this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2024
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Fuck Subscriptions
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How does it make more sense that “cosmetic” features are in the paid-tier? Would it not be the other way around?
Because it improves the experience, but isn't vital to it. If you want the free tier to be accessible to everyone, limiting things like lyrics that people like OP use as a disability accommodation isn't the way to do it.
The whole point with features being paid for is that they incentivize you to pay. There is no universal right to have a free tier or certain features for free.
It just makes sense to lock features that users enjoy to incentives them to pay.
Sure, but if that's causing a difference in access for people with a disability like OP, then that becomes an ADA issue.
It’s unfortunate and I can empathize with the user but I don’t see it as obvious that this specific need should be catered to, for free. It’s primarily a music service and lyrics is an additional service to enhance the experience, apparently at the paid-tier. It’s not so expensive that it’s inaccessible to the average user, if music with timed lyrics is an important part of their life.
I don't know. If we were talking about Netflix making captions a premium feature that requires an extra fee, I'd think that's pretty skeevy and ableist. I hadn't thought about lyric sheets being an accommodation until OP brought it up, but now that they did, I'm kind of putting it in the same bucket.
That’s a fairly good analogy, and it did made me this over a bit more. I agree that it would be weird if they put captions behind an extra fee. I suppose captions are more part of the “standard” offering historically so I would definitely just expect it to be included whereas timed lyrics is not something I’d expect by default. But I do an acknowledge that this could shift, especially as this feature enable deaf users to enjoy music. Hopefully Spotify can take the critique and find a good compromise that helps this user group. I just don’t think they thought to do this to squeeze money out of deaf users. I’m guessing it’s more of an unfortunate side effect.
Oh, I'm definitely not saying that there had to be intention behind it. After all, it's a consequence I never thought of, so I'm sure whoever made that decision at Spotify never did either. But then, they're supposed to be paid to think of consequences like this.
I guess the question is, if a decision screws disabled people in the pursuit of more money, does it really matter if the disabled people were deliberately targeted, or if they're just collateral damage?
Intentions matter, and to what degree you do it in pursuit of money. You do need money to have a sustainable business. But that can of course be to a point where it’s just greedy. Maybe they have gone to far in that respect, I don’t know.