EDIT: The only reason why I still had it at this point was because I could use it with other apps. However, now that my Spotify Subscription is cancelled, it doesn’t work with anything. It’s mildly infuriating because today, I can’t still use it with other apps like I was able to yesterday.
Please don’t make the same mistake I made. No one should buy this.
I cancelled my paid Spotify account because I can’t get them to stop fucking recommending Joe Rogan to me.
I’m moments away from canceling. Splash screens of some bullshit podcast or something I don’t want to see. Getting fed up.
leave em sail the seas or tidal for the same price you get better audio so win win in my book either way
plus you’re supporting jigga
Allegedly, YouTube Music is about to shove podcasts in our faces with a soon to come update.
I’m leaving YTM if they do that. I’ll go back to ☠️⚓⛵ and using locally available music.
If you have an android, just download blackplayer and use a YT link to mp3 site to get whatever music you want.
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I’ve been pretty happy with YouTube music. I got legacied in due to Google Music shutting down and thought I would hate it, but I’ve had zero complaints. Plus, it comes with free YouTube Premium, so I haven’t seen an ad in years.
I have so many complaints, Google Play music was fine. It did exactly what I wanted it to.
YouTube music is like an alien looked at that app, and tried to recreate it exclusively by smashing it’s forehead against a keyboard until an app that started most of the time came out.
I would actually argue that Google Play Music was the best music streaming app that I’ve used. It was great being able to upload music from CDs of small local bands and have it right in there with the other streaming music.
Just today I had a hankering to listen to a specific song through my android auto, and instead of just being able to verbally ask the unit for that song, or even being able to search through the atrocity that is the YouTube Music interface on my head unit, I had to pull over, pull out my phone, search for the band, then click the uploads tab (because uploaded music does not show with the regular search results) and then click the song to get it to play.
Yes and the glorious “playing near you” feature of Play Music. That made the best recommendations for local shows, and I mean local, within a few miles, not just bands I’d listened to but always relevant and often small shows! That feature, I found several new bands I liked that way and good live music. YouTube has nothing like that. Also interface not as intuitive, more cluttered. My kids like it better because they do like having the videos available, but as I do not give a fuck about that but do like live music this is still not as good as the Play Music.
It’s not optimal, and I would like for uploaded music to just show up in the regular search, but there is a top navigation bar where you can just switch between where to search (uploads being one of the options). Also YTM has the upside of showing YouTube uploads as well, I could always find obscure bonus EPs that only came with the physical CD because someone uploaded it, which is really handy
I’m still pissed ytm no longer allowed me to view playlist songs like it would in gpm
YouTube music is like an alien looked at that app, and tried to recreate it exclusively by smashing it’s forehead against a keyboard until an app that started most of the time came out.
You think they that much care and attention into the app?
But seriously, yeah, I had pretty much the same experience -Google Play Music just worked beautifully, whereas YouTube Music was a steaming turd on Android. I gave up after six months and two phones and went to Deezer, never looked back
It’s definitely not Google play music, but I treat it a bit like Pandora twenty years ago and it’s ok for that.
I would say the same myself. They don’t do the worst job for music discovery either which is important to me. Amazon Music drove me nuts constantly recommending Cage the Elephant and other well-known (profitable) artists instead of obscure music similar to my tastes.
The algorithm on YT music is vastly superior to Spotify for new discoveries
Oh, you used to listen to Metallica back in the day?
YT music - Here, you’d probably like Shaka Ponk, Gin Wigmore and Royal Blood
Spotify - hAvE YoU hEarD of A bANd cAllEd KiSs?
Same. Honestly, I expected YTM to make things worse. That’s usually how those kinda things go. But it actually did get better for me. I jumped to Google Play Music because it had better selection than Spotify (at least back then). YTM kept that, but fixed the issues I was having with the desktop browser player sometimes getting stuck. And the more recent support for lyrics that are synced to the music is great.
Their queueing system sucks. All I want to do is queue up some songs but instead YTM fills my queue with tons of crap I’ve never listened to before because that’s how they make money. They put my manually queued songs at the END of the queue so I have to move them up 20+ spaces. There’s literally no way to do it other than creating a custom playlist every time I listen to music, and they intentionally made that take more clicks/taps than queuing. I don’t get how people are ok with the YTM app, it’s terrible.
I hate YTM and I hate that I can’t cancel it because they bundle it with YouTube premium, which my partner uses every day. Screw Google and they anti-consumer manipulative bs.
Their queueing system sucks. All I want to do is queue up some songs but instead YTM fills my queue with tons of crap I’ve never listened to before because that’s how they make money. They put my manually queued songs at the END of the queue so I have to move them up 20+ spaces. There’s literally no way to do it other than creating a custom playlist every time I listen to music, and they intentionally made that take more clicks/taps than queuing. I don’t get how people are ok with the YTM app, it’s terrible.
wrong.
- you can disable automatic queuing by hitting the ‘auto-play’ switch in UP NEXT
- you can queue songs by long-pressing and hitting ‘play next’ (which will put it in front of the queue) or ‘add to queue’ (which will put it in my the end
No, I’m not wrong. Option 1 does not exist on my phone. There is no switch.
And the “play next” feature also sucks. I don’t want to “play next”. I want to build a queue like literally any other music app and that isn’t what “play next” does.
Edit: I don’t see that “auto-play” switch on the web app in Safari either.
yes you are, it must be there unless you’re using an obsolete release of the app. Below is a screenshot how it looks like
yes, you can build a queue by “adding to queue”.
So I finally figured it out. this is how that toggle works:
- it only appears when you manually search for a song or select a song from certain groups on the home page.
- it does not appear to appear if you select a song from “listen again” or “quick picks” in which case the app forces you to listen to whatever is in their queue unless you manually clear the queue.
So no matter what it’s still a bad experience.
oh yeah, you are right-ish. it doesn’t show up if you launch a “radio”, which innately is a automatic, end-less playlist of similar music. I do agree though that this should be more visible in the UI
No. I’m not wrong, and I don’t appreciate you repeatedly telling me I am when you obviously have no clue what I’m looking at.
It isn’t there. I’m on Android 13 with the latest version of the app. There is no “auto-play” toggle anywhere. I’d upload screenshots to prove it but lemmy is throwing exceptions. I’ve checked every tab and settings page as well.
Yeah, you can use the play next button but it’s not ideal
Time to give Napster a shot!
Is Limewire still a thing?
No but direct downloads are all the rage. Here are my two favorite sites for free music. Every track is available in either 320k MP3, or FLAC lossless. So they’re even better than Limewire ever was:
https://slavart.gamesdrive.net/tracks
https://free-mp3-download.net/ (FYI don’t use punctuation in your queries or it breaks the search on this one)
I’m gonna go pull my fucking LPs out of the attic.
You want SoulSeek. I swear it’s not a dating app
Don’t think so. Soulseek on the other hand…
If you want a virus and to not be able to download anything, sure. https://fmhy.net/unsafesites#software--apps
Not as the software it was, but frostwire is still kicking
EDIT: correction, frostwire is now a BitTorrent client
Looks like there are still Gnutella clients out there though
lol
It’s kind of a joke, but Napster is actually trying to get back into it. They hired the guy in charge of music from Roblox to be CEO
There’s literally a feature on Spotify where you can hide an artist and never see it, fyi
Really? Where out of curiosity? I’ve never experienced that.
On PC. Keep (kept) it in a separate window while working.
Never had issues with that either tbh. I guess the algo just picked up on something for you. That’s annoying.
White guy late 50’s? What algo would ever target me?
you can try this
https://github.com/williamtcastro/carthing-non-premium-spotify
the whole ui/dashboard is just a web app, so it’s pretty easy to “jailbreak” or modify
I also may or may not use a ‘freemium’ spotify apk. Its been about 3yrs and not issues, so far…
Why would you even buy this? Literally just buy a phone mount and use your phone. This thing was a textbook example of a useless product.
Seriously, what does this do that a phone doesn’t? Am I missing something? Even early Android/iOS devices could run Spotify in their time (although not always anymore). What does this do?
Whenever I’m driving, my phone is almost permanently mounted as a GPS. I also own the car thingy, it has very intuitive hardware buttons and a dial on top of being touch screen. This way I can leave my phone on the GPS screen and adjust Spotify controls on the car thingy without taking attention of the road.
The only real shitty thing I would argue is that you NEED Spotify premium not just to control your Spotify, but also to control youtube/mp3 player/ any other media that you would want to play through your phone.
very intuitive hardware buttons
Now there is an actually sensible product: A phone holder with nice hardware buttons, exposed to the phone as a USB keyboard.
I’ve got a bluetooth steering wheel control (add on for ~$15) that adds play, pause, volume control, and next/previous track.
It has volume button. Idk
I have a car thing, I use it at my desk for media controls. It is pretty great.
But the product description was pretty clear that you needed premium to use it. The same goes for using any third party Spotify client. Shouldn’t have expected otherwise.
Buying any physical hardware that doesn’t function without a subscription should be a illegal, not something you should expect.
But the point is that the description of the product clearly stated it needs a subscription to function. You literally buy it with that understanding. If you didn’t read the description then it’s 100% on you.
Whether it should be legal or not, or whether it’s ethical or not, is a different discussion. But the product wasn’t disingenuous about how it works, so complaining about how it works exactly as advertised is a bit silly.
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No, the life we’re all living is a neoliberal hellscape. The fediverse was started by people who consider liberals right wing. Read up my man
A gas stove requires a subscription.
@pjhenry1216 @MyUnclesSecret Not quite. A gas stove requires gas. I can run it from canisters if I want to. In fact, I know someone who does.
It’s much more like a stove requiring a specific gas brand to work.
He can clearly turn on his Car Thing all he wants. Spotify is the gas company in this metaphor.
You can buy gas from anyone. Even make your own in a digester.
Your gas stove is not cryptographically locked to one gas company.
Your gas stove is not cryptographically locked to one gas company.
…yet.
Look out! Communists are coming for your toothbrush. Better vote for harsher penalties for modifying stuff you bought. The DMCA still allows throwing away or disconnecting the computer locking you out of your heated seats.
Gotta be an easier way to blow up your house.
Yes, many much easier ways. A propane tank for one. Wet, high CO2 methane is really hard to make explode.
Do get a CO detector though.
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Every single modem and cell phone I’ve ever owned have worked without a subscription to anything. My internet and ability to make cell calls were limited after my subscription ended, but the devices themselves were easily repurposed to other uses.
In my country nobody (or at least, most people don’t) buy their own routers, it’s always a subscription on top of the existing internet service
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How about a law that if the service is no longer provided then the company needs to provide a means to unlock the device?
That way companies can still have their subscription stuff, but once they inevitably stop supporting the product it doesn’t become useless.
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Just responding to the edit;
Modems work with other providers. You don’t own the infrastructure that connects the internet -> subscriptions.
Phones make it impossible to root or change batteries? I don’t own the device, byt at least it’s not e-waste yet.
The car thing you don’t own since the software makes the hardware e-waste.
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So what use is a consumer modem without an internet service?
You can still use it to network with other computers over the telephone network. Heck you don’t even need to do that via the actual telephone service you can just run some wire.
But I think what was actually meant by OP is “tied to a specific subscription service” as well as “disables features that don’t need a subscription service when you aren’t subscribed”.
Phones, arguably, don’t perform their primary function without cell services.
You can use them as e.g. smart home remote. The cellular modem is going to go unused (at least apart from emergency services) but that’s only a small portion of the hardware, and modems were only ever locked to subscriptions (at least over here) if the phone is subsidised by that subscription. I don’t think they even do that any more, they replaced it with minimum contract durations. In any case even back in the days you could unlock it after some time or coughing up some money.
that’s why I think it should be root-able, serviceable, and speak in standard open protocols
Yep I wish rootability was included in the new EU regulations, it would solve so many issues at once. OTOH: It would solve the issue for people who are tech savvy enough to do such things, gotta be careful with our own elitism there. Enjoying consumer rights should not hinge on being a grease monkey.
Public companies obviously intentionally want to make everything as shitty as possible, just to extract money, but lets accept the hypothetical that subscriptions will actually be banned. Wouldn’t that be great?
You would basically be treated the same as Tier 1-3 ISP’s, pay for the cost of the routing to the company. That phone plan that costs ?? €/$ a month becomes “Pay as you use it”. Flat fee per gigabyte / message etc. These plans were at least here in Finland, and I think my phone bills were around 4-5 EUR a month and a cap that you cannot exceed that month, though smartphones and data plans weren’t a thing. Now everything is a subscription.
Now back to hardware vs software. You obviously pay for the software also when buying the hardware, but for whatever reason the user doesn’t own any kind of rights around it. This has obviously become much worse the past few years (TV’s have ads etc). I really don’t think that the issue is anything you listed, the issue is that greedy companies want to use the subscription model rather than play fair. Phones and modems are EOL at best in a year. I have a PFSense router that cost me less than a router from my ISP used and it’s EOL and security is something I don’t have to worry about.
Modems and routers have most of their features dedicated to home networking and are not usually made by the ISP. Them connecting to the internet is one of the smallest features they have. The other features are related to offline networking and tight security, you can actually just plug an ethernet cable to the wall and get connection from your ISP. Same as using a modem and putting it in “bridge mode”, which will completely bypass the features of the modem/router.
The issue here is that the companies don’t want to provide value, they just want to extract as much money as possible, which is wrong. Laws and regulations are desperately needed and even something as radical as banning subscription services for user devices would be a net positive. Renting Tier 1-3 operator infrastructure for your router/modem to work is completely different than “You have the device and the software, but we block you from using it, since you don’t pay”, which in my opinion is ransomware, not subscriptions.
For right to repair and owning these devices, I completely agree with you.
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I know this is a hard sell for many, but consider this: You aren’t nearly as smart as you think you are.
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You misunderstand. I have no knowledge about how smart you are. You could easily be smarter than me. What im saying is you need to reassess your tone and delivery, because it, and your edit only shows me and others that you are arrogant and therefore unable to properly assess other points of view.
Address the possibility that i have a point on your own time, after your ego-required final comment to me. Whether you will address youself or remain as you are, it’s completely up to you.
Goodbye
I have the hobby of cracking stuff like that (but mainly windows apps to tell you the truth) and there are many-ish people out there with the same hobby. search around a bit and google stuff like “Spotify Car Thing github” or “Spotify Thing bypass” or jailbreak. Heavily rely on github and russian forums. Also random small blogs
If you’re so determined though and nobody else has done it and you’re fine not using it for 3+ months, there’s a very slim chance that I could find the time to bypass it
EDIT: Yeap it’s cracked and it’s easy too
Thank you for your service, comrade
unfortunately I’ve not released any crack and the reason behind it is that I develop them in a way that you can read what they do (which function they hook, what do they expect and more) using https://frida.re so the crack ends being a javascript file that is run through a power shell script. so no “copy this dll” or “disable your antivirus” - super clean and you can always see what the crack does. my base is ALWAYS that you download and install the app from the manufacturer
due to that though I “can’t” release the scripts to the public as:
- I’ll go to jail
- the companies will start to implement anti-cracking measures as I give them exactly the way I crack their app on a silver platter
The only thing I like about Russia. The warez
same with china
Based coder brings the freedom.
Russian forums are truly the peak of hacking
That’s really dissapointing, did Spotify seriously release a hardware device that expensive, and mandates a subscription to operate?
It’s a shame because it looks quite nice too, and is sadly guaranteed to be e-waste at some point
Are you kidding me? It’s been par for the course as far as car assessors go. Sirus radio was like 100 and still required a subscription. A lot of GPS were that price and most had subscriptions.
Don’t know why you’re being downvoted - enshittification as a viable consumer business model was pretty much proven in the auto space.
Just like they want to charge you to use the heated seats you’re paying the gas to lug around anyway
Just like they want to charge you to use the heated seats you’re paying the gas to lug around anyway
That’s not the same thing at all. As bad as e.g. Sirius or GPS subscription might be, at least with those the subscription is for ongoing access to new data being transmitted to you. In contrast, a subscription purely for the use of hardware already included in the car is literally theft.
The hardware is free for subscribers to the service…
Those I don’t fault. Sirius has satellites to maintain and they don’t get ad revenue.
GPS makers, well making maps on that scale is very expensive. Not everyone can be google and give it away to end consumers by harvesting user data and selling ads to businessplaces.
Spotify though, fair enough to charge for the hardware but once bought should work with the ad-supported version of their product…
The hardware is free for subscribers…
If you buy it outright it tells you that you need a subscription.
Just because it’s percieved as normal doesn’t mean it’s something we should put up with though.
With GPS subscriptions (the ones I’m aware of anyway) they will still navigate you from A to B when you stop paying the subscription, you usually just miss out on traffic updates, map updates and other localized enhancements. If there are any that deny you navigation outside the subscription that’s plain scummy IMO.
I’m not familiar with Sirius Radio but from what I can see online, it’s a satellite radio subscription service that seems to bring new things to the table (like starting a radio station at the beginning of a last song etc). The hardware appears to actually serve a purpose, i.e. it’s the satellite receiver for the radio service subscription. I believe we could compare this to buying a Starlink dish for internet access, and paying the monthly subscription. The spotify device shown here is not a standalone device and is only fitted with bluetooth IIRC, requiring a phone for operation.
In comparison to Spotify, Sirius does not appear to have ever had a free plan - whereas Spotify does… I see is no reason why Spotify could not make their free plan usable on this device.
Edit: fix typo
The device is free to premium users. It’s a marketing device for the premium subscription.
The box clearly states that a premium subscription is required.
Assuming you’re referring to the Sirius radio, it makes the Spotify device an even worse proposition IMO
Edit: Clarify assumption
Glad to see someone mention that the subscription being required for use is clearly conveyed. It’s not like this was some hidden information
I think I got an Echo Auto for $25 (during the public tests). It doesn’t need any kind of a subscription to use as far as I’m aware. It only does streaming still, but there are Alexa skills that let you stream from your Plex or Jellyfin server.
Yes, but the Echo platform is a tool to gather user data.
Man you are seriously going to hate the future lol
I could still use it for playing music in other apps. Now I can’t.
I mean, it’s basically a cheap smartphone or computer tablet, with a lower resolution, but nice quality screen, and a giant volume spinner. $100 does not get you much at all in the phone and tablet space. I don’t think there’s much of any profit margin, if at all for it.
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I guarantee you that some idiot working there thought it was “quirky”
can’t blame the devs, it’s a thing for a car. better than spoticar
better than spoticar
Barely, if at all.
Unironically Spoticar would suck less
Sp-auto-fy
better than spoticar
Nope
Fuck streaming. Return to a big dumb pile of MP3s.
This is absurdly difficult if you want to actually pay for individual mp3s. It’s like they want you to pirate
Nice weather we’re having.
You wouldn’t download a storm cell.
I know, right? A bit hot in some parts of the world, but in general, things seem nice.
The first generation iPod topped out at 40GB. It’s felt like that for a long time, matey
I found my first gen iPod last week, the gen 1 with the spinning wheel and firewire maxed at 5 gig.
Those had the cutest mini hard drive.
🤣
I still buy CDs and rip them. All the music I want on my phone ready to play from headphones or the car
I just bought a CD player a few weeks ago. It’s not very good (it’s a combination CD player/alarm clock, and the speakers are crap) but it’s nice being able to just put a disc in and press “play” instead of booting up one of my game consoles or plugging in my USB optical drive. I’ve started hitting up second-hand stores for CDs to play with it.
That must be expensive as fuck.
I think Spotify is 12€ p month. Let’s say 10€. A new album costs about 10€ digital or 15-20€ as a CD.
So you could buy a new album every month and build up a catalogue.
I buy them used for about 2,50€ an album.
I don’t always want an album though. Sometimes I just like one song on an album.
Spotify is just so convenient. I have over 5000 liked songs on there.
I just download from youtube with yt-dlp or using blackhole app to import spotify playlist or using some telegram bot to download songs from spptify links.
Convenience is because you have been using it and made your liked playlist there. I download the songs I like and play it locally because that is even more convenient to turn of mobile data or put airplane mode on and play song with much longer battery life and no other app notifications. Also you can play it on any device with the added benefit of not getting tracked and getting advertisements
You can also have offline mode on Spotify, my desktop has downloaded all 5000+ songs.
Also yt-dlp is just piracy with extra steps. Might as well pirate the music to get it in good quality.
Offline mode on spotify is local media with extra steps. Offline mode is premium only. Also you still get tracked with the proprietary app. Spotify songs cannot be played in your favourite music player, device or whatever. I can copy some songs into sdcard to play it on an old speaker set.
Pirated music gets more convenient than what you paid for. Moreover, restricting saving and sharing media is kinda dumb and does not actually hurt artists or their revenue
Yeah, I love streaming for music. About $10 a month and I get seemingly every song I’ve ever looked up. Streaming video has a lot of problems with fragmentation, but music doesn’t seem to have nearly as bad of an issue. I use YTM and have never not found what I wanted to listen to. $10 is like the price of a single CD (or was – it’s been well over a decade since I’ve even looked at the price of CDs).
I’ve also listened to a lot of full albums on streaming (it’s often what I do when I discover a new artist that I like) and there’s never an album that I’d want to buy every song from. My music tastes are also very diverse. My liked songs are full of tons of songs that may as well be one hit wonders to me. That doesn’t translate well to buying CDs.
I stopped listening to music, radio or nothing. I’m tired of being constantly stimulated, I desire peace and quiet
Instructions unclear burning 8 track tapes.
I actually really love the idea of spotify, but their execution is fucked. Joe Rogan’s getting billions and musicians who make up the overwhelming majority of the plays get microscopic returns per play. That’s bullshit.
Audiogalaxy
FLAC or some other lossless format is better.
Cars in 2030: to use brakes you need premium account. Sorry!
This thing that OP bought is a separate add-on to the car. As far as the car is concerned it doesn’t exist and it’s just plugged into a normal 3.5 mm aux device.
How does that boot taste?
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Ok bootlicker
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I mean to be fair, Spotify as a company clearly would rather give millions to right-wing shitheads than ~anything else.
How else will Joe Rogan be able to afford his basic necessities like subverting democracy 🥺
Out of all the things that Spotify is shitty for that’s the least of my worries about them, and I fucking hate right-wing shitheads. People would rather see the artists they love starve if it gave them convenience to enjoy their art without actually paying for what they do.
It’s honestly kind of baffling to see people go up in arms enough to side with fucking Disney “in support of artists” because AI is supposedly stealing from them and the same people go on with their lives and put on Spotify and feel self-righteous. People fucking suck.
/rant
and the same people go on with their lives and put on Spotify and feel self-righteous
Yeah but consider that for me for example, I was previously giving exactly 0 to artists. Now I give whatever tiny amount my odd song played here or there pays out. Which is more than previously.
Is it a lot? No. Do I listen to a lot of music? Hell no. Did I buy any music before as a result? Fuck no. And now I sometimes listen to some. Plus the music I listen to I couldn’t buy in physical anyways (low-fi or synth background noise while coding), and wouldn’t know where to buy digital even if I wanted to. Previously I just used a noise generator, btw.
It’s probably not a good idea to assume that 100% of listeners on spotify would have invested that same amount of money into physical sales.
Imagine if they had spent that $50 million on programmers instead. They could have had the best music playing app in existence.
wait they DO THAT??
I’ll need to rethink my choice in streaming platforms, because that’s messed up
I can’t tell if you’re being serious or not but they gave Joe Rogan a platform and pay him a lot of money for it. Probably other stuff too if they support that.
what’s wrong with Joe Rogan?
Alex Jones Jr. Wing nut conspiracy theorist.
It would be quicker to list what’s right with him
Horse dewormer man.
He’s a lunatic
He’s the male Gwyneth Paltrow selling brain pills instead of Goop. He promotes alt-right and far-right conspiracies. He told people not to get the COVID vaccine. If he just interviewed people – even people from all sides – I’d be fine with it. Problem is he promotes dangerous conspiracies and usually ignores fact checking. He’s using his influence and authority to do harm. And worst of all, I think he just does it for the ratings.
Image Transcription:
A photo of a Spotify Car Thing with the text displaying on the screen under the Spotify logo: “Need a Premium account To use Car Thing you need to be logged in to a Spotify Premium or Premium Family account on your phone.”
[I am a human, if I’ve made a mistake please let me know. Please consider providing alt-text for ease of use. Thank you. 💜]
Good human
Hi transcript gpt
Hello Android 009.
Take a look at rooting it, maybe you can find some way to use it to stop it from just being e-waste. https://npjohnson.github.io/Spotify-Car-Thing-Root/
I betcha someone in the piracy groups can help you jailbreak that thing so it will continue to function.
Edit: Yep someone in the comments linked you a GitHub project that should work
Wait, so let me get this straight.
You purchased a device that presumably has no local storage and are upset that it needs you to login to a server that can then stream you the music?
Or is this an issue of not having a paid account?
I guess Spotify didn’t realize someone who didn’t pay for Spotify would be likely to pay 100 bucks for a device to stream Spotify, and in most cases I’d say they’re probably right.
upset that it needs you to login to a specific server before it will let you stream music from other unrelated servers
FTFY
Must be nice to be privileged
If you can drop 100 bucks on a random bullshit device instead of just using your phone or something then you’re the privileged one.
Reduce and reuse was just a way of life for some of us.
Plus it was on the marketing, not much to be done there unless you just can’t read.
Wait till they put Denuvo in the car, for you montly driving plan.
Need to ask a crackhead like Empress to crack it for us. I’ll trade prozac tabs.
I don’t understand why people (guys, most probably) simp for Empress. Do they think she’s gonna have sex with them or what?
Maybe they like that she is skilled and take the risks for cracking games? Or like some of her wild opinions? I can only guess…
you can appreciate her cracking skills and still hate her for everything else she does, like running a cult and refusing to tell anyone else how to crack denuvo, even though she literally makes zero money off it so she’s literally just keeping it secret for clout (presumably to fuel the whole telegram cult thing)
Well I’m not a member of this cult, but I believe admiration for cracking skills always existed before her, now it’s different because she is more socially open than a average cracking group. The scene on the denuvo part is basically her so It’s easy to build a cult, as you said she keeps a monopoly.
Lmao if skip the real simps most people are there for drama only and ig she is the only cracker close to a community rest don’t respond directly to general audience. Though i feel her drama is over the top and waste of time.
Yes. My personal belief is they want account-bound services normalized by the time self-driving cars become viable. They would HATE for us to have the ability to lend our cars out to other people throughout the day without giving them more money
We are in the era that other than games, the companies have not yet caught up with anti-cracking techniques. I crack shit as a hobby and everything is fun and challenging until you start to mess with games. It’s insanely difficult, a CONSTANT cat n mouse run and sooooo damn time consuming
How can I get started cracking software myself?
ok so first of all you need to know programming. nothing crazy but you should definitely know what a “function” “loop” or “variable” is and some basic HTTP knowledge (what is an HTTP reuest, what’s a header, etc.).
now, your target is to bypass the license check. there are many ways to go about that:
- the web way: intercept the traffic between the app and the server. maybe the app tells the server “am i licensed” and the server responds “no” and if you just change that you’re golden. to intercept traffic the golden standard is “burp proxy”
- the exported function way: I’m sure that you’ve seen that all the apps that you install come with various dlls. these are “libraries” which means that they’re a bunch of functions in a package. most times they also include the name of their functions and more often than not you’ll find a “is_user_licensed” that returns a 0 or a 1. hooking that to return 1 will hand you a win
- the exe exported function way: same as the above but the function lives inside the exe. BTW exes are exactly the same as a DLL (and you can actually execute a dll or import functions from an exe!)
you can find any function that gets called and has a name (the names are called “symbols”) using frida-trace
afterwards you can write a frida script (javascript) that either replaces the entire function or append/prepend code to it. most times you want to append code that just returns a value as to not mess with the programs internals
if you have a .net app though the whole process is WAY easier as you can read all the code of the app using a decompiler - dnspyex is the gold standard
of course not all apps are that easy to crack. it’s more of a time/mind game and less of a skill one. sure, you get much more efficient and the solutions start to “smell”, but trying to crack an app that has stripped symbols (no function names) and everything is statically compiled (all the dlls are shoved into the exe to make it harder for us) can make your life much more difficult
since this is a “starter guide” i’m gonna leave anti-reverse, anti-debug and obfuscation completely out of the discussion. unless you get a moderately good grasp what the above terms mean, don’t bother
I also didn’t talk about actual reversing with a debugger/decompiler/disassembler as I think that it’s better to find out about them as-you-go. don’t start from that. it’s intimidating
Don’t get intimidated. You’ve got it. Remember that it’s not about skill (ok don’t go cracking IDA Pro or denuvo), it’s about patience and methodology As the hacker say: Try harder and happy hacking 🙂
NOTE0: ALWAYS ask chatGPT stuff. if it refuses to answer put the question in the context of “malware research” NOTE1: I think that someone somewhere may have told me that a very popular app owned by dickheads used in the 3d printing community is a very good starting point 😀 NOTE2: You’re more than welcome to ask anything - PMs or otherwise
EDIT: I forgot to mention reversing divas: since this is such a niche thing to do and you spend your life away from grass, some people involved are in the mindset of “this is not for everyone, you’re stupid and you can’t do it, etc”. Fuckem
