this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2023
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As much as I am a fam of alternative Software and such, what are actual advantages of using spotube over Spotify premium? Disregarding the membership fee.
The fact you're using a libre client that doesn't do extra data collection.
Anything you do in the UI has some associated backend request (everything relevant at least). Search queries, loading albums, skipping, changing settings, anything is just a Web requ on their backend server which could still be collected. The custom ui does not save you from relevant data collection. Only thing potentially not getting tracked is empty navigation between tabs, but there is not a lot of info in tab switching
That's what I meant by "extra data collection," it just gets data that has to do with what you do on the server, which is significant, but you're still protected from kinds of local collection (e.g.: device model, IMEI if possible, screen resolution, networks you connect to, etc.) other than not having analytics trackers and ads. It may sound a bit crazy, but it is possible to collect this kind of stuff to fingerprint you, just like browser fingerprinting.
This is true for the desktop/mobile app application I aggree with you there since its a CEF native on desktop and mobile apps have these kinds of APIs. I very much disagree with the Web client (which admittedly my original comment didn't mention at all, personally I mainly use the Web player)
Since on Web it's just a Website, all previously mentioned serve side tracking applies; but getting any hardware information through the sandboxing would break the browser security model and is not possible since there is no such web API. Web fingerprinting is one of the reasons apple (at least they keep bringing it up as a concern) is not keen on implementing the Web API for the luminance sensor on safari. Interestingly webkit (chromium core) does have the functionality which is why it's behind a dev flag atm (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/AmbientLightSensor)
Identifying hardware should not be possible according to the browsers security model.
I should've phrased my question as 'what advantage does spotube provide over Spotify premium in the browser', after downloading it and trying it out I am guessing the biggest advantage is the download button and stuff like that? Though... I personally have no use for offline Musik nowadays.
Edit: Sidenote: the Mozilla docs frequently mention that the user agent may be used to infer hardware/browser information, and therefore developers are encouraged so spoof it (and in general not to trust the information given)