Recently, because my NetEase Cloud Music membership “expired”, in a very bad mental state, I angrily uninstalled the app and started looking for other music platforms.

Throughout my long experience using music platforms, Xiami Music was my favorite product and the one I used for the longest time, but it was eliminated in market competition due to poor management after being acquired by the Alibaba Group, which has always made me feel very regretful.

After that, I was forced to use QQ Music for a few years, and even later, in order to more conveniently connect my mobile music player to my car, I used Huawei Music and Vivo Music for two years.

Until the end of last year, I started using NetEase Cloud Music again. Before this, I used NetEase Cloud Music around 2012, mainly because it was free at the time.

At the end of last year, a friend introduced me to the NetEase Cloud Music official flagship store on Taobao Mall, where I purchased a one-year music VIP service for what I thought was a cheap price at the time, only 20 yuan per year, much lower than the official price. But considering that the membership services of these music platforms are often bundled and sold with other shopping apps, video apps, and various lifestyle apps, the actual value is just like that.

But I didn’t expect that while listening to music in the car last night, I found that multiple songs were automatically switched after just playing for more than 20 seconds, which made me realize that my music service membership might have expired.

I found it very strange because it seemed that I hadn’t been using the membership service of this platform for very long, so after parking, I carefully checked my purchase record and found that I did purchase a one-year membership service on December 4, 2023. However, in the service record, I found that the originally one-year membership service was altered by the official to only four months after the purchase, which officially expired the day before yesterday. This feeling of being deceived is just too terrible.

From my many years of experience using music platforms, it is basically impossible for me to be “kidnapped by the platform” again. So I downloaded a music app called Kugou Concept Edition on the advice of other friends, and I heard it also offers a free membership every day. But during the use, I found that Kugou Music is still similar to 20 years ago, with a strong local flavor, and the recommended songs are far from my taste.

Later, I searched for other music apps in the mobile app store and found a product called Soda Music, which is launched by the Douyin platform and deeply integrated with it, with music styles and recommendation algorithms coming from Douyin.

Since I mainly listen to music by random play and only occasionally feel like listening to a specific song, Douyin’s short video recommendation model music product is very suitable for my needs. Plus, the design of this app is very simple and practical, unlike QQ Music and NetEase Cloud Music, which have a bunch of bloated features, so I happily started using this music app.

Additionally, this app also offers a one-day membership for each use, which is equivalent to being free, so why not use it?