I'm apparently in the minority, but I long for a return of the 5-star ranking. I really miss that about itunes, being able to rank each song, and set up smart playlists based on genre and how much variety (how deep in the star rankings) I wanted. I'd have to think an intelligent recommendation engine could do a ton more with star rankings than a simple up/down too. 5=love, 4=like, 3=ok, 2=dislike, 1=hate. It could ev…
The more information the better, thing is platforms want to sell their content first and foremost. This removal of user input was pushed by the business so they could push content regardless of personal interest.
Ever wonder why Netflix keeps on pushing bad content ?
Why Spotify plasters your home page with Podcasts: Short answer is $$$$. Longer answer is: Spotify must pay royalties for each song played. Imagine if there was a completely free (for Spotify) form of content that filled users ears for hours, thus removing the need for Spotify to pay royalties. Ahem podcasts. Now imagine if Spotify started injecting ads into said media form to grow their revenue beyond subscriptions.…
Welcome to McDonalds, home of the Mcadoyble. Now given that burgers cost us money to produce, wouldn’t you rather have a podcast? Does this whole thing not seem insane to anyone else?
They would recommend you food that's more profitable for them: drinks, nuggets, fries.
Last.FM could have been great. Back in 2005 (17 years ago!!) it had a veritable encyclopedia of artists, albums and tracks, a decent recommendations system, "neighborhoods" that matched you with other users who listened to similar artists (and they even told you what you had in common so you other ignore users whose 12 year old also likes the Barbie song). You could add specific users to a 'Friends' section. You could look at their music libraries. Last.FM invented scrobbling (AFAIK)... Once upon a time my wife and I both paid them a monthly subscription for ad-free music. You couldn't play whatever you liked, because of the licensing model - instead you could pick a "radio station" based on your neighborhood, a specific neighbor, your likes, a band, a genre or even your whole library (ie: everything you ever listened to). It was really great for discovering new music, had a great interface, and had built-in love/ban buttons. Right when the world was about to lose its shit over the inferior Spotify, Last.FM absolutely fucked up. Instead of running a stable infrastructure and licensing music for on-demand streaming like Spotify did, they mismanaged their infrastructure, making music borderline unplayable. They had site outages. They broke their API with backward-incompatible changes. Once they proved beyond doubt that they couldn't run the streaming infrastructure, they gave up trying simply added a Spotify play button. And there went the only reason to give Last.FM your money, because now you had to pay Spotify anyway. Pathetic. A wasted opportunity. If I could have the Last.FM from a decade and a half ago with on-demand music and stable infrastructure I'd take it over any other service available right now.
I listen to some background noise during the night when sleeping (rain, wind, that kind of stuff)... now, any mix, recommendation and whatnot consists of "soothing noise; relaxing Japanese traditional music; sounds of the beach" etc.
Things I want from Spotify: - Fix the damn album artwork in the browser. A big part of enjoying an album is viewing the cover and liner art. Let me do that full-screen with zoom. - Let me create genre-limited radio stations from my likes. Don't just play songs from my likes. If I'm in the mood for , say, 80s hip-hop, I want a radio station based off my liked 80s hip-hop songs which includes related artists. - Hide th…
For the people who argue that you cannot hear the difference lossless and compressed: I agree, however the issue is that the lossless versions of the music also received more editing from audio engineers. That is what makes Tidal more enjoyable.
I'm genuinely confused by people who complain about Spotify's recommendation algorithm. I have eclectic, often obscure tastes, and I've found it to be an incredible way to discover new music. I think you do have to prime the engine a bit. I "like" a lot of albums and songs. Every time I hear something new that I like I press the little heart button. Same when I discover music outside of Spotify (I listen to WFMU a lo…
I also find it strange. I find the algorithm incredibly good. I did link it with iTunes back in the day, so it started off knowing what I like, and I always Like tracks when I like them. Now I often find myself pressing like on most tracks on Discover Weekly because it's so good at recommending things I'll enjoy, and quite a lot in Daily Mix and Artist Radio too.
Things I want from Spotify: - Fix the damn album artwork in the browser. A big part of enjoying an album is viewing the cover and liner art. Let me do that full-screen with zoom. - Let me create genre-limited radio stations from my likes. Don't just play songs from my likes. If I'm in the mood for , say, 80s hip-hop, I want a radio station based off my liked 80s hip-hop songs which includes related artists. - Hide th…
- Allow listening from more than one device at the same time on a family plan. Use case: I listen to something at home and then get in my car. People at home should still be able to listen to what they want, and I should also be able to listen to something else. At the same time.
Welcome to McDonalds, home of the Mcadoyble. Now given that burgers cost us money to produce, wouldn’t you rather have a podcast? Does this whole thing not seem insane to anyone else?
Selling a burger is inhernelty profitable for McD, they sell it for more than they spend on manufacturing and shipping and serving it. Each new burger sold adds more profit. Serving music is unprofitable for Spotify. They collect your monthly subscription fee, then every additional song play makes Spotify lose money. They don't want to have zero song plays since then nobody would subscribe, but their goal is sell the…
> their goal is [...] minimizing the unprofitable thing (song plays).
If that's the case, how do you explain those two features :
- the repeat button
- the "automatically play similar songs" option
In the first case, since I don't know how it works, maybe they have to pay only one time for a song per user listening to it during a period (say a month). But I doubt it.
In the second case, it's Spotify explicitly saying : "here are songs you don't intended to play but that we picked automatically and are playing to you".
If you look at Netflix, sure they have the feature that automatically launch the next episode. Or they try weird stuff like live or play anything... But they also have the "Are you still watching ?" feature, to make sure that they don't display content to an empty room.
Spotify doesn't have that, it can just play songs indefinitely without any human interaction.