Wow, that’s hot trash. Imagine subtitles on movies and TV being stuck behind a paywall.
While I agree that this is stupid, why would a deaf person be using Spotify in the first place?
Long shot guess: deaf person can “listen” to vibrations of music with their hands on a speaker but this is not possible with lyrics?
So imagine you’re listening to rap. But you’re hard of hearing. The beats still slap, but the words aren’t intelligible. Hell the beats are even better because you got a subwoofer that shakes the floor. But you know it’s poetry, it’s about the words as much as the beats. So of course you’d want to read along
Deafness isn’t binary, they could be capable of hearing the music but not making out the lyrics.
Just to clarify definitions that probably wouldn’t be considered deafness, it would be an audio processing disorder. Ability to hear music but inability to process the words.
Deafness is “binary” in that it just means ones ability to hear sound or not. If you can hear sound even slightly then you just have a hearing impairment and are not deaf.
Deafness is commonly understood to include both total and partial hearing loss. Every major dictionary defines it this way. It might have a more precise meaning in some spheres (medical, etc), but in common English it is not binary the way you’re suggesting.
No it really isn’t. The hard of hearing are considered deaf. There’s complete deafness, much like there’s complete blindness, but the fact that you’re calling it hearing impairment instead of hard of hearing indicates you aren’t as well versed in Deafness (not to be confused with deafness) as you think
And even people who cannot hear anything at all still feel the bass and stuff.
Relevant funny story from Deaf actor Daniel Durant: https://youtube.com/shorts/eYQKtwkoZOI
As someone who is not deaf, this was a really helpful comment to help me understand, thank you.
To everyone else reading down here, lot of people also don’t really get this same idea with visual impairment and other handicaps.
There are a lot of people who are legally blind, but that just means they can’t make out things at certain distances, and these are why we need things like high-visibility curbs and street markers and large-type text options and other accessibility features that able-bodied people in a wide field of industries often forget about and just assume either people are blind and won’t be using their products, or will have perfect vision. When really there are far more people who are considered deaf or blind who can still enjoy many of the same things as someone with fully faculties and just need a little extra help.
I am only typing this out because we seem to entering a strange time in the developed world where more and more people are withdrawing from the social contract and not extending compassion towards others, particularly those with special needs.
When I was little I thought the future would be a bright and remarkable place where people took care of each other, because those were the messages you see on PBS shows like Mr Rogers and Sesame Street. Turns out, a LOT of people didn’t watch those shows.
So I’m not deaf, not in the slightest, but I struggle to understand lyrics in music. I love music, I live and breathe it and I’m gonna dedicate my life to it, but I’ve always struggled with understanding lyrics in music. To me, the vocalist is just another instrument in the mix. Having lyrics to read helps me appreciate my favorite tunes more!
For me it is certain singers that apparently everyone else understands but I cannot without knowing the words ahead of time. Not just mumbling, some voices just don’t register clearly for me if I don’t know what they are saying.
It can depend on the mixing, too. Not just in regards to volume, but also in how the vocals are edited. My recent obsession has been Dusk at Cubist Castle, shit’s absolutely amazing. The way a lot of the vocals are mixed and processed are super cool, like layering the same lines over themselves five times over with subtle delays and panning, it sounds real cool! But it makes it sound a lot more distant to me as a result.
You might have a smidge of Speech Auditory* Processing Disorder. I do and that’s what it’s like for me. Common comorbidity with ADHD and ASD, and possibly other neurotypes.
Oh almost certainly. I have ADHD, prolly autistic, and I’ve had many times where my mind stopped processing what people are saying. Which is bad when you work tourism xD
Spotube.
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.
But seeing as it’s a free account, it’s their prerogative
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!
ADA accessibility requirements for their public accommodations
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.
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?!
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.
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.
it’s their prerogative to try and get people to pay for the service.
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.
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.
You don’t need lyrics to listen to music however.
I also don’t need an elevator to move between floors of a building that has stairs, while some people do.
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.
But for some folks, the elevator is completely essential. This dynamic resulted in making pay-to-ride elevators illegal in most places, today.
So this is absolutely fucking hilarious and shows your surface level knowledge (or just googling something and having zero knowledge…) they are only illegal if they are the only means of transportation, every single one of the buildings with one these will also have regular elevators, so they meet the code.
All the law did was prevent single elevator buildings from being able to discriminate. If a non-abled body person has another conveyance method, they can charge whatever they want. This is how amusement rides are able to charge AND have non ada accessible rides. And incase you didn’t know, elevator codes do cover amusement rides in most jurisdictions as well…
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?
so you’re cool with people with disabilities having to do more labor than you to get the same thing? go fuck yourself
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.
If you want Spotify for free and lyrics for free, just Google the lyrics…
While I mostly agree, there is a difference. In Spotify, you can play a song and it highlights the lyrics as they are sung
fuck off, it’s not that simple. Spotify you can’t just play whatever and also you can skip like 5 songs per hour or whatever the fuck. Charging for lyrics is fucking ridiculous and you saying just google it isn’t any better.
Spotify you can’t just play whatever and also you can skip like 5 songs per hour or whatever the fuck.
Okay? That has literally nothing to do with getting lyrics for free…
Charging for lyrics is fucking ridiculous and you saying just google it isn’t any better.
The people are entitled to their free music and free lyrics right in the same spot. Having to do a single Google search to get those lyrics is inconceivable!
