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The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

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Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#71

Post by [deleted] »

daveoc64 wrote: post #56
xnorswap wrote: post #40

I feel like I'm in a weird alt-universe. I've heard frequent complaints about spotify pushing podcasts but I've never once had spotify show me a podcast above the fold that I haven't myself followed. Only if I scroll really further than I've ever scrolled before could I find it. Spotify shows me: "Made for xnorswap: ": 5 "daily mixes" which have always been a bit rubbish because they're not really mixes, they seem to…

>I feel like I'm in a weird alt-universe. >I've heard frequent complaints about spotify pushing podcasts but I've never once had spotify show me a podcast above the fold that I haven't myself followed. That you have followed or listened to a podcast in Spotify is what makes you different here. I have never listened to a podcast on Spotify, despite being a user since the invite-only days, yet the UI recommends podcast…

[deleted]

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#72

Post by joduplessis »

OJFord wrote: post #68
joduplessis wrote: post #54

Love Spotify, saying that as a UI guy as well as a music lover. I've tried Apple Music, Deezer & recently Tidal - but find Spotify's music discovery alg. is killer for what I listen to.

> Love Spotify, saying that as a UI guy Really ?

Really. :)

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#73

Post by thriftwy »

jamesear wrote: post #63

I know this isn't a practical option for many, but there are still many simple audio players for self managed music collections. I use VLC on Android, and Amberol on Linux. They're both folder oriented, and stay out of the way.

During the golden age of mp3/flac KDE's Amarok was awesome, later it had a subpar upgrade to 3.x and was forked off as Clementine, and now Clementine is also becoming creaky...

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#74

Post by Semaphor »

platelminto wrote: post #6

I'm also not a fan of the direction Spotify is going, but if I want to keep listening to music, I don't see a way around it - and I don't think other music services are materially different. I support the artists I care about most by going to their concerts and/or buying merch. I use services like last.fm for better discovery. Spotify doesn't have to be the only way you interact with music. The author doesn't say how…

> but if I want to keep listening to music, I don't see a way around it

Buying albums works. It’s what I do. It is markedly more expensive than Spotify, though.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#75

Post by advael »

platelminto wrote: post #6

I'm also not a fan of the direction Spotify is going, but if I want to keep listening to music, I don't see a way around it - and I don't think other music services are materially different. I support the artists I care about most by going to their concerts and/or buying merch. I use services like last.fm for better discovery. Spotify doesn't have to be the only way you interact with music. The author doesn't say how…

I use bandcamp, which is vastly materially different from spotify (at least for now) in both its value proposition to me and its commitment to fairly compensate artists. It offers phone apps on which I can trivially stream any music I've bought there as well as lots of music I haven't (though artists can also opt out of allowing this).

I can also purchase the music, which the artist gets a fairly significant cut of, and which the apps start yelling at you to do if you're repeatedly listening to the same albums. Doing this also lets me download it, either to local storage on one of the proprietary phone OSes so I can play it when I don't have signal, or as actual files I can put on my computer, which I personally then use to also stream it to myself on any linux device using freely available tools (mpd and shoutcast, often through an ssh tunnel)

I get that the last part of my use case allegedly requires me to be "technical" (IE set up a config file and use a command-line application or two), but the baseline use case of bandcamp provides streamable music without that, and it's not like it's some obscure thing no one's heard of either. What are you talking about?

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#76

Post by salzig »

fabioborellini wrote: post #25

Spotify's suggestions are horribly bland and insultingly unoriginal compared to Apple's. I keep getting Black Sabbath's Paranoid, the song, in various "deep cuts" and "new music" themed lists and suggestions. It's from 1969. Apple's lists and suggestions may actually have new music.

Spotify did a good job until lately. Apple is quite unusable for me, since they can't distinguish between me and my partner - whoever starts something on a HomePod, it's done with my account. We tried to reset Siri often, but gave up on it.

Another downside is the ~4000 Songs shared Spotify Playlist with some friends&co-workers which is not available on Apple Music, and sadly they make it (IMHO) ridiculous hard to import Playlists from other Platforms.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#77

Post by marginalia_nu »

Yup, I quit spotify for similar reasons.

Overall, it seemed like with every update, it more aggressively was trying to strongarm me into listening to what they want me to listen to, making it harder and harder to make my own choices and have my own tastes.

Really sucks. Spotify used to be pretty good.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#78

Post by weberer »

qqj wrote: post #38

I dunno why people seem to have these weird relationships with commercial companies where they get disillusioned, feeling betrayed even, and then have to go through what essentially is a break up with these tax entities. Is there a term for this psychological phenomena?

I've seen slides from marketing agencies where they're called Brand Fanatics. Apparently if customers are emotionally invested in a company, they pay 3x more or something like that.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#79

Post by short_sells_poo »

mittermayr wrote: post #32

> Instead, my subscription is probably pooled according to some black box formula and ends up paid to some of their top performers like Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, or The Weeknd. While the indie artist I have been obsessed with gets literally nothing because they don’t meet a certain arbitrary threshold. Well, as a musician myself, I often feel a bit conflicted reading statements like these. After all, as uncomfortable as…

> Well, as a musician myself, I often feel a bit conflicted reading statements like these. After all, as uncomfortable as it may be, it is that brings _most_ people to a platform, not the indies, typically.

I'm confused by your argument here. If the big popstars bring people to a platform, then presumable there will be more than enough people to listen to those popstars and their share of the revenue will be naturally very high, no? Let's say there are 1 billion music listeners worldwide (I pulled this number out of my ass). 90% of these want to listen to pop music and will subscribe to a platform that has the major pop artists. It then follows that these pop artists will naturally get 90% of listeners on the platform too, no? The only difference is the marginal 10% who want to primarily listen to indies.

In other words, a "fair" revenue distribution model would still direct most of the money to a handful of popstars, but now it wouldn't be so extremely skewed. Instead of 99%, they'd only get 90% - which should IMO be more than enough and crucially at least it's fair.

As it stands, indie musicians who need to money are basically subsidizing the extremely popular artists who don't need subsidizing anymore. It's completely the wrong way around.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#80

Post by piva00 »

colund wrote: post #15

I feel the same way about Spotify. It reminds me of Netflix in that it's hard for me to find interesting content to consume. I wish there was a way to become a power user, enabling me to better organize my audio library and delve deeper into their extensive collection to uncover new, intriguing music. Moreover, the fact that artists seem to be paid so little makes me increasingly inclined to consider leaving their se…

> I feel the same way about Spotify. It reminds me of Netflix in that it's hard for me to find interesting content to consume. I wish there was a way to become a power user, enabling me to better organize my audio library and delve deeper into their extensive collection to uncover new, intriguing music.

I have the exact opposite experience on Spotify, I canceled my Netflix subscription because I got tired of being stuck scrolling trying to find something to watch.

On Spotify I have my playlists, including an "Inbox" playlist for sorting later when I find interesting new music. On playlists it used to be able to start a "radio" for recommendations based on the playlist's content, that has moved to the "Enhance" feature which will interleave some tracks on an existing playlist, I can add the tracks I like to the playlist and ignore the ones I didn't like, then refresh the "Enhance" feature to get new recommendations.

When I'm listening to some weird ass music that I want to discover more artists/tracks on a similar genre I will start a track or album radio, when I stumble upon a track that I like I will add to a matching playlist or simply put into my "Inbox" one to sort later.

I've done that for the past 10+ years and have discovered many, many artists and songs this way, even completely new genres that I liked.

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