Spotify is officially raising its Premium subscription rates in the US come July, following reports of the move in April. The platform is increasing its Individual plan from $11 to $12 monthly and its Duo plan from $15 to $17 monthly — the same jump as last year’s $1 and $2 price hikes, respectively. However, its Family plan is going up by a whopping $3, increasing from $17 to $20 monthly. The only subscribers getting a break are students, who will continue to pay $6 monthly.
Spotify announced the price hikes less than a year after its previous one last July. Before that, Spotify hadn’t raised its fees since launching a decade and a half ago. I guess it was too optimistic to hope the next increase would also take that long, especially with Spotify’s continued focus (and money dump) on audiobooks.
Premium subscribers should receive an email from Spotify in the next month detailing the price hike and providing a link to cancel their plan if they would prefer to do so. Users currently on a trial period for Spotify will get one month at $11 after it ends before being moved up to a $12 monthly fee.
You should check out Plexamp while you bridge the gap. It has tidal support built in, and you can self-host your own collection as you build it up. Then when you’re done with tidal, you don’t have to learn or download a new app.
Plex is also on the route of enshittitfication. Jellyfin is the better recommendation imo. A variety of apps that can connect to it too, for either streaming or music.
For music libraries:
There is no point to self hosting music streaming in my opinion.
Just have syncthing sync your music folder on your SD card to your server. Everything local and available when you want it.
Plex is slowly being enshittified too it seems, just slower.
I do, but the music streaming on jellyfin is nowhere near as nice as plexamp.
Just syncing all of your files locally is far superior to either unless your library is like >250GB.
Streaming is a different use case than playing your own music which is essentially what plexamp and jellyamp are doing with extra steps. There are much better local music players than either option.
