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The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

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Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#101

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…

Maybe it's you indeed. Spotify shows me Podcasts I should listen to supposedly based on the ones I currently listen to, but... I don't listen to Podcasts, and I don't subscribe to any. I listened to two episodes two years ago on vacation with my girlfriend in the car, and didn't even finish them, and now I need to listen to all this great stuff!

In addition to that:

"Jump back in" and "recently listened" are basically the same list of albums. I have tried to understand the logic behind them, but it makes no sense to me, and could very well be just one section.

I listen two some very much non mainstream media. I do have two or three sections of "please listen to random German Rap, or maybe Taylor Swift, everyone likes that". If they base everything on data, they really should know that this won't make me listen to what they propose, so why do they do that?

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#102

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…

I've never listened to a podcast and have zero podcast related content on both mobile and desktop. There is one audiobook recommendation section, the 9th section down.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#103
The worlds music at your disposal, and not satisfied... LOL

You can spend the rest of your life listening to all sorts of music, just by using the search bar and clicking around. Thats incredible!

I feel like after a while, we can take things for granted that are incredible and weren't even possible not too long ago. Not that we shouldn't strive for a better ideal..

Reminds me of a fortune cookie note I read a long time ago that I never forgot, mostly. Something to the effect of:

"I spent the time prepare the song, while the song is not being sung"

I do agree that artists should get a bigger share. Im sure if Spotify were super transparent about cost allocation, we would see room for improvement. Where there's money, there is greed.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#104
Sure, the UI/UX has degraded over time but I canceled my subscription when they started paying Bro Rogaine hundreds of millions of dollars to traffic disinformation and conspiracy theories.

There are countless examples but here's one from last week: www.forbes.com/sites/joshuacohen/2024/02/15/joe-rogan-provides-a-platform-to-hivaids-denialists

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#105
I'd like to call attention to the incredible situation regarding Benn Jordan (The Lightbulb), Spotify, and TuneCore, which just beggars belief.

Jordan uses TuneCore to distribute his music to major streaming services. He has posted a series of videos critical of Spotify among other streaming services, including the most recent, entitled "How Money Laundering W/ Spotify Works", attacking fraud on Spotify.

Very soon thereafter Jordan's music was pulled by TuneCore from all major streaming services due to, incredibly, supposed "high amounts of streaming fraud". Lots of finger pointing have since ensued. Spotify insists it didn't tell TuneCore to do it, but it's looking pretty murky. They did it over the weekend so there was no recourse until Monday. They've since backpedaled and pseudo-apologized. To me (and others) this is very suspicious.

As far as I can tell, Benn is (1) beyond reproach here and (2) was only able to get both of them to admit error because he had a big enough audience. Smaller musicians would have to resort to, you know, posting to HN asking for help.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#106

Can very well relate to being annoyed with Spotify being an all-encompassing audio platform. I guess there is a market to that. YouTube Music is also bringing podcasts to their app. But for someone who actually consumed a lot of audio content, that’s a terrible idea. If they had separate apps for these and showed hints to get you to download others, it’d feel way more organised. I’ve completely moved to Apple Music f…

I don't think an all-encompassing audio platform is a bad business idea. After all audio is not a big market as it is. But it should be possible to turn features on and off. I have zero interests in podcasts and audiobooks either - I have no patience for that stuff.

But it's important to note that at least with (paid) Spotify you can simply use a different client which doesn't offer any suggestion. This is what I do.

Outside of music the one thing I would want in audio isn't there though :( It would be erotic ASMR-style content. But as usual big companies stay away from anything under the belt.

Oh and I would love nature audio also but I don't think they offer this either (and it's pretty repetitive so usually a short clip on repeat works fine).

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#107

I believe, Spotify is pretty much the best thing ever. I understand the criticism - but to me, this is just a sign of how far we've come. I was born in 1984 and, from a very early age, was really into Metal. That was a problem - since there were literally zero ways to discover new songs. The radio and MTV didn't play Metal. None of my friends shared my taste in Music. The listening stations at HMV & Co (remember thos…

When you were born I was a teenager in France recording music from the radio to a tape praying for the announcer to be short and not to talk over the song. And that the song is not cut.

Such a tape was fantastic until you had to use a pen to rewind it.

Spotify at that time was science-fiction movie worthy.

This said, I listened to 20 sounds at that time and I have probably about 50 now that turn around :) The discovery functionality is great though

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#108

I believe, Spotify is pretty much the best thing ever. I understand the criticism - but to me, this is just a sign of how far we've come. I was born in 1984 and, from a very early age, was really into Metal. That was a problem - since there were literally zero ways to discover new songs. The radio and MTV didn't play Metal. None of my friends shared my taste in Music. The listening stations at HMV & Co (remember thos…

Yeah, that is great. Apple Music and others for comparison remove songs from your playlists btw, does Spotify do that too ?

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#109
I like Spotify, not because of the algorithm, but because of the availability of music and the ability to listen to it, I know how it was with casette decks, cd's and napster.

I think Spotify did set and still sets an example how content can be distributed and made available for a pretty acceptable price, I still have to see somthing like it for video.

And algorithms can be a nice feature, but fastly can become generic or a bubble, being able to actively choose what you want to listen to, that does if for me.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#110
Goodness, feels as if I could have written this post :)

I have Spotify premium because I got a year long offer for less than 1/10th the price. Since I anyway used ad-supported Spotify I went for it. I really didn’t see any improvement:

- The UX sucks, more so - there’s nothing much to say here really

- They still push podcasts and different languages down my throat, more vehemently

- The recommendations still drive me mad

- They keep adding things, like that short video, that doesn’t let me listen to music peacefully, rather violently distracts me.

- So much so that I kinda limit myself to Liked. So that I don’t really have to interact with the app.

Then why I stay and stayed with Spotify? Because I don’t use Google (so no YouTube Music for me) and Apple Music sucks trucks and rails when it comes to India/Pakistan music, more so when I am looking for some old music.

Everything else is worse than even Spotify. But still it’s not worth paying for!

I thought of heading back to the high seas. But after W.CD that part is lost as well (no, nothing could replace that; O and R are not even a fraction of its shadow).

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