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My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

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Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#161

Post by bartread »

jstummbillig wrote: post #114

I am mostly confused by what the author thinks the selling point is. > I can’t describe what a breath of fresh air this is compared to how bad modern smartphone music and streaming apps have become. Well, I was hoping they would try to describe it, because personally, I would have to wear my most deeply shaded nostalgia glasses to think that MP3 player UX has ever been comparable to what Spotify offers nowadays. And…

> MP3 player UX has ever been comparable to what Spotify offers nowadays.

You might have different experiences to me.

My iPod was never a distraction whilst driving in the way that Spotify, with it's manifold failure modes and inconsistent/unresponsive UX, can be.

With depressing regularity I drive without either music or podcasts because that's preferable to dying (or killing someone else) in a car crash because I'm fussing with Spotify after it's crapped out in some weird way yet again.

Again, not a problem I ever had with my iPod. I know they do crash occasionally - happened to a friend - but I can't remember a single incident in the 7 - 8 years I used mine regularly (multiple hours, every day) where it crashed.

Spotify is terrible software to the point of being dangerous. I can't see how that is desirable UX.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#162

Post by cfcf14 »

pcmoney wrote: post #7

Somebody help me understand this? If the audio quality isn’t better why is it so much better than the “bad” subscription services? I understand critiques of how little they pay artists but I mean from a customer perspective, why is spotify et al bad? I assume you have to buy download organize and sync the music for this system? Is it just nostalgia? Just a single purpose device that cant text you etc?

The author could have probably shed a tad more light on why they feel music apps (spotify et al) are bad. I agree with them though - these apps are atrocious to use, and seem to be continually getting worse. Some of my ongoing complaints about spotify are the following:

* Offline mode still doesn't work properly, after literally years of development. If you lose connection while streaming and want to switch to your 'downloaded albums'? Nope, the app will hang on a blank screen or crash. As londoner, this means spotify basically doesn't work on the tube at all - again, _even in offline-mode_.

* App will generally blank screen, hang, or crash semi-regularly for no apparent reason at least a couple times a day.

* Audio quality is awful. The default is 96kbps, which I believe even the most untrained listening can hear the crumminess of.

* Tons of missing music, even from mainstream artists.

* UI makes it difficult to navigate playlists artist song album, traversing the hierarchy of music associations

* UI prioritises pushing podcast & other unwanted commercial content at you, make it difficult to find what you want and navigate the library

Then you've got the scumminess of the company itself that you alluded to (not paying artists, toxic corporate politics, etc).

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#166

Post by mellavora »

fbnlsr wrote: post #133
jstummbillig wrote: post #114

I am mostly confused by what the author thinks the selling point is. > I can’t describe what a breath of fresh air this is compared to how bad modern smartphone music and streaming apps have become. Well, I was hoping they would try to describe it, because personally, I would have to wear my most deeply shaded nostalgia glasses to think that MP3 player UX has ever been comparable to what Spotify offers nowadays. And…

> And we can not even directly compare a MP3 player to Spotify, which is paid to do an entirely different and way more complicated job, considering that you are able to browse and organize a completely different and incomparably larger (and automatically growing) set of media. Spotify has two drawbacks though: you need a constant Internet connection and it removes tracks at will. The constant internet connection can…

> The constant internet connection can be solved by downloading media to the device,

Well, you'd think so, but I've had albums which I had downloaded disappear if I hadn't listened to them for a while.

So the "download" isn't really stable.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#167

Post by thirdsun »

iasay wrote: post #109
thirdsun wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there's a lot of niche, obscure music missing from streaming services. People who are into music care about those gaps in the catalogue and they want to own their collection without fear of loosing access to their content due to changing rights, which might happen any day.

To note you can add your own music to Apple Music. About half my music was from CDs and iTunes back in the day.

I know. My whole collection lives in Apple's music.app - I jsut don't want to rely on their (or anyone else's) streaming service. I use Spotify merely to preview releases I consider buying.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#168

Post by mellavora »

waiseristy wrote: post #78

Hottest of takes : A shitty music app on my phone like Spotify is 1000x more convenient than a dedicated music device will ever be. As a society we already processed and answered this question in the late 00's. PMP's (heh, remember that term?) suck. All-in-one devices are better Hot-take over.

> As a society we already processed and answered this question in the late 00's.

Perhaps, and perhaps society is re-processing this question and maybe drifting towards a different answer?

Society does change its mind sometimes

> A shitty music app on my phone like Spotify is 1000x more convenient than a dedicated music device will ever be.

Perhaps for you, and you do you. For me,

Pick up phone,

Unlock screen. Shit, doesn't recognize my fingerprint. Again.

Unlock screen with PIN

Navigate to Spotify.

Start spotify, wait for the UX to load.

Try to find that song/albumn I wanted to listen to.

Connect to my headphones/stero.

Hit play

Get a phone call, now ringing over my speakers and the music has stopped

Oh, and it helpfully turns down the volume for me after a while

I'm not quite seeing the convenience here.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#169

Post by worble »

Stormwalker wrote: post #165
anentropic wrote: post #159

Can anyone recommend a good non-streaming, album-centric music player for Android?

Poweramp is what you're looking for. It is paid player, but it's worth every penny

I upvoted this but honestly feel like that isn't a strong enough recommendation for Poweramp. It blows every other player out of the water, there's no competition.

I also just checked their website and as of v3 it doesn't even require google services to buy, so even if you have a degoogled phone you can still use it.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#170

Post by laputan_machine »

trollied wrote: post #149
theodric wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beautiful hardware let down by its software? Sounds like every Sony product I've ever bought.

SonicStage was a perfect example of this. Amazing (small!) MiniDisc hardware, let down by one of the worst pieces of software I've ever had the misfortune to use.

Yeah this is exactly what I was thinking of, that software was truly awful. I owned 3 MiniDisc players. I thought they were so neat!
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