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

Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?

neil.computer

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 504 posts

Re: Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?

#301

Post by solarkraft »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #78
intothemild wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's why I'm being driven back to piracy, because the UI/UX is do horrible on these platforms, that and believe it or not because Content discovery is easier a couple of the piracy apps look at what I have in my collection, and do recommendations off that... And guess what.. it's really good. So a bunch of people in their spare time seem to be doing a better job than Netflix, why is that? Because I don't think Netfli…

I have the same issues with all of these services. But I'm wondering if it's some kind "expert mode" issue which is only a problem for a small advanced-user minority - many of whom will be reading HN. Do most users want to be told what to consume? Circumstantially I'd guess so, because otherwise it's a lot of effort to add friction for no reason. But I don't know. Possibly Spotify and Netflix do. Or possibly not. Per…

> Do most users want to be told what to consume?

I like "lean-back listening" and that's the whole reason I'm still sticking with Spotify. They (almost) always have something to accompany my mood both out of songs I already like and new ones I often also like (yay!). The drift in mood is minimal. I can listen to calm piano music for a whole night while Apple music can shift over to loud metal within only a few songs (what a joke).

It may be getting worse, though. Especially a few songs keep playing over and over, sometimes despite me explicitly blocking them. Both a lot of new or familiar songs often show up at times at which I want just the other - and of course you can't choose (what a joke! The algorithm is great, just badly tuned, let me change it!).

Re: Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?

#302

Post by moolcool »

nightowl_games wrote: post #268

Spotify's UI is a case study of the negative impact of assigning single screens to single teams, designers and managers. There is no cohesive vision. The useful functionality is all obscured by esthetics. I am perpetually annoyed at how poor spotify is at it's basic purpose. They have leaned way too far into recommendation systems and over designed layout. 99% of the time, I know what I want to listen to. Spotify's U…

iTunes and WMP were okay, but nothing ever has topped Foobar 2000 IMO.

Re: Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?

#303

Post by nine_k »

srrr wrote: post #196
mcjiggerlog wrote: post #16

This is a big frustration of mine, too. The other is that Spotify is extremely biased towards playlist listening and makes browsing and listening to a library of albums really painful. The good news is that Spotify's SDK and API are actually powerful enough that you can build up an entire alternative interface, which is actually what I recently started doing: https://i.imgur.com/ar7VrYy.png . It's still work in progr…

15 years ago when I worked in the music streaming space we also had to push users to playlists instead of albums. The reason, in Germany at least, was that a playlist only payed 1/10 the royalties to the GEMA [1] than an album playthrough. Playlists were classified as ¨radio¨ and thus a performance of the radio station but an album was the performance of the original artist. Our interface was optimized for low royalt…

It would be great to be able to buy an album, pay the upfront cost, and then stream it for free.

This is how Bandcamp works. I greatly prefer it to Spotify, but only because I'm not generally interested in mainstream bands.

Re: Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?

#304

Post by frogstomp19 »

HeadsUpHigh wrote: post #252
frogstomp19 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like we've lost essentially nothing. In the streaming era, it's easier than ever before to discover new artists and listen to an unprecedented variety of music with minimal investment. If it's slightly cumbersome to listen to albums on Spotify, it's still much less cumbersome that going to a store to buy a CD or purchasing online and waiting for it to arrive + keeping your collection physically organized and i…

My results from discovering new artists have been far superior on community oriented places vs spotify or any streaming service. Algos just suck at this.

I'm not really arguing that Spotify has the greatest music discover system but if you read about an album, it costs you nothing to try it out. Prior to subscription services and digital music it would be a 10$ investment that you may or may not make.

Re: Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?

#305

Post by solarkraft »

robertlagrant wrote: post #107
nonrandomstring wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I believe forced interoperability is essential to the future of online consumer tech. We've discussed it here in the context of social media monopoly regulation, but it has far greater implications. Salient examples are the alternative Twitter interfaces that proliferated, and indeed those for Hacker News. One huge benefit is that users won't be stuck with a single, often hostile UI, but be free to either…

That would be cool, but then some of those interfaces (probably the ones with the most ad funding) would be part-owned by one of the streaming services and would push their content the most. Feels like it'd be just one more hull on the Titanic.

Which is fine as long as the better ones are available.

Re: Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?

#306

Post by lowercased »

mahogany wrote: post #256
hyperbovine wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dystopian you say? For $15 a month I can access basically every song ever recorded at the click of a button, wirelessly on an ultrapowerful mobile computing device that fits comfortably in my pocket. Place yourself in about 1997 and savor that statement for a moment. But what have we gained?

> I can access basically every song ever recorded Not really, there is a lot missing from Spotify, and not just obscure music. And you have to accept the fact that music may (and does) go missing at any time. Plus, even for songs that are on the platform, you are forced to listen to what version they have, which is almost always a "remastered" version. Example: early Beatles songs have vocals hard-panned to one side,…

> Example: early Beatles songs have vocals hard-panned to one side, which sounds terrible on headphones. It sounds way better on the original mono version.

Somewhat agreed, although I suspect that may be more of an Apple/Beatles decision as to what versions to make available. Having 3-4 versions of each song may create more confusion for people. But... it's a shame that many of those versions aren't available (original mono, original stereo, remastered mono, remastered stereo, etc). I do see that Apple Music has some more options (US box set, for example), but even then, those are the US stereo/mono, and the UK mono/stereo mixes are, in some/many cases, different.

Re: Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?

#307

Post by lkfjasdlkjfsad »

Reason077 wrote: post #169
mcjiggerlog wrote: post #16

This is a big frustration of mine, too. The other is that Spotify is extremely biased towards playlist listening and makes browsing and listening to a library of albums really painful. The good news is that Spotify's SDK and API are actually powerful enough that you can build up an entire alternative interface, which is actually what I recently started doing: https://i.imgur.com/ar7VrYy.png . It's still work in progr…

I've deliberately frozen my Spotify on the April 30th, 2021 version largely for this reason. It's one of the last versions that still supported the "classic" UI, which is much snappier and has a proper, compact songs table and a decent albums view. Still works great with zero compatibility issues that I've noticed. http://mckinlay.net.nz/images/Spotify-Screenshot.png

i remember this UI update.

this UI update (the version after the April 30 2021 version) should be recorded as a possible worst UI change in the history of software.

Re: Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?

#308

Post by alexvoda »

objclxt wrote: post #199
daveoc64 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enjoyment of music linked to a specific physical item seems incredibly shallow to me. If the music is worth listening to, the medium shouldn't matter at all.

> Enjoyment of music linked to a specific physical item seems incredibly shallow to me. To a certain extent, but across the arts there's always artists that want to play with the format, so a changing of format can result in something being re-contextualised. For example, you can have [multisided vinyl][1] with hidden tracks, or loop a track onto itself so the record plays forever (like Sergeant Pepper). Neither are…

I see no reason why all of that could not be done in software. Same as DVD menus.

For the record, VLC supports DVD menus and the Matroska container format (mkv, mka, mks, and the basis for webm) supports all of the features imagined so far. I believe the demand for the content far outweighed the demand for the presentation layer.

All of these forms of interactivity however didn't prove popular in the digital world. Think of DVD's again. How often would you have ripped a DVD into a 4 or 8 GiB ISO in order to preserve the full experience and how often would you have rather ripped just the video file ~400 MiB, reencoded using a modern codec. Netflix optimises for the latter.

If you allow for programability, all features of music albums and more can be recreated.

What people want is no fuss instant access to the popular music of the moment therefore we have streaming services with good enough quality for most people and vast enough but incomplete collections of music. All while navigating the maze of licensing internationally.

How many listeners do you believe would rather open Spotify/iTunes/WinAmp and press play to hear music and how many would rather navigate a album specific experience.

If experience is so important, it can still be done in the streaming focused world of today (without standardised formats like Matroska). Just package it as an app (native or web), publish it on the app stores and let the app store take a 30% cut. Apps do not appear to be a popular format for music albums or for movies, even though they were attempted.

Re: Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?

#309

Post by solarkraft »

zamalek wrote: post #257

For those wanting an alternative, do give Tidal a trial (there are services that can port over your playlists). Pros: You can view almost everything as a list, although their UI is optimized for touch screens - so the rows are rather large. Their radio rivals Pandora in terms of properly understanding your tastes. Cons: After a very quick look, I don't think they do podcasts. Their API support is utter shit, 3rd part…

> Cons: (...) I don't think they do podcasts.

That's a big pro. Podcasts and music don't belong together.

A good recommendation engine is important to me, so I'll check it out.

Re: Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?

#310

Post by ulrikrasmussen »

nine_k wrote: post #303
srrr wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

15 years ago when I worked in the music streaming space we also had to push users to playlists instead of albums. The reason, in Germany at least, was that a playlist only payed 1/10 the royalties to the GEMA [1] than an album playthrough. Playlists were classified as ¨radio¨ and thus a performance of the radio station but an album was the performance of the original artist. Our interface was optimized for low royalt…

It would be great to be able to buy an album, pay the upfront cost, and then stream it for free. This is how Bandcamp works. I greatly prefer it to Spotify, but only because I'm not generally interested in mainstream bands.

Same, I love Bandcamp, and I am truly worried that Epic will find a way to ruin it. It is one of the last places on the internet I know of where you can easily buy music for download (i.e. you actually own it).
Post reply on HN