Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Spotify vs the US Competition

blog.like.fm

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 108 posts

Re: Spotify vs the US Competition

#61

Post by physcab »

chrischen wrote: post #22
nc wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. See spotylist.com, discovery through non-friends playlists beats algorithms as you can understand why songs are grouped together and get a feel for a persons music tastes.

I'm not sure if any "social" type of discovery can beat algorithmic in quality. The added benefit of "social" is the socializing bit, not the discovery bit. Algorithms can always match you up with similar people faster and better. But thanks for the link I'll re-consider the rating.

After testing out Turntable.fm for the past few weeks, I have to almost disagree. And this is coming from someone who worked on Grooveshark Radio for a year, which is almost all algorithmic.

Re: Spotify vs the US Competition

#62

Post by mnutt »

dgallagher wrote: post #57

After two days with a free account, on a Mac, I noticed this: - If you mute your speakers via OS X while an advertisement is playing, it pauses the ad until you unmute your speakers. - If you turn down your speaker volume via OS X too much while an advertisement is playing, the same behavior occurs until you turn the volume back up. This appears to be relative to the volume you were just listening to music at. Quick…

If they wanted to be especially clever, when you muted/turned down the volume while a song was playing they would continue to advance the progress bar while not actually streaming the song, which might save them some royalty costs.

Re: Spotify vs the US Competition

#63

Post by igorgue »

dgallagher wrote: post #57

After two days with a free account, on a Mac, I noticed this: - If you mute your speakers via OS X while an advertisement is playing, it pauses the ad until you unmute your speakers. - If you turn down your speaker volume via OS X too much while an advertisement is playing, the same behavior occurs until you turn the volume back up. This appears to be relative to the volume you were just listening to music at. Quick…

Quick fix around this; PAY FOR IT!

That's it FTFY.

Re: Spotify vs the US Competition

#64

Post by earbitscom »

physcab wrote: post #41
earbitscom wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grooveshark has been playing a lot of copyrighted material without licenses for a very long time. It takes it down; the content reappears. I understand that you're somewhat protected by DMCA, but the entire business was built on the backs of mostly mainstream content. It wasn't until you already had a big audience that you started securing the majority of your most important licenses, and plenty of the music there is…

Its not a black or white issue. Licensing is incredibly complex with ownership sometimes changing between territories, products, people and having the technology in place to enforce specific terms so all parties are happy. I'm not completely knowledgeable about the subject so I won't comment on that further, but its not something we turn a blind eye to. Our content ID system is getting better and better. Ultimately i…

I'm not going to lie, we're competitors, and I have plenty of people tell me they're happy with Grooveshark, and that you provide a lot of value. I also hear the other side, and I hope that Grooveshark gets what it deserves from Universal.

The fact still remains that Grooveshark as it is wouldn't exist if not for the many years it's had to benefit from free use of mainstream content. That's not what DMCA was created for. It was created to protect people who mostly have UGC and occasionally have their terms violated. If Grooveshark was one of those companies, they would look more like Unsigned.com right now.

The music industry's legal system is complex. We all know that. Other companies are navigating that complexity in much more difficult ways, being much more honest to the spirit of the law. Grooveshark takes advantage of the laws and operates a service that has only one foot in legality. Of course it would be easy to build a business that way and then get the praises of those companies you forge relationships with _after_ your audience and platform is already valuable. But there is more to be said for a company that takes the hard road and does the same. I think Pandora has had a miserable time of it, but at least they did it right.

Re: Spotify vs the US Competition

#65

Post by earbitscom »

potatolicious wrote: post #53
earbitscom wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grooveshark has been playing a lot of copyrighted material without licenses for a very long time. It takes it down; the content reappears. I understand that you're somewhat protected by DMCA, but the entire business was built on the backs of mostly mainstream content. It wasn't until you already had a big audience that you started securing the majority of your most important licenses, and plenty of the music there is…

> "then why has Universal declared "legal jihad" on Grooveshark?" This isn't to excuse Grooveshark (honestly, not a user, so I have no horse in this race), but attracting the ire of the RIAA/MPAA in and of itself doesn't mean much except that you've gotten some big dogs pissed off at you.

That's true. But Grooveshark has been playing Universal artists for years, millions of times over, without licenses. They're not innocent. They claim DMCA, but they know that they have a ton of copyrighted material on their platform. Say what you will about the RIAA, it doesn't make all of their enemies good people.

Re: Spotify vs the US Competition

#66

Post by earbitscom »

physcab wrote: post #47
earbitscom wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's legal because the person uploading it agrees to their terms and says it's not copyrighted, or that they have the right to upload it. In most cases, these people do not. Grooveshark relies on DMCA and says that they prohibit this behavior but they know full well that tons of the content being uploaded is copyrighted. The simple fact is, they should know what content they have licenses for, and what content they d…

> Maintaining a list of the top 1,000,000 bands in the world and not letting anybody upload tracks with metadata that included those bands and song names in it would not be that difficult. I addressed this in my other comment, but as it turns out, this aspect of the problem is incredibly difficult. Metadata can be wrong and we can't always depend on it. So we use waveform analysis. But thats difficult too due to the…

The simple fact is, without mainstream content, Grooveshark would be a joke. Putting in a requirement - Do not play songs with the word Primus in the metadata - would probably "accidentally" keep out some cover bands' songs that are legally uploaded, but it would do a very good job of keeping out most Primus music. Even if that music showed up, but without the metadata, nobody would be finding it in searches, which also helps eliminate the use of that illegal content. What you do, frankly, is close to the legal minimum because the business wouldn't exist if you did a better job at it.

Within 5 minutes I can go find music on Grooveshark that is there illegally. It ought to be pretty easy for you to do the same queries and prevent that from happening. Would you prevent legal music? Yes. What is more important - that some cover band be allowed to post their music, or that Primus be allowed to retain their rights? Particularly when you consider that nobody is coming to Grooveshark to hear covers of Primus.

I'm not saying that operating legally in the music industry is easy - far from it. But on the spectrum of trying to, unprofitable Pandora is on one side, and Grooveshark is waving hello in the far distance.

Re: Spotify vs the US Competition

#67

Post by seabee »

Joakal wrote: post #59
dgallagher wrote: post #57

After two days with a free account, on a Mac, I noticed this: - If you mute your speakers via OS X while an advertisement is playing, it pauses the ad until you unmute your speakers. - If you turn down your speaker volume via OS X too much while an advertisement is playing, the same behavior occurs until you turn the volume back up. This appears to be relative to the volume you were just listening to music at. Quick…

Does this happen on a PC?

Yes.

Re: Spotify vs the US Competition

#68

Post by earbitscom »

earbitscom wrote: post #66
physcab wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maintaining a list of the top 1,000,000 bands in the world and not letting anybody upload tracks with metadata that included those bands and song names in it would not be that difficult. I addressed this in my other comment, but as it turns out, this aspect of the problem is incredibly difficult. Metadata can be wrong and we can't always depend on it. So we use waveform analysis. But thats difficult too due to the…

The simple fact is, without mainstream content, Grooveshark would be a joke. Putting in a requirement - Do not play songs with the word Primus in the metadata - would probably "accidentally" keep out some cover bands' songs that are legally uploaded, but it would do a very good job of keeping out most Primus music. Even if that music showed up, but without the metadata, nobody would be finding it in searches, which a…

P.S. I apologize for saying "the simple fact is" way too often.

Re: Spotify vs the US Competition

#69

Post by chrischen »

physcab wrote: post #61
chrischen wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if any "social" type of discovery can beat algorithmic in quality. The added benefit of "social" is the socializing bit, not the discovery bit. Algorithms can always match you up with similar people faster and better. But thanks for the link I'll re-consider the rating.

After testing out Turntable.fm for the past few weeks, I have to almost disagree. And this is coming from someone who worked on Grooveshark Radio for a year, which is almost all algorithmic.

Turntable is fun with friends. But being a listener in a DJd room is no different than listening to a curated playlist, a curated radio station, and probably worse than personalized algorithmic radio in terms of efficacy of discovery.

You'll discover music on Turntable, but for the same amount of time spent on an algorithmic radio station you'll probably discover more.

Re: Spotify vs the US Competition

#70

Post by sjs »

mmahemoff wrote: post #17

Spotify's discovery is better than a 4. Since a playlist can be represented by a URL, sites have emerged to share playlists, which is actually awesome, one of those living in the future moments. Even better, these can be dynamic, like a top 40 list, and also curated by everyone. That said, Spotify could certainly do much more in this area (a lot of their energies have been focused on getting the US launch, it seems).

I use and like Grooveshark but it's radio recommendations are pretty bad and people who have used both say Spotify's is better. I would take these scores with a grain of salt. As much as I like Grooveshark I wouldn't give it a 9 overall.
Post reply on HN