This should be the top comment.

OP, how about you’re more transparent next time?

“I’m fine, thanks. Who are you?”

My first week at the MAGIC school! 💥🏰 | Vlog, Room Tour, Teacher tier list I feat. @hgranger and @ronny_w

Winning the lottery. Not “acceptable” maybe, but a valid reason nonetheless.

Thanks for the tip!

I don’t mind paying for the music. What I do mind, however, is the kind-of hostage situation that I am in with Spotify. I understand that they have costs that need to be covered. (Though, podcasts - especially exclusive ones - are NOT what I ordered.) I want to be in control of my data, and be able to easily transition to competitors and/or self-hosted solutions.

I guess one of the more difficult things to have “free” is the music that could be of interest to you, but you do not already own it.

I was contemplating to go back to reading album reviews and music news myself, but that seems like a larger time invest.

That is a very good question.

• What would it cost if I was to acquire the music in my library?
• What if I wanted to sail the seven seas instead? Where would I get the music from?

As for the algorithm, a lot of the suggestions for new music is probably also available to non-premium users (e.g. “Discover Weekly”) and could be scraped/downloaded from the API.

I believe there could be a rise in demand for a solution to migrate away from these audio walled gardens, especially with the upcoming price hike.

My observation during Covid was that once they are “hooked” on a certain conspiracy, they go out of their way to discredit/ignore any facts that state otherwise. My assumption is that the longer this goes on, the harder they are fighting to stick to “their truth”. They rather accept obvious false news than accept that they were wrong initially.

Why? Because they would need to go back and acknowledge being wrong, " loosing their face" in front of a lot of people. They may have had angry conversations over the conspiracies with loved ones and may have even cut ties. (Experienced that first-hand with family.) The further down the rabbit hole they go, the higher the “costs” of going back up.

I tried to avoid going into details, but they started to say something among the lines of, “Well, things are not like your media wants you make believe…” (aka “The press is lying to you/us”).

They seem suspicious of mainstream media. How they find their Telegram channels to be more competent is beyond me.

I wish it was that easy. That part of my family is a bit more remote, so I don’t see them that often. Still, I hurt thinking about how this misinformation was able to divide us like that. There’s also little point in arguing with them. We simply don’t talk much anymore, and if we do, we keep the topics light and refrain from politics and/or other world-news topics such as climate change. (Which is not really a thing, if you ask them, but I think you get the idea.)

For us, the topics just changed. After Covid, they started to talk Pro-Putin bullshit, probably Q-Anon related. It’s honestly shocking to see people who I once thought of as intelligent turn brainwashed. We rarely talk anymore, and if we do, it’s very superficial.