Ekky

Could be worse, could be XBox. shudders

I guess that’s one way to announce End Of Service.

Everything nowadays that attempts to give back a little autonomy or freedom to the user is called piracy.

As long as an app could theoretically be used for piracy, even if it was made to circumvent toxic behavior of users’ bought and paid for products, then it must be properly labelled as piracy and taken down.

I’ll better stop before this becomes a rant.

Haven’t heard about that one, thank you for the heads-up.

First impressions:

• From top 10 artists i follow:
  • 5/10 have profile and uploaded at least one song on Bandcamp.
  • 3/10 have an account on Audius (possibility to donate).
  • 1/10 has uploaded at least one song on Audius.
• One MUST upload a profile picture to create an account.
  • About 1/3 of proposed artists during account creation have uploaded <5 songs, most seem to be remix and cover artists.
  • Didn’t figure out how to search for artists during account creation, ended up choosing 2/3 artists I’ve never heard of.
• Not immediately apparent whether I can download bought music to a lossless format.
• Not sure how to buy album or individual song at first glance.
• LOTS of remixes and covers, not so much original songs (this is both good and bad).
• Nice that you can donate arbitrary amount without buying anything, in case you already got the music from… other places…
  • I didn’t find anyplace where “$AUDIO” is explained, how much the artist receives, or what you receive if anything.

Less relevant observations:

• weird pause/play button, sometimes there’s just a loading wheel spinning where it’s supposed to be, not really functional.
• Slightly intrusive, had to disable some plugins (Javascript (obviously it’s playing music) and fingerprinting (cloudflare?)) for the site to load. Not relevant to music, but just a general observation since we’re in the piracy community.

Not much going on by now, but it probably just needs some time to grow and assimilate the likely soon-to-be-migrating Bandcamp user base. I’ll keep an eye on it, and probably revisit it once more artists have migrated to it.

But we’ll still need a proper place to support our favorite creators (where the artists actually receive some of the money). I wonder where people will migrate next.

Most foreboding quote 2024.

it should be supported.

All in all? I don’t like it. Looks like a template taken from Soulless MoneyGrab Inc. but with some added steam elements.

Change and innovation is not bad, but while perhaps not especially beautifully, the current user interface is pretty decent in the storm that is nowadays “looks over function”-mentality.

Edit: but as others have said, it would be nice if there was some kind of theme selector so people can make their own choices, or just fine tune Big Picture mode as it already follows a more simplified and stylished theme.

OP might be talking about the steam link app, and not the steam link. But yes, the post is confusing.