Plex’s servers. So there’s no way for them to realistically take your media away from you.
Jellyfin is the FOSS alternative, but isn’t quite mature enough to overcome the “friends and family factor” in many peoples’ setups. Basically, Plex makes remote access easy, by proxying the initial connection. The same way DDNS turns a dynamic IP address into a static URL. You host the media server, it tells Plex “hey, I’m located at this address”, and then your various devices simply ask Plex what your server address is. So in that sense, connecting with plex “just works” much easier.
Plex also handles all of the signup and onboarding stuff; Sharing your media libraries is as simple as having them create a Plex account, sending each other friend requests, then granting access to your server. Plex handles all of the backend authentication stuff, and they made their own account, so you’re not bogged down by managing a ton of different accounts.
With Jellyfin, all of that DDNS and account management stuff needs to be set up by you. The Jellyfin devs don’t host any centralized servers, so there’s no way for an app to ask what your server’s address is. And since they’re signing in directly to your server, (because again, no centralized service to handle that), it means you as the server owner are managing accounts for all of your friends and family. So if grandma forgot her password for the fifth time this month, you’re the one resetting her password.
There are other ancillary services that help smooth a lot of that out, but setting them up is a fairly obtuse process if you’ve never done anything like it before. And it also means that you’re setting up six or seven different containers, just to emulate what Plex does right out of the box. The demographics here tend to skew towards system admins and IT professionals, so all of the inevitable “psh, setting it up is easy. I did it in 15 minutes” comments are built upon a lot of external knowledge and experience. Of course, there is a relevant xkcd for that:
On the bright side, you can run both in parallel, and see which one you prefer. They’re just providing access to existing media folders (and indexing that media to grab metadata, album art, etc,) so they’re perfectly fine to run side-by-side. Many people (myself included) do so.
Thank you this was a really useful comment.
I happen to be an IT guy (but not much of a Networking guy) so between Claude and Stackoverflow I can probably set up “ancillary services”, esp if there are general guides somewhere.
I’m definitely willing to spend more of my own time and money if at the end I have something I truly own. Bonus if I wind up understanding a little more tech in the process.
Also worth noting that Jellyfin has several known vulnerabilities. Nothing catastrophic, but there are a few “people who already know your library’s naming scheme can access media without authentication” types of things. If you follow the recommended guides exactly, it means you’ll end up with the exact same library layout as lots of other users. It can largely be solved by simply using slightly different folder names, but it’s still worth mentioning in case you want to avoid some random bot being able to access your library. And the Jellyfin devs have openly stated that they have no intentions of fixing them, because it would require a complete code rewrite.
Most people will say that it’s best to avoid exposing it to your WAN, and simply use a VPN to connect to your LAN instead. But that completely blows the aforementioned “friends and family factor” out of the water, because now you’re requiring them to figure out a VPN before they can even begin to access your server. And it also means that they can only watch on devices that will actually be able to run a VPN connection. So your grandma’s shiny new smart TV will be completely unable to connect (unless you feel like being the family IT support, and setting the VPN up on her router).
And while we’re on the topic of smart TVs, some of the most popular ones don’t have a native Jellyfin app. You can sideload on most of them, but (again) we’re considering that friends and family factor. If your grandma has to sideload the app before she can even access it, it’s a non-starter for many people.
On the other side of the same coin, Plex recently disclosed a password breach. Hackers got emails and password hashes. So there are benefits and drawbacks to both systems. Of course this is largely solved by not reusing passwords and simply resetting your password to something new, but that burden is on the individual users.
When I deployed FunkWhale, I set people up with sub:Sonic on their phones. That is working well (except for the complaint that FunkWhale is “boring” and doesn’t have “features”)
A plus is that FunkWhale has a default web-based player, so as long as the device (eg Smart TV) has a browser, it can stream. Kludgey, but usable.
I had Plex for a long time, but switched to Jellyfin as they’ve been pushing more paid products even to lifetime-pass users. Very easy to switch, haven’t looked back.
I just use Jellyfin, with Finamp for playing on my phone.
I am considering Jellyfin on a VPS host so securing it is a concern (though not a major one; I basically grok reverse proxies/nginx etc)
Interested in your observations as a user and admin
Different person but it’s really not a big deal. I’ve created a username for my friends, and they for me on theirs. Easy as pie.
I keep a local backup just in case something happens, just setup vps again and go. I use nginx to force https, and go. I’ve also limited to US, Canadian, and U.K. ips only so pretty much never see unusual activity trying to access it (if I ever share with someone elsewhere I’ll whitelist their specific IP).
I’m also running full IPv6 which just worked.
Edited to add: I only share with trusted friends who I know won’t two and delete the database or something. Just use basic security and you’re good.
limited to US, Canadian, and U.K. ips
oooh why didn’t I think of that? Imma do the same for some of my selfhost VPS (such as the abovementioned Funkwhale). I have friends in US/UK/Canada but as it turns out none in, eg China or Russia, which is like 85%+ of malicious connection attempts
I was hosting behind nginx for a while, however recently switched to tailscale VPN. The reasoning was less to do with security (though that’s a fine bonus), and more to do with the fact that I couldn’t get split DNS resolution working very well. As in, use one address while on LAN but a different address when I’m away from home, mostly relevant on my phone. I was getting frustrated with that and Tailscale just works really well once it’s set up.
Music Assistant with Lidarr
Interesting, I hadn’t heard of Lidarr.
The github is active, lots of features, cross-platform support,Lidarr is a music collection manager for Usenet and BitTorrent users
This gives me pause. My user base includes non-technical family members. And the model I am looking for is for us to upload our own music to share (like old-time mixtapes) vs straight-up pirating
Lidarr is to fill your collection with. Music Assistant is for playing. It creates a web interface that you can play to any smart speakers or just devices running the browser window will allow you to send songs to it. They are working on an app and hopefully it will be released soon
I’ll start with I have not researched alternatives to Spotify with my comments here. Reason I have always had Spotify is that it’s just so easy to see options to listen to and BAM I’ve got hours of playlists and podcasts right there. Reason I never tried to do any self hosted media (I have an Unraid server and access to music) is because I don’t know how to get the above item without having to go out and find artists, download music, setup playlist, etc etc. Any thoughts on my laziness?
*arr stack my friend. I use docker-compose files for pretty much everything. Jellyfin as a media server for pretty much everything, many choices are available for a front end, but my symphonium purchase has paid for itself many times over.
This is pretty close to what I set up, but not exactly.
Get friends who also value keeping their music. Everyone uploads; everyone benefits
Navidrome’s alright, Jellyfin has, in my opinion, a bit of a better UI, but not by a huge amount, and it’s handled my metadata a bit better.
TY. super appreciate comments like this from people who’ve already done the work and tried stuff out
Navidrome is what you’re looking for. Jellyfin does music but it’s better for TV, Movie, YouTube and books.
Client like symfonium can do some of the recommendations
Try radiooooo for a fairly wide selection of tracks from 1900 to the current year. There are featured playlists compiled by the site itself, but no user generated ‘channels/playlists’. Virtually every country is represented (although understandably you may not find any/much content from Azerbaijan in the 1920’s or Tunisia in the 40’s). Content is not divided by genre, instead by country of origin, decade and “Slow, Fast, Weird”.
It’s hard to find an ethical player in the media space, especially the streaming space. It’s hard to even agree on what that would look like and how it would work.
Having said that, it’s clear that Spotify isn’t it. From the first time the client paused an ad when I muted my laptop volume I knew the enshittification was coming. I’ve been Spotify free for a few years now, but decline to recommend my current solution because it’s not much better. When I have time again, I’ll be sorting my local music library and physical media.
ICE ads would have sent me over the top. That would be a FAST cancel from me.
It’s hard to find an ethical player in capitalism.
I’ve not used Spotify since they provided Rogan with a platform, ICE ads was the next logical step for that fascist friendly platform.
Already done.
The tough part is that my parents are on my Spotify family plan and not tech savvy at all to use anything that I would self host. I know I can patch Spotify app and self host content on my PC but there’s no way they could troubleshoot anything if something broke. For them Spotify works and me not using my own Spotify account isn’t going to accomplish anything even if I disagree with the companies decisions. I like Spotify and would like to keep using it because I have found lots of new music through it but it’s a tough spot. Companies take advantage of users that don’t know how to do anything else.
Why can’t you & your parents live without Spotify? I’ve lived without it my entire life and I promise you nothing’s lacking. Is your idle comfort & convenience more important than doing your part to STOP OUR CURRENT HITLER??
As soon as Tidal or Qobuz add a couple real key functionalities that Spotify has but they don’t I’m switching right over
What about Deezer?
I believe their founder (or CEO?) also has his own controversy. Based on what I’ve seen so far, Quboz is the best choice if you really need to use a streaming service.
A few months ago I was looking for a Spotify alternative and tried out Deezer, Tidal, and Qobuz. Deezer would have no idea what song I was just listening to on my computer if I switched to my phone. That was a deal breaker. Tidal was pretty good, but lacked collaborative playlists. I landed on Qobuz and am pretty happy with it. The one slightly annoying thing is I’ve seen a few cases of bands having albums mapped to them that aren’t actually them, but some other band/artist with the same name. Not a deal breaker for me, just slightly annoying and something that will hopefully get cleaned up over time.
Or, be part of the user base to increase their numbers and be part of the wave that provides user feedback so dev teams can prioritize those features.
Not that I trust Tidal not to turn to shit eventually, probabaly some time after an IPO.
I know Apple isn’t popular with Lemmy users, but Apple Music feels like more of a safe home for that reason. Apple’s business model is very established, unlike Tidal which could change rapidly with an IPO. At the end of the day, nothing is safe that isn’t self hosted, but there are only so many hours in the day to self host services.
I already did this. I joined both, paid them money and then found out they were lacking these features after doing so. I gave them the feedback. Unfortunately the lack of them really gets in the way of how I like to listen to music. I’m sure others will be feeding back the same
Yeah I also saw that Tidal had announced they’d be scaling back the amount of funding on development fairly recently before I tried them out. Which didn’t fill me with much hope. But I’ve not written them off at all. It’s not like Spotify is really raising the bar at all these days anyway
Tidal
Wikipedia: “Tidal is now majority-owned by Block, Inc., the owner of the point-of-sale system Square.”
Yo, hard pass. Corporate platforms are just enshittification waiting to happen. And Jack Dorsey can suck my balls in particular.Qobuz
Same deal. Just a matter of time before all your music disappears because of some geoppolitical or corporate billshit
In 2021, Qobuz was made available in six more countries: Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Australia and New Zealand.[25] Qobuz offered its service in six further countries in 2022: Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, and Portugal,[26] additionally launched in Canada in 2023,[27]and launched in Japan in 2024.[28]
if it can be opened up to a country, it can be blocked just as easily.
Ok but I’m not sure personally what my other option is? Of course there’s buying the music directly, which good on people for doing that. It is the best and most ethical way. But something I always find kinda frustrating about the “just buy your own music” comments that are always all over these posts is I have a very wide music taste and really like to keep up with new music too. I have over 12,000 songs saved on Spotify. I’m also broke, jobless and homeless. I’m sorry but doing that isn’t a viable option for me. I would love to be able to support all these artists but the best I can do is play their music a lot on Spotify and spread the word about them to others. I also go to a lot of gigs but so many acts that I like are big enough that they play big venues and are very expensive to see because of it.
Download all you can. You can always stream from audio to a WAV or MP3 and keep that. Or download from YouTube.
Once you actually have a copy of your music you have options. But while it is all inside some asshole’s walled garden, you are at their mercy
