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The clock is ticking for Spotify

bbc.co.uk

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Re: The clock is ticking for Spotify

#101

Post by lobster_johnson »

piotrkubisa wrote: post #65
ProblemFactory wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's just one area where I find Spotify consistently incomplete. At first (especially some years ago when the catalogue was much smaller) this used to annoy me. But Spotify has made a lot of progress in side-stepping the issue. The Discover Weekly playlist of recommended music in particular was a great invention. It doesn't matter that much if artist X's latest album is not on Spotify, as long as they can find some…

Personally, I fell in love in their Discover Weekly algorithm. If you in previous week listened music from artists which tracks haven't been listed in any user-made playlist nor played magical 10,000 times and there is a problem with getting a vinyl / CD you wouldn't expect any songs from such artists but in Discover Weekly you may found similar tracks - they match same genre, they are also from the same decade, they…

Protip: You can generate a new random "Discover Weekly"-style playlist manually by putting a bunch of songs into a playlist, right-clicking the playlist (in the desktop app) and selecting "Create similar playlist".

Re: The clock is ticking for Spotify

#102

Post by rorykoehler »

puddintane wrote: post #42
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.

I recently switched to SoundCloud free and the ads are really not that bad (only con for example if your playing off your phone and it hits a video ad you can't lock your device till the SD finishes). However if the device screen is locked you'll only get audio ads (short and sweet at that). Like YouTube though it will suffer from take down notices on some stuff you book mark, as well as mainstream stuff you can only…

I use both. Soundcloud audio quality is way lower. Not suitable for all day listening without fatigue.

Re: The clock is ticking for Spotify

#103

Post by leoc »

The thing that really vexes me about Spotify is how many listens they're giving away to YouTube by making it impossible to search for and listen to a song without losing your place in your current album or playlist: the interface has no concept of tabs or easily-accessible bookmarks. There's a back button, but it doesn't remember what time or even what track you were on, and even with that memory it would be a second-best alternative anyway. The upshot is that even if you're listening to Spotify at the time you decide to search for a particular track, the instinct is to pause Spotify, go to the web browser, open a new tab and search YouTube! YouTube has other things that Spotify lacks like video, song descriptions and (for better and worse) comments, but I think it's largely just the inconvenience of losing your place that drives you away from Spotify in cases like this. For a company which is scrambling to survive, and which I assume would be better off with more plays and more and happier subscribers, it looks like reckless or hapless squandering.

Re: The clock is ticking for Spotify

#104

Post by bogomipz »

delinka wrote: post #97
bogomipz wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, I didn't mean in any kind of GAAP sense, just that the investment has already borne fruit is all.

But it hasn't. Until they sell. They didn't need to make the investment to get those licensing fees.

Their actual financial investment in the company was likely nominal if anything at all. Spotify likely offered an ownership stake as an incentive to get the labels to take a chance on an unknown company and an unproven model.

Whether Spotify goes public or not the labels have already made out very handsomely was my point. That's the $5 billion that Spotify often states that it has paid out to rights holders. So yes it very much has borne fruit, $5 billion worth. If the company goes public its basically gravy for them.

The record labels were decimated back in 2006/2007 when Spotify started. Things looked pretty bleak for the industry as a whole. So yes the labels needed to do something as their revenues has pretty much dried up comparatively to a decade earlier.

Re: The clock is ticking for Spotify

#105

Post by patrick_haply »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #101
piotrkubisa wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I fell in love in their Discover Weekly algorithm. If you in previous week listened music from artists which tracks haven't been listed in any user-made playlist nor played magical 10,000 times and there is a problem with getting a vinyl / CD you wouldn't expect any songs from such artists but in Discover Weekly you may found similar tracks - they match same genre, they are also from the same decade, they…

Protip: You can generate a new random "Discover Weekly"-style playlist manually by putting a bunch of songs into a playlist, right-clicking the playlist (in the desktop app) and selecting "Create similar playlist".

This is actually exactly how I do music discovery. I create seed playlists with maybe 5-10 songs and start the radio from that. Any songs that I like from the those stations get added to a separate playlist, unless I explicitly decide that I want that song to influence the future selection of songs.

Thumbs-up or thumbs-downing songs in a radio playlist will change the songs that show up, but I find just having a seed playlist is more reliable and repeatable and easier to fine-tune.

Re: The clock is ticking for Spotify

#106

Post by piotrkubisa »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #101
piotrkubisa wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I fell in love in their Discover Weekly algorithm. If you in previous week listened music from artists which tracks haven't been listed in any user-made playlist nor played magical 10,000 times and there is a problem with getting a vinyl / CD you wouldn't expect any songs from such artists but in Discover Weekly you may found similar tracks - they match same genre, they are also from the same decade, they…

Protip: You can generate a new random "Discover Weekly"-style playlist manually by putting a bunch of songs into a playlist, right-clicking the playlist (in the desktop app) and selecting "Create similar playlist".

Indeed, I would call myself as user who uses "Create similar playlist" on daily basis. Sadly, it isn't so awesome as Discover Weekly, because for certain tracks it won't generate any new tracks, i.e. When you put single track (Price - Controversy) and click to create similar playlist you may notice exactly the same track (Prince - Controversy). Also, it usually generate the same output for the specified list of tracks.

Re: The clock is ticking for Spotify

#107

Post by NTripleOne »

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…

>with the exception of a few hold out artists

fuck you Tool. :(

Re: The clock is ticking for Spotify

#108

Post by NTripleOne »

leoc wrote: post #103

The thing that really vexes me about Spotify is how many listens they're giving away to YouTube by making it impossible to search for and listen to a song without losing your place in your current album or playlist: the interface has no concept of tabs or easily-accessible bookmarks. There's a back button, but it doesn't remember what time or even what track you were on, and even with that memory it would be a second…

You need to start using the queue.

In the middle of an album but want to hear another track without stopping the album? right click -> add to up next (or tap-hold, add to up next, if you are that way inclined). It will then play after your current track and before the next track in your current playlist/album.

Re: The clock is ticking for Spotify

#109

Post by afishisafish »

untoreh wrote: post #86
majewsky wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Modern contemporary electronic music, which is usually available vinyl only. Oh, the irony.

I am not sure what is ironic about this, unless you mistook electronic music for edm?

Almost all underground electronic labels offer their releases digitally, they just don't publish to steaming services.

Re: The clock is ticking for Spotify

#110

Post by pimeys »

runeks wrote: post #98
pimeys wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are other big areas where it's seriously lacking content: 1) Modern contemporary electronic music, which is usually available vinyl only. 2) Classic albums in their original form. When there's a remaster, Spotify typically only has the remaster, original was either never there or will be removed when remaster is out. Now, when you start to invest to your sound system even a bit (not talking about 100k wires her…

Have you honestly done a blinded listening test, comparing 320 kbps Ogg Vorbis (Spotify Premium) to lossless, and concluded that there's a severe reduction in quality? Audio compression is an old technology by now. Lossless CD audio is ~1200 kbps, and we're only compressing to something like 1/4th the original size. There really shouldn't be much room for error. Even completely lossless CD audio compression can still…

When I get my music, I want to use that for the next 20 years at least. It's stored in my NAS lossless and I can convert it to any format I want? For example, I use 192kbps opus files on my phone, which work nice while using A2DP to pack the sound even more.

But if I own music, FLAC is the proper format. I can go into any other format from it and re-pack my whole collection in the matter of minutes. Buying and storing content in lossy format doesn't give me this freedom.

And even if Spotify Vorbis sounds ok, it doesn't change the fact that many records in there have a very bad mastering and no other versions at all. Which was my original point here.

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