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The clock is ticking for Spotify

bbc.co.uk

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Re: The clock is ticking for Spotify

#71

Post by AbstractCache »

zpr wrote: post #63
ivraatiems wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The music industry doesn't need to ruin Spotify. It's ruining itself. Its support is abysmal, its apps are bug-riddled and get worse with every update, and it's consistently doing boneheaded "pivot" moves (like mandatory Facebook login a couple years back, "version 1.0" of the desktop app more recently), and so on. It's squandering the good faith and great library it has.

I agree. Never cared much for the UI, and always found it too buggy to keep using. At my old job, we used it for office tunes, and it was often showing the wrong song that was playing, (so you never knew what you were listening to unless you used something like SoundHound), and going to previous or next tracks was inconsistent, so you might not get back to the last song ever again. Pardon my ignorance but why is Goog…

I actually used to have Google Play Music All Access, but the bugs would just drive me insane. I think the worst one was where it would play the censored version of a song, no matter if you chose the edited or explicit version. The only way to fix it was to delete your locally downloaded music, which I keep 60gb of my favorite tracks on my phone. I finally jumped to Spotify premium and I've haven't experienced any bugs. Plus, Spotify premium is half the price because I get a student discount. I think the only thing I miss is no ads on YouTube videos.

Re: The clock is ticking for Spotify

#72

Post by layer7burrito »

zpr wrote: post #63
ivraatiems wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The music industry doesn't need to ruin Spotify. It's ruining itself. Its support is abysmal, its apps are bug-riddled and get worse with every update, and it's consistently doing boneheaded "pivot" moves (like mandatory Facebook login a couple years back, "version 1.0" of the desktop app more recently), and so on. It's squandering the good faith and great library it has.

I agree. Never cared much for the UI, and always found it too buggy to keep using. At my old job, we used it for office tunes, and it was often showing the wrong song that was playing, (so you never knew what you were listening to unless you used something like SoundHound), and going to previous or next tracks was inconsistent, so you might not get back to the last song ever again. Pardon my ignorance but why is Goog…

The sad thing is, it didn't used to be this way. The first versions of Spotify (beta) were really performant. In fact, the same developer that wrote Open Transport Tycoon had a large part to play in the first Spotify desktop app. It was slick, simple and easy to use.

Now though... There's bloat every where, bugs everywhere, zero user feedback has been incorporated into the product. There are bugs that have been open for _years_ that still haven't been addressed.

From what I hear of the company culture, it's not surprising. International parties, organizational bloat, defunct acquisitions. What started as a really nice piece of tech quickly devolved into a hedonistic wannabe mainstream media company, and it shows.

Re: The clock is ticking for Spotify

#74

Post by hellopat »

ivraatiems wrote: post #53
iamben wrote: post #3

I can't be the only one that has almost zero faith the music industry won't ruin Spotify? I'm sure it won't be deliberate, just a combination of stubbornness, greed and living in the past. Spotify and music is like a library and books. It's fantastic and accessible for listening and discovery. I'm hard pushed to find a friend that didn't use napster or limewire that's moved to Spotify - it's just easy, there and the…

The music industry doesn't need to ruin Spotify. It's ruining itself. Its support is abysmal, its apps are bug-riddled and get worse with every update, and it's consistently doing boneheaded "pivot" moves (like mandatory Facebook login a couple years back, "version 1.0" of the desktop app more recently), and so on. It's squandering the good faith and great library it has.

I have absolutely no issues with the mobile or desktop versions of the app.

Re: The clock is ticking for Spotify

#75

Post by hellopat »

ivraatiems wrote: post #53
iamben wrote: post #3

I can't be the only one that has almost zero faith the music industry won't ruin Spotify? I'm sure it won't be deliberate, just a combination of stubbornness, greed and living in the past. Spotify and music is like a library and books. It's fantastic and accessible for listening and discovery. I'm hard pushed to find a friend that didn't use napster or limewire that's moved to Spotify - it's just easy, there and the…

The music industry doesn't need to ruin Spotify. It's ruining itself. Its support is abysmal, its apps are bug-riddled and get worse with every update, and it's consistently doing boneheaded "pivot" moves (like mandatory Facebook login a couple years back, "version 1.0" of the desktop app more recently), and so on. It's squandering the good faith and great library it has.

I have absolutely no issues with the mobile or desktop versions of the app.

Re: The clock is ticking for Spotify

#76

Post by hellopat »

ivraatiems wrote: post #53
iamben wrote: post #3

I can't be the only one that has almost zero faith the music industry won't ruin Spotify? I'm sure it won't be deliberate, just a combination of stubbornness, greed and living in the past. Spotify and music is like a library and books. It's fantastic and accessible for listening and discovery. I'm hard pushed to find a friend that didn't use napster or limewire that's moved to Spotify - it's just easy, there and the…

The music industry doesn't need to ruin Spotify. It's ruining itself. Its support is abysmal, its apps are bug-riddled and get worse with every update, and it's consistently doing boneheaded "pivot" moves (like mandatory Facebook login a couple years back, "version 1.0" of the desktop app more recently), and so on. It's squandering the good faith and great library it has.

I have absolutely no issues with the mobile or desktop versions of the app.

Re: The clock is ticking for Spotify

#77

Post by lorenzhs »

mattlondon wrote: post #39

Too expensive for me. When I had the Google equivalent (now cancelled too) I found that I just ended up listening to the music I already know/own anyway, so what is the point of paying to listen to the music I have as MP3s? I've found YouTube has been a great replacement for listening to any music I don't already own.

Did you try the discovery features? Many people find them to be among the most valuable features of Spotify. I quite like the discover weekly playlist that is auto-generated every Monday, and the daily mixes are quite good as well. Or see in which playlists other listeners discovered an artist and see if there's anything else you like in there. There's also a "generate more like this" option in playlists' context menu.

Re: The clock is ticking for Spotify

#78

Post by infosample »

sydd wrote: post #41
dageshi wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think youtube is its biggest competition to be honest. Because youtube has a frictionless method of payment (ads), has a paid option if you don't want the ads and is massively useful for "discovery". I could see youtube killing Spotify and all its competitors.

I don't think so. I use Spotify a lot on the go, and YouTube is not suited for that. (can it even play stuff if your screen is locked?) Also Google doesn't want to cannibalize their own Play Music sales.

> can it even play stuff if your screen is locked?

Yes, with Youtube Red.

> Google doesn't want to cannibalize their own Play Music sales.

Youtube Red is free with a Play Music subscription for $9.99/month in the US.

Re: The clock is ticking for Spotify

#80

Post by andybak »

gdulli wrote: post #69
ivraatiems wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The music industry doesn't need to ruin Spotify. It's ruining itself. Its support is abysmal, its apps are bug-riddled and get worse with every update, and it's consistently doing boneheaded "pivot" moves (like mandatory Facebook login a couple years back, "version 1.0" of the desktop app more recently), and so on. It's squandering the good faith and great library it has.

I loved the music discovery aspect of Spotify but bad software pushed me away. Even to me it sounds counterintuitive. Finding new music I love should have been worth more to me than a player with a lot of features. But my instinct was to let foobar2000 pull me back. Something about sophisticated control of playback and playlists turns out to be really important too. But power users are the minority, I'm sure.

I loved both LastFM and MusicIP (or MusicMatch as it was previously known) for their unique matching and recommendation ability. Both were neutered and gradually withered.

I still hope something out there will use my LastFM profile to offer something better than the laughably inaccurate recommendations that I get from every other service.

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