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

neil.computer

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

#311

Post by Taywee »

I'm so irritated with Spotify. Deezer is a bit better, but not a hell of a lot. I was a CD buyer and music pirate for a very long time, and while music streaming has helped me find a lot of new music, it has come with many frustrations as well. The biggest problem is the slow slide from convenience into a pre-packaged, curated experience, leveraging the audience for extra revenue. I know it's inevitable when companies need to maintain constant growth, but I can't help but get a little angry when I'm paying for a service, and I'm STILL the product to be sold for advertising dollars. The old adage of "if you aren't paying for it, you are the product" doesn't apply anymore. It's now basically "If it is a service, you are the product".

You can't customize any of these home screens. You can't tell them to STOP SHOWING ME PODCASTS I DON'T LISTEN TO PODCASTS. You can't reset your listening profile to get back to a vanilla experience (especially applicable if you use your account for multiple different things. I don't listen to the same music while working as I do while working out, or actual "just sit-and-listen to music" sessions, and I also use music for D&D sessions, so all my suggested music ends up being a terrible mishmash. Spotify's suggestion here is to pay for multiple accounts.

Even the AI and suggested music is wearing thin. Both Spotify and Deezer just give me the same exact tracks constantly, 99% of it is very mainstream, well-known stuff, and I haven't discovered any new music in over a month, despite listening for at least 4 hours a day. I kind of want to go back to just pirating everything again. It's actually pathetic that these top-of-the-line services offer less flexibility, power, and control than just pirating music and sticking it on your PMP did 15 years ago. It's sad.

At least Bandcamp is still a thing, but then I've got an annoying library split. I can't mix my bought Bandcamp tracks in with Deezer or Spotify.

Why are these the options? Pay out the nose for music (if you're a serious listener, $150 gets you 10 albums, which I can get through in three days). Be a criminal. Pay for a subscription that gives you no control and sells you to advertisers.

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

#312

Post by VistaBrokeMyPC »

nathell wrote: post #55

> Foobar2000? where are you? Do you still have that tattoo on your arm that screams "FUNCTIONALISM"? F2K is at https://www.foobar2000.org/ , it works just as well as ever, and, yes, still has that tattoo. I’m happily using the Mac version on Big Sur.

Foobar2k and Lidarr is where it's at. I went full circle back to sailing the seven seas because streaming services got so bloated and user-friendly in my opinion.

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

#314

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

matwood wrote: post #161
lapser wrote: post #43

Spotify is horrendous. Their UI is subpar. Their mix of podcasts with songs is odd at best (seriously, I never listen to podcasts, why can't I switch it off completely?). Their shuffle is just not. Imagine listening to the same 20ish songs from a playlist of nearly 2k songs. How can you mess up shuffle that bad? It's also not easy to move away from it. It requires time and effort. Time that many don't have.

I've never understood the Spotify love. I tried it long ago and didn't like it at all. Ended up on GPM until Google pushed me to YTM. Now on AM, and it works fine with how I listen to music. I wonder if it's just different ways that people listen to music that lead them to prefer one service over another?

> I've never understood the Spotify love.

I started using it when it was launched or shortly after, before most of the alternatives (including Youtube Music) even existed. It was great ~10 years ago.

I still use it because I'm invested into it: we have our premium family account, with all smart speakers configured to play songs using it, we have playlists, out of the music I like I know what's available and what's missing and I have acquired what's missing by other means (but switching to another service would mean different songs/artists would be missing, etc.)

Compound that with lack of time (work, parenting, etc.) and while the Spotify UX has really gone downhill, it would have to get really, really bad for me to switch...

Walled gardens are evil. But so convenient...

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

#315

Post by acidburnNSA »

I cancelled my spotify subscription after they banned libspotify from working in May. I was using it in Mopidy using the Iris plugin to get this nice table of songs. Now I'm spending my subscription fee on MP3s to grow my local MP3 collection and curating local playlists in Iris just like the olden days. So far so good.

https://mopidy.com/ext/iris/

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

#316

Post by fullshark »

No because Spotify needs to turn its music catalog listeners into (proprietary) podcast listeners. Possibly proprietary playlists/recommendation radio streams as well. Same reason why Netflix pushes originals over licensed content.

It's incredibly annoying but haven't yet heard a compelling reason to switch to apple music.

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

#317

Post by [deleted] »

danielovichdk wrote: post #48

I use Winamp for my MP3 collection that I downloaded of my T1 line at the office. When I turn that mother up on and my CRT monitor starts smoking because of the Winamp addons that spikes all kinds of shit whenever the tune is changing, then I know I have found the right track. Then I get cracking on the floor. Break dancing and caps flying around. The neighbors come jumping in the door and starts clapping and the mus…

[deleted]

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

#318

Post by Godel_unicode »

ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #310
nine_k wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

You can buy and download DRM-free music from Apple and Amazon.

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

#320

Post by cosmiccatnap »

We live in an age of poor design. Advertisement and dark patterns run rampant and reduce the functionality and usability of our software all the time.

That being said Spotify still somehow stands out as a case study in how not to design an interface. What's worse is that the mobile apps are specifically designed with electron under the assumption that it will make cross platform development easy...but it breaks on every device in different ways.

It's sad because I hate having to maintain a large music catalog manually but no music service really provides an adaquite solution to this and the system with the most extensive library is sadly...the worst platform for it. I hope they get better but I've been hoping that for years at this point.

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