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The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

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Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#171

Post by vintermann »

code51 wrote: post #26

The crux of Spotify was the acquisition of Echo Nest back in 2014: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/mar/06/spotify-e... I tend to think whatever good bits we see (Discovery being good) is sitting on the shoulders of that base work. Yet, the product values of Spotify do not align with these people or musicians anymore.

If Echo Nest were as important as you say, then that's bad news, because Glenn MacDonalds, the Echo Nest chief engineer, was one of those who were fired in the recent downsizing.

I'm not so sure they deserve all credit for Spotify's discovery features - those where at their best right after Sander Dieleman and Aäron van den Oord were interns there, and both those guys were snapped up by Deepmind and have a ridiculously good publication history by now.

But that Spotify is going to get a ton worse without MacDonald, is pretty certain.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#172

Post by mittermayr »

jchw wrote: post #162
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 think you've over-complicated this, or at least missed the point by quite a lot. The question is extremely simple: Why should I pay money to listen to music I like, and then that money goes to music and artists I've never and never will listen to? I don't care how much money top performers want. If I am going to spend money on music, it should go to artists that I actually listen to. And it does, because I buy musi…

> Why should I pay money to listen to music I like, and then that money goes to music and artists I've never and never will listen to?

Well, you could simply bypass Spotify and just buy the music directly from the artist, no (which you indicate you do)? So Spotify isn't necessary for this, I'd guess?

Spotify isn't a payment app for artists (again, I feel super weird defending them, I am not a fan myself!), it's a distribution channel.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#173

Post by Xeyz0r »

Spotify has removed several popular features over the years, such as the ability to view lyrics while listening to music and the option to sort playlists by date added. These changes have angered many users. Spotify's recommendation algorithms have been criticized for becoming less personalized and more repetitive. While Spotify remains one of the most popular music streaming services, it is clear that many users are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the platform. Spotify needs to address these concerns and improve its service if it wants to retain its user base and maintain its position as a leader in the industry.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#174

Post by Xeyz0r »

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…

Spotify is a convenient and affordable way to listen to music, but it is not without its drawbacks.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#175

Post by mittermayr »

short_sells_poo wrote: post #79
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 naturall…

I agree with all you say, but I probably didn't fully get the point you were trying to make with this: > indie musicians who need to money are basically subsidizing the extremely popular artists

I am not sure how my $8 of Spotify money subsidized Taylor Swift and/or how that is a problem? I would have $0 otherwise, not $10. Spotify enabled me to get to the $8. Fair is a hard word when the distribution power of Spotify is not accounted for, I'd argue. Again, I know nothing, it's just one perspective I often find myself in, and it feels weird (being someone who benefits from Spotify, i.e. the $8 instead of $0).

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#176

Post by skrebbel »

I rage-quit Spotify some years ago for similar UX reasons, and switched to YouTube Music. I can warmly recommend it, and that's from a Google-hater. Truly, it seems like all 3 competent UX designers at Google were put to work on YT Music.

There's no pushy podcast crap, recommendations are rather decent, "play album" button actually plays the album, playlists and queues work as you might expect, playback is gapless by default, you can turn off autoplay (yeah, really, a Google product lets you switch off the AI), it's all very nice. Just, all the stuff that should be table stakes is actually right.

And, of course, they got the biggest catalog of all because any YouTube video that the AI thinks might be a music video is indexed too! Lots of weird indie bootleg shit in my playlists.

It's not perfect by a long shot, but oh boy is it better than Spotify.

Note: I'm really only talking about UX here. I vaguely recall reading somewhere that YT Music pays artists like 10x less than other apps do, and the artists put up with it because YouTube (not YT Music) brings exposure and Google made it a package deal. Not sure how true this is btw.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#177

Post by michaelt »

short_sells_poo wrote: post #79
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 naturall…

> 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?

Ah, but what if those big stars have the negotiating leverage to get paid more per play ?

If the platform has a fixed-size pie and can afford to pay $0.005 per play, but Joe Rogan and Taylor Swift will walk away unless they get $0.01 per play, should small artists' slice of the pie be reduced to $0.002 per play?

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#178

Post by helsinkiandrew »

Let's hear it for the slightly less sucky Apple music!

https://artists.apple.com/support/1124-apple-music-insights-...

I'm a fairly content Apple music subscriber. The apps (iPhone and MacBook) suck - although it keeps podcasts and audiobooks elsewhere, but there's a good chance I can find even obscure tracks and I can also listen to the old CDs and unpublished music I uploaded with iTunes Match on any Apple device.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#179

Post by vintermann »

usrusr wrote: post #169
vintermann wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My entire strategy was based on going to a record store and buying whatever had appealing cover art in the metal section. And I did this A LOT. By doing this, you supported the bands you liked, and supported experimentation by accidentally subsidizing a lot of bands which didn't turn out so great (at the very least, experimentation in cool album covers...) But you don't actually do that on Spotify. As the article c…

Are you implying that Spotify distributes by number of plays, not by number of plays, weighted by account utilization? (where a play on a one hour a month account would count considerably more than a ten hours per day account). If it's not (inversely) weighted by utilization, then I'd assume that it's less the fault of Spotify but more the fault of licensors being unable to think beyond simplistic money-per-play metr…

Yes, this is how it works. There are separate pools for ad-supported plays, and I believe separate pools per country now (because Spotify premium costs a lot less in India than in e.g. the US), but it's still pooled.

It used to be the case that the big record companies demanded pro-rata licensing. Tidal (before Jay-Z bought it) commissioned studies on user centric licensing and approached the record companies about it, but they were uninterested.

Now, however, it seems the record companies want user centric licensing, but Spotify resists it. It's hard to say exactly what kind of politics lie behind that opposition. I'll note, however, that Spotify seems to have adapted a lot to "gourmand" listening with their background playlists.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#180

Post by bookofjoe »

criddell wrote: post #153
nicoco wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Would you say that the Spotify era is a worse time to be a musician than the UMG / Sony / Warner era? I’m not a musician but it seems to me it’s always been difficult to make a living as an artist. I wonder if it’s easier to find an audience today than it was 50 years ago?

>The creator economy can't rely on Patreon.

https://joanwestenberg.com/blog/the-creator-economy-cant-rel...

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