this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2024
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Fuck Subscriptions
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Naming and shaming all "recurring spending models" where a one-time fee (or none at all) would be appropriate and logical.
Expect use of strong language.
Follow the basic rules of lemmy.world and common sense, and try to have fun if possible.
No flamewars or attacking other users, unless they're spineless corporate shills.
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New community rule: Shilling for cunty corporations, their subscriptions and other anti-customer practices may result in a 1-day ban. It's so you can think about what it's like when someone can randomly decide what you can and can't use, based on some arbitrary rules. Oh what, you didn't read this fine print? You should read what you're agreeing to.
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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.
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.
That's a good point. That might actually make the case for "undue burden".
A court case about it could be a way for Spotify to pass the problem to their licensors, in theory.
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.
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.
Should my free local newspaper also include everything in braille?
Listen, I don't want to be in a pointless internet argument; I could answer your question by referencing some of the things that go into deciding what reasonable adjustments should be put in place, legally speaking (in particular, your question is getting at the "how much is reasonable" aspect of the problem"), but I only want to engage in this conversation if you're actually interested to learn.
(On that front, I apologise for the sharp tone of my previous comment, because that certainly wasn't conducive to conversation.)
Legally speaking, the ADA promotes accessibility in public accommodations, but it does not require music streaming services to provide lyrics. There is no legal precedent requiring these services.
Additionally, the service in question is free. Do any music streaming services provide both lyrics and music for free? While I don't particularly favor Spotify, this argument doesn't relate to any legal obligation on their part.
There is legal precedent for requiring captioning where I’m from and probably in the US as well. Practically every form of broadcasted video (and at least here, it is required of websites with video) has a legal requirement to provide captions. I don’t see how it would be difficult to apply that to music.
It being available on the free tier has almost no relevance to Spotify being a profit making entity that has to comply with the law. I’d be surprised if they don’t get in trouble for it legally. As pointed out elsewhere it’s paywalling an accessibility feature. Which seems like a great way to draw enough eyeballs to your bullshit and get legislation changes; assuming it doesn’t already violate it.
Yes in the USA there are laws that require CC on programs being televised, but not all. Interestingly enough, one of the TV exemptions is programs that are mostly musical.
After doing a bit of research now I can see your point and I agree with you that this could set up a legal situation like it did back in the 90s. I wouldn’t mind if they revisited the 1996 Telecommunications Act so they could break up the radio monopoly here, but I digress.
Ah, so you don't understand disabilities then. Got it.
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.
Yeah. I understand what they're saying, but they're wrong, based on past court cases.
Defining "full equal service" in a way that carves out big portions (like knowing what the lyrics are) in ways that fully able bodied people take for granted - has gone badly for companies that let it go to court.
That you refuse to share with the class 🤔
But they're totally real. For real.
You’re comparing something that actually affects someone’s ability to move around with someone not enjoying free music as much without lyrics
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!
Source that providing lyrics to songs is a requirement?
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.
Help me do what, exactly?
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?!
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.
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.
Do radio stations provide lyrics?
The ~~fact~~ possibility 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.
Edit 2: For anyone reading along to learn - a radio station without captioning technology is unlikely to be required to add captioning under any accessibility law I'm aware of. But a station that provides captioning is unlikely to be able to charge extra for that captioning under current accessibility laws.
Businesses are typically accountable to provide equitable accommodations at no additional charge.
A comparison that may help: a storefront with no dedicated parking whatsoever is typically not required to provide the usual required percentage of reserved accessible parking. Or rather, their zero reserved spaces meets the required percentage automatically, at it's whatever percentage of zero total spaces.
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 far more informed opinion than that of a couple of asshats who were replying to me in this thread.)
So why does that apply to OTA, but not their website or other delivery methods…?
Your “laws” seem to have lots of exceptions when you need them to. But also, not surprisingly, very easy to find the flaws since they don’t exist and you’re not smart enough to think of these yourself apparently….
Let it be known that I am a generous and benevolent ruler.
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 (can no longer be evaded during a court case or an audit) dictating how that accessibility accomodation must be managed.
As was pointed out, many radio stations do provide captions, and in doing so, fall under (no longer receive any exemption 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.
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.
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. **edit 2 - c'mon guys, why are you afraid to name yourselves?
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.
Are Google lyrics timed??
No, so what? Neither are all Spotify lyrics. They don't even have lyrics for some songs.
Spotify lyrics aren't synced? Then why the fuck are they charging for them?
Just because a building has a glass elevator with a view doesn’t mean all the other elevators are making an ADA violation……….
Some places have better features, unless ADA mandates something, they’re just doing something better, fuck them eh…?
nobody's talking about the bare minimum of federal law dude. this is a discussion about how humans are supposed to treat each other. if the way you walk around life is "well, it's legal to be an asshole in this situation so I'll do it" then there's no point in having this conversation because do not have the time to make you a better person
also your example absolutely wild. the purpose of an elevator is to get you from here to there. the purpose of Spotify is to help you listen to music. people with hearing issues are required to pay extra or do extra work to get the same experience as a perfectly abled person.