Both could be good if they were more strictly organized into communities or servers and the “all” feeds would lose importance… but unfortunately we are all just a bunch of shitposters and not the intellectuals we pretend to be

For context, do you use Linux or have you contributed to open source?

I don’t get your point at all. I know that you do not say that, but you don’t even have any counter argument.

I don’t get what you try to say with your last paragraph. It sounds like you are worried that the poor 97% of Windows and Mac users are losing something because Linux is rising. Which makes absolutely no sense.

I believe many open source projects that are used by large corporations find a way to make money with that, at least by offering support or consulting or with sponsorships.

There are volunteer projects of which the developer doesn’t profit of but are used by corporations but I doubt they are the “largest” transfer as written in the post.

If you are using Gnome stay with that first. You can try gnome extensions and gtk themes, there are lots of possibilities. Many of the things that people post for other window managers will not work on Gnome.

Then know your command line well https://github.com/jlevy/the-art-of-command-line

Then try to automate things, such that e.g. you can open a QR code of your clipboard with a key binding. Or whatever cool things you want your computer to do.

If you like these things and you have a lot of time, try other window managers as well. Start with something that has a good example config and good resources online, I believe sway was pretty easy to get into for me.

Not just kids

Do you write 4$ or $4 if you don’t have cents? I really don’t know how you do it in US

what do you even live for if curiosity is not enough of a reason to do something

If there is any company that can do personalized ads for music then it is Spotify. It’s what they are best at, why would they skip that opportunity?

Most ads are terrible because they are annoying and advertise bad products. I think that’s less likely to be a problem here because your music is the ad, if it is annoying and bad you will simply stop listening and they lose money on the ad.

If it would be ads for podcasts for example, it would be much much worse for me.

Of course they don’t care about small artists. That’s my point, if you pay for ads you have an option to be less dependent on the platform to make you famous by paying for it. Simply waiting for people to find your music is unlikely to be succesful.

It seems relatively harmless as long as they don’t overdo it though. The only incentive for someone to pay for this is that that you might like their music and will listen to it more in the future, which would be a win for you as well.

Maybe it also allows smaller artists to gain momentum without only depending on the magic recommendation algorithm.