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I didn’t even know they did that, Glad I don’t have an account with them. I’m partially deaf, most music I can’t understand what someone singing. Those fun things people do of like “most common misheard lyrics” is basically my life. On the plus side I enjoy music from around the world because unintelligible music is unintelligible no matter where it’s from. They’re very few artists I feel like I can understand, and realistically I’m probably wrong.
In real life, I read lips to help augment my terrible hearing. Fun fact during the mask man dates during COVID, was probably the worst time for me. A lot of people I could hear talking as I could hear noise but I could not make out what it was. Leading to a lot of awkward conversations.
Anyhoo, that’s all to say that for music that I do like I do have to see the lyrics. It’s what converts the noise into words.
So, fuck you Spotify, My life’s difficult enough already, I’m not paying your shitty service so you can charge me for my impairment.
why the FUCK does anyone still use spotify, it’s a fucking joke. Unusable without paying for it.
paying $15 a month to listen to anything I want instantly is worth it
They don’t have everything. I have plenty of tracks on my drive at home that aren’t available. ALSO, sometimes you’ll find a track you like and save it locally in Spotify, then Spotify decides they don’t like that track anymore and you no longer have access to it. It still shows up in your library but it’s grayed out.
Also their shuffle button is hot garbage, at least on Android. It’s been garbage for years and it recently got even worse.
I’ve never used Spotify could you give a quick run down on why their shuffle sucks? Shouldn’t it just be random songs?
I heard they’ve fixed it, but it used to be limited to 100 songs, and it was a simple re-order and not actually random. It’d always put tracks in the same order (unless you’ve changed something in the first 100 tracks since last time)
You’d have a 300 song playlist, hit shuffle, and it’d “shuffle” the same 100 songs in the same order, but start at a different point every time.
It doesn’t seem very random to me. What user “vodka” said might be true. Whatever, I can deal with that. What really grinds my gears is that Spotify frequenty turns on shuffle when I want it off, and it frequently switches to “smart shuffle” when I want regular shuffle. “Smart shuffle” will mix in songs that it thinks you might want to hear. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve turned off shuffle without having turned it on. I assume they have some competent people working at Spotify so I can’t imagine how they could have let it get to this state.
you can just crack the APK to use it for free.
I left Spotify for Tidal. But why would anyone feel obliged for free music from a commercial host? Just self host if you dont want to pay. Piracy is always morally right. It’s preservation of cultural heritage.
I choose to pay for Tidal because of convenience. I refuse to pay for more than 2 streaming services. It’s fairly easy for any adult to make choices like that.
This is an imagined problem and a fairly new one to.
Left handed people having to use tools and appliances designed for right handed people is an actual bigger issue.
While I agree that this is stupid, why would a deaf person be using Spotify in the first place?
Deafness isn’t binary, they could be capable of hearing the music but not making out the lyrics.
As someone who is not deaf, this was a really helpful comment to help me understand, thank you.
To everyone else reading down here, lot of people also don’t really get this same idea with visual impairment and other handicaps.
There are a lot of people who are legally blind, but that just means they can’t make out things at certain distances, and these are why we need things like high-visibility curbs and street markers and large-type text options and other accessibility features that able-bodied people in a wide field of industries often forget about and just assume either people are blind and won’t be using their products, or will have perfect vision. When really there are far more people who are considered deaf or blind who can still enjoy many of the same things as someone with fully faculties and just need a little extra help.
I am only typing this out because we seem to entering a strange time in the developed world where more and more people are withdrawing from the social contract and not extending compassion towards others, particularly those with special needs.
When I was little I thought the future would be a bright and remarkable place where people took care of each other, because those were the messages you see on PBS shows like Mr Rogers and Sesame Street. Turns out, a LOT of people didn’t watch those shows.
And even people who cannot hear anything at all still feel the bass and stuff.
Relevant funny story from Deaf actor Daniel Durant: https://youtube.com/shorts/eYQKtwkoZOI
hissss!!!
Excuse me while I kiss this guy!
(mumbles in yellow led better)
Oh the feelin/ On a voice of betters yeah/ And i said/ I wanna be dead again
I don’t know what your problem is. Yellow Ledbetter is totally understandable
On a wizard, on a whale, Anna no, Anna no I don’t wanna be dead again.
Bunny’s too tight to mention
Just to clarify definitions that probably wouldn’t be considered deafness, it would be an audio processing disorder. Ability to hear music but inability to process the words.
Deafness is “binary” in that it just means ones ability to hear sound or not. If you can hear sound even slightly then you just have a hearing impairment and are not deaf.
No it really isn’t. The hard of hearing are considered deaf. There’s complete deafness, much like there’s complete blindness, but the fact that you’re calling it hearing impairment instead of hard of hearing indicates you aren’t as well versed in Deafness (not to be confused with deafness) as you think
Deafness is commonly understood to include both total and partial hearing loss. Every major dictionary defines it this way. It might have a more precise meaning in some spheres (medical, etc), but in common English it is not binary the way you’re suggesting.
Makes sense!
So I’m not deaf, not in the slightest, but I struggle to understand lyrics in music. I love music, I live and breathe it and I’m gonna dedicate my life to it, but I’ve always struggled with understanding lyrics in music. To me, the vocalist is just another instrument in the mix. Having lyrics to read helps me appreciate my favorite tunes more!
For me it is certain singers that apparently everyone else understands but I cannot without knowing the words ahead of time. Not just mumbling, some voices just don’t register clearly for me if I don’t know what they are saying.
It can depend on the mixing, too. Not just in regards to volume, but also in how the vocals are edited. My recent obsession has been Dusk at Cubist Castle, shit’s absolutely amazing. The way a lot of the vocals are mixed and processed are super cool, like layering the same lines over themselves five times over with subtle delays and panning, it sounds real cool! But it makes it sound a lot more distant to me as a result.
Seems like they could just Google the lyrics and read that.
But I guess Spotify lyrics do give an idea on the pace of the song.
Or pay for the service like they suggested
ew
Only if they’ve been synched, a lot of lyrics on there aren’t.
Long shot guess: deaf person can “listen” to vibrations of music with their hands on a speaker but this is not possible with lyrics?
So imagine you’re listening to rap. But you’re hard of hearing. The beats still slap, but the words aren’t intelligible. Hell the beats are even better because you got a subwoofer that shakes the floor. But you know it’s poetry, it’s about the words as much as the beats. So of course you’d want to read along
Is that you, Helen?
Spotube.
Agreed.
I spent the last month converting all of my Spotify likes to MP3 files and ended my subscription in Mid-June.
Their greedy, shrinkflating, enshittifying asshole CEO can go fuck himself.
If you want Spotify for free and lyrics for free, just Google the lyrics…
fuck off, it’s not that simple. Spotify you can’t just play whatever and also you can skip like 5 songs per hour or whatever the fuck. Charging for lyrics is fucking ridiculous and you saying just google it isn’t any better.
Spotify you can’t just play whatever and also you can skip like 5 songs per hour or whatever the fuck.
Okay? That has literally nothing to do with getting lyrics for free…
Charging for lyrics is fucking ridiculous and you saying just google it isn’t any better.
The people are entitled to their free music and free lyrics right in the same spot. Having to do a single Google search to get those lyrics is inconceivable!
While I mostly agree, there is a difference. In Spotify, you can play a song and it highlights the lyrics as they are sung
Not always, only if they’re synced.
Hopefully it’s gotten better, but I know years ago song lyrics sites were a major source of malware.
I’m not saying it’s an excuse for hiding accessibility features behind a paywall, but for that you’re going to want to search YouTube for “(song title) karaoke”.
I’m so confused by people under this post defending a company’s scheme to make more money that disproportionately affects disabled people.
So how did deaf people enjoy music for free before Spotify?
Talking about lyrics specifically?; they probably didn’t. That’s no reason to not make things more accessible to people with disabilities though. It’s about quality of life and making sure people with disabilities have equitable access.
If having the lyrics available is an essential part of being able to enjoy the music, it should be as equally accessible as the music is.
Definitely. But if this specific feature, that isn’t even primarily intended as an accessibility feature, has apparently not been available before in this form, does it make sense to call out Spotify for making that feature available “only” limited on the free version?
But yes, I’m aware of the community I’m on right now :D
If it were a paid account yeah, it’d be extremely shitty. But seeing as it’s a free account, it’s their prerogative to try and get people to pay for the service. Besides, I don’t get this entitlement that spotify has to provide music for free. They’re a (admittedly greedy) middle-man that wants to get paid. If one wants free music and everything, well, time to self-host.
it’s their prerogative to try and get people to pay for the service.
Except that this attempt could easily be shown to largely land on folks with accessibility needs. That’s a big no-no under many laws.
An interesting comparison is pay-to-ride elevators. For most folks an elevator is a nice convenience they would not mind occasionally paying for.
But for some folks, the elevator is completely essential. This dynamic resulted in making pay-to-ride elevators illegal in most places, today.
Due to the uniquely fucked up way music licensing works, it’s likely they license the lyrics through a separate company than the music and probably don’t even directly license it themselves (Tidal for example uses Musicmatch’s lyric library and api). There’s a cost associated with this that is likely outside their control. It’s shitty, but it is plalusibly reasonable they implemented this as a cost savings measure.
You don’t need lyrics to listen to music however. If she’s deaf and can’t hear the music then I don’t know why she needs Spotify.
Ah, so you don’t understand disabilities then. Got it.
You don’t need lyrics to listen to music however.
I also don’t need an elevator to move between floors of a building that has stairs, while some people do.
I think they were more saying you don’t need to understand the lyrics to enjoy music, which would be more like if the elevator still worked for the person in the wheelchair but the mirrors inside are hung so you can only see yourself if standing.
Much like many disabilities, deafness isn’t a hard binary between hearing Vs deaf, but a spectrum dependent on many factors. For example, someone may have hearing loss in a particular frequency range, which may affect their ability to hear lyrics. I would also expect that someone’s relationship to music may be impacted by whether they were born deaf or acquired deafness later in life.
The point that other are making about this as an accessibility problem is that a lot of disability or anti-discrimination has provisions for rules or policies that are, in and of themselves, neutral, but affect disabled people (or other groups protected under equality legislation) to a greater degree than people without that trait. In the UK, for example, it might be considered “indirect discrimination”.
You might not need lyrics to listen to music, but someone who is deaf or hard of hearing is likely going to experience and enjoy music differently to you, so it may well be necessary for them.
I don’t even know the lyrics to some of my favorite songs. I think the whole complaining about unlimited, free lyrics is ridiculous. Spotify isn’t a charity and just because someone can’t enjoy music as much due to not reading lyrics isn’t an accessibility thing.
Guess Spotify should just get rid of the free tier and then this wouldn’t even be an issue.
Okay, well get back to me when you have some lived experience of deafness and maybe we can have a productive discussion then, seeing as my point seems to have gone completely over your head.
hiding accessibility features behind a pay wall is disgusting, because only people with disabilities have to pay for it. *edit if you’re downvoting, just let me know so I can block all of the ableists running around this community
They can get Spotify but can’t Google lyrics?
so you’re cool with people with disabilities having to do more labor than you to get the same thing? go fuck yourself
If I want to get free lyrics for free Spotify, I would have to do the same labor…
Also I downvoted you, so go ahead and plug your ears and block me, like a child.
But seeing as it’s a free account, it’s their prerogative
Oh, so not charging money magically exempts companies from meeting ADA accessibility requirements for their public accommodations?
Edit: what I’m taking issue with is the notion that being on the free tier of service changes anything. Maybe Spotifiy has an obligation or maybe it doesn’t, but either way, it’s the same regardless of how much or little the customer pays. Being a second-class customer does not make you a second-class citizen who doesn’t get equal protection under the law!
Do radio stations provide lyrics?
The
factpossibility that they’re unable to provide lyrics gives radio stations a free pass on this, under ADA (and most similar laws).Edit: Correction, per correction below - options for providing radio captions do exist.
they are able to, many FM stations support RDS to serve data. ever been ina car that told you the song playing on the radio or the station’s name? yeah thats RDS.
You are technically correct - the best kind of correct! (Futurama quote, meaning I appreciate your correction.)
It’s probably not an issue for a station that simply doesn’t have that level of captioning, yet.
But I take your point - it would likely be a violation if they had that captioning and tried to monetize it. (In my substantially professionally trained but still non-expert opinion.)
They can provide lyrics, most have websites, they can print a pamphlet, that’s just excuses to justify crying out against one and not the other.
What makes them unable to, but Spotify able to?
Once an organization can no longer claim an accessibility accomodation is an undue burden, then various laws kick in dictating how that accessibility accomodation must be managed.
As was pointed out, many radio stations do provide captions, and in doing so, fall under the same laws about how they managed those captions.
Spotify is also a big enough organization that any claim of “undo burden” would probably not hold up in court, anyway.
While a small local radio station might well be protected, and is a good example of why such exceptions exist.
Once an organization can no longer claim an accessibility accomodation is an undue burden, then various laws kick in dictating how that accessibility accomodation must be managed.
What…? The laws applies to everyone, you can’t just claim I can’t afford it. Got a source please?
As was pointed out, many radio stations do provide captions, and in doing so, fall under the same laws about how they managed those captions.
Where was this pointed out? Most don’t, and the few that do just link to other places, something Spotify could do to with what you’re claiming. Why do they need to provide the actual words when radios don’t? Another source on this would be great. You’re already saying the laws apply differently, but are the same? You’ve contradicted yourself multiple times already….
Spotify is also a big enough organization that any claim of “undue burden” would probably not hold up in court, anyway.
Source that’s a thing.
While a small local radio station might well be protected, and is a good example of why such exceptions exist.
So I can just claim I don’t make enough and not need to follow any ADA laws? That doesn’t sound right, even non-profits get riddled with ads claims, so again, source please!
We all know you’re talking out of your ass, so yeah I don’t expect any actual response, so enjoy your weekend troll!
Some do. It’s pretty rare, but stations that are more talk-show or interview style shows might have transcripts on their site afterwards. (The Final Straw Radio, my beloved)
Music stations? Probably not. At least I’m not aware of any that do. But I also don’t like hearing the disk jockey chat between music so I don’t listen to that type of radio ever.
Most just provide links to other places actually if they do, the point is, it’s nothing to do with ADA and if it was, radio would be required to too.
ADA accessibility requirements for their public accommodations
Source that providing lyrics to songs is a requirement?
I never said it was. I said that the requirement is the same whether it’s a free account or a paid one. It’s either always required or it’s never required, but it sure as Hell is not “their prerogative” based on how much they get paid.
Think about it for a second: what the parent commenter is suggesting is that it’s somehow okay for a company to use compliance with legal requirements as an upselling opportunity! You do see the problem with that line of thinking, right?!
I never said it was. I said that the requirement is the same whether it’s a free account or a paid one.
Which is completely irrelevant if its not actually a requirement. So I’m asking you to prove that it is.
What’s relevant is that the commenter I replied to suggested that it’s Spotify’s “prerogative” whether to comply with the law or not. It isn’t.
This issue here is people spouting dangerous late-stage-capitalist nonsense, not the content of the ADA rule. Your demand is actually just a derailment tactic.
What’s relevant is that the commenter I replied to suggested that it’s Spotify’s “prerogative” whether to comply with the law or not. It isn’t.
No they did not. You brought up the law.
The person agreeing with you has literally said they can claim they don’t make enough and not need to comply with ADA laws…. Apparantly…. So yeah they can just choose to not comply. This is from someone working directly with them, so we have to accept this is true I guess.
Providing a substantially inferior outcome to someone with an ADA need absolutely violates ADA rules.
When stuff like this has gone to court it hasn’t been pretty for the offending organization.
There’s a bigger question about how much of what Spotify currently provides falls under ADA. Web services used to get a free pass. They largely don’t anymore.
Source: some of this stuff is my problem, professionally. And no, I’m not going to look up a primary source for anyone. That’s Spotify’s lawyers job.
So no, just talking out of your ass then.
You can Google the lyrics to songs on any device you can view them on Spotify.
While I make it a personal policy to talk out of my ass as much as possible, in this case I just don’t like you enough to help you.
Help me do what, exactly?
Wow, that’s hot trash. Imagine subtitles on movies and TV being stuck behind a paywall.
Look, they don’t need your help in implementing bad ideas. Please stop assisting them… For all our mental health.
I mean, technically a lot of them are, you can’t see subtitles for most movies without paying to see the movie, same with any TV show you can’t watch with just an antenna.
Prime Video - ‘hold my hat’
“Let’s run ads to announce it!”
shhh don’t give them ideas jesus what are you doing
Search for something called “Spicetify” and make sure to install the marketplace as well for more addons.
Nice.
wait why should deaf people enjoy music? And not through vibrations but LYRICS?!?!
I might get a bit of hate for this considering the community name, but Spotify is the one subscription I pay for and don’t feel like I’m getting ripped off. Basically every song I want is on there, they very rarely remove content, and the algorithm actually comes up with decent recommendations. I even like some of the other random features like Spotify wrapped.
But the main difference I see vs other subscriptions is that I don’t feel locked in, since there are no Spotify originals etc if they ever make the service too shit (which admittedly they might since they keep raising the price and trying to shove podcasts down everyone’s throat) I could easily switch to a different streaming service or even go back to just buying music outright
I guess deaf people aren’t allowed to enjoy music like the rest of y’all.
I’m so sorry but this is the absolute funniest shit I have ever read. 😂
Being deaf is a spectrum. There are plenty of people who still have some hearing, and are “hard of hearing”. There’s deaf people who can enjoy music through the use of hearing aids as well. There’s also totally deaf people who can enjoy music because of the vibrations. There’s people whose hearing is just bad enough that they don’t understand what anyone is saying without subtitles/lyrics. Deaf in only one ear, etc.
