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The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

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Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#141

Post by kugla »

wolframhempel wrote: post #85

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…

All of this is because of the technological change (MP3, internet speed) not because of the streaming service.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#142

Post by lawgimenez »

devjab wrote: post #119
wolframhempel wrote: post #85

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…

The flip-side is that most of those metal bands now make almost no money on people listening to their music compared to what they did when they sold CDs through a lot of indie record companies. I don’t personally mind music services too much. I don’t use Spotify because Apple Music comes with our family plan, but I might use it otherwise. It has value for me because my daughter listens to a lot of different music, bu…

> The flip-side is that most of those metal bands now make almost no money on people listening to their music compared to what they did when they sold CDs through a lot of indie record companies.

I was a roadie on my friend's metal band around 2000-ish, they were not in any record company and just sold their CDs through DIY, during live shows, word of mouth, etc. My point is not all bands are in a record company, most are just doing it via DIY. Now, these indie, DIY bands, whatever you call it can now upload and share their music worldwide. That's a huge win.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#143

Post by speedgoose »

nzoschke wrote: post #67

I’ve moved to Tidal and Bandcamp. Tidal has roughly the same catalog as Spotify plus high quality / lossless playback options if the album / artist supports it. Tidal also integrates with a lot of DJ software like Rekordbox and Djay. These apps let you play from Todal but disable recording when using a streaming service. Bandcamp is the real way to support labels and artists by buying music directly. You download the…

Can you do the difference between 320kbits/s OGG Vorbis, 16bits at 44100Hz, and 24 bits 48000Hz lossless audio? Using the same master, I don't.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#144

Post by pipes »

nicoco wrote: post #132
wolframhempel wrote: post #85

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…

The fact that you can say "Spotify is pretty much the best thing ever" when they basically pay the musicians nothing is amazing to me. Have we come this far into individualism? "It's good for me, so it must be the best thing ever".

But the post didn't say that. It just described the benefits of using it.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#145

Post by tjpnz »

mgoetzke wrote: post #108
wolframhempel wrote: post #85

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 ?

Sometimes Spotify swaps them for others by the same artist. One of my favorite instrumentals got swapped out for the version with vocals which I can't stand. I can't for the life of me understand why it could be a licensing issue.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#146

Post by meonmyphone2 »

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.

Curious to know how a UI person would appreciate Spotify UI.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#147

Post by troupo »

threeseed wrote: post #62
troupo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spotify doesn't pay the artists directly. Apple Music doesn't pay the artists directly. Youtube Musice doesn't.... You get my gist. All those pay to the rights holders . Why does no one ever question the rights holders : EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group why the artists are paid pennies?

It isn't just the big labels. Apple Music has a list of distributors they work with: https://artists.apple.com/partners CDBaby is popular where 91% of revenue from Apple, Spotify etc goes to the artist. So then it seems that the price per stream does make a difference.

Spotify has the same distributors. But the absolute vast majority of money goes to the big labels.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#148

Post by secondcoming »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #107
wolframhempel wrote: post #85

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 discove…

> praying for the announcer to be short and not to talk over the song

Hahaha, I did that in Ireland too. I'm pretty sure DJs deliberately talk over the song intros to make illegal recordings unviable.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#149

Post by S0und »

Honestly, I'm kinda tired of the constant whining about Spotify. But in many ways, it showed me, that when you have a wide customer base and your product is a simple "wrench", you will be surprised how different each people try to use the same tool. Most of them don't understand that you can't drill with it, nor you can weld with it.

Ok, what do I mean by this? People want to turn a streaming service into a music streaming and organizing tool that can fit every user's weird OCD. I mean there are people out there, who create a new playlist for EVERY ALBUM they listen to, removing and reordering songs in the album for their taste. This person was requesting a feature to be able to hide and reorder songs in an album because they're tired of creating a new playlist for every album. I don't want to judge people, ohh boy there are weird people out there...

Same thing with recommendations. You might see this all the time, you have a group of people who have a bad experience with Spotify discovery system, and then you have people like me, who are happy with it, and works perfectly well, for ME. But I listen to a specific genre of music, and if I like an artist I "follow" them on Spotify. I try to do my best, so Spotify has a chance to figure out what I like. Hence, Discover Weekly is mostly good, every 4 or 5 weeks (for whatever reason) it's fucking great.

> I might have been naive, but when I started paying for Spotify Premium, I thought my money was going to the artists that I was listening to.

Let's track back a bit...

> Growing up in Tunisia, piracy was the norm. Our debit cards didn’t work internationally, and publishing companies never thought of us as a viable market to bother with.

Harrr, surely there was no way to buy a single music CD in the whole of Tunisia.

But I'm not judging, I did music piracy in the past. But thinking that your €5-10 monthly subscription magically will feed every artist that you listen to is idd naive. I've been a premium user for the past 10 years. During this time I've spent x20 more money on concert tickets, merch, and music CDs than before. If I have a good year, I usually go to 10-15 concerts a year from clubs to arenas, and even travel abroad if I have to. Because this is the only way you can support your favorite artists. But let's just spend nothing on them, use Spotify, and complain about how Big Corp pays nothing to artists. Meanwhile, record labels are standing on the side, laughing at this, wiping the tears of joy with a banknote. There is nothing more exciting than Discover Weekly showing you a brand new band (for you) and you realize the band will play in your country in 2 months. Without Spotify, I would not know about them, let alone go to the concert.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#150

Post by vintermann »

schnitzelstoat wrote: post #69
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…

I mean they are revenue-share deals. So each label will get paid a % of Spotify's total revenue according to the number of listens they have and how well they negotiated the deal. So labels like UMG are going to get a better deal than some indie artist who just has to sign up normally. How much the UMG artists end up getting paid is up to UMG. The problem is really that 90% of people listen to a few big artists that…

It's not always people. Spotify has a spam problem. With the distribution key Spotify uses (correctly, if not precisely, described in the article), you don't even need stolen account credentials. You can just sign up a thousand accounts, and listen to your own fake artists, and actually get paid more than you spent on those accounts. All you need to do is play a lot more songs than the average listener. Make your spam songs short (slightly more than 1 minute seems to be enough to defeat Spotify's anti-spam algorithms, judging by the spam I find), and you can rack up a ton of plays.

And if you do that, you should even have room to put in a few plays of the big pop stars. So that you have someone protesting if your spam accounts get closed by spotify and their plays wiped.

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