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The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

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Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#201

Post by probably_wrong »

ant6n wrote: post #52
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 got pissed off by their product, so I just stopped paying them. Now I just hear ads every 10-20 minutes, which pisses me off even more. Now I really don’t wanna pay for Spotify anymore. …it’s probably not the best business relationship, but hey, I didn’t start it.

If only it were the ads... I accidentally let my subscription lapse and the experience was so bad that it convinced me not to renew and leave the service altogether.

I mean yes, you get ads, but also your playlists get added random songs (which are pretty bad for my music), they play in shuffle only, and you can only skip a small number of songs per hour, turning the service into a radio you can sometimes fast-forward. I also had to reinstall the app because downgrading to free got it stuck - it wouldn't let me play my offline songs but it also wouldn't show me anything else. And for well over a year the only way to pay with a gift card on Android was exploiting a mild privilege escalation bug.

I imagine that there's someone at Spotify whose job is to identify how annoying your product can be before the number of lost ad plays surpasses the income from paid users, and I imagine their free tier is as close to that as possible. But that's a risky play considering they are not the only game in town.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#202

Post by usrusr »

Innervisio wrote: post #116
bowsamic wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were basically born with Spotify, like many of us here (or at least, had it or something like it from a young-ish age), then unfortunately there's no way we will ever appreciate it. It's like someone from a century go saying how amazing it is that we all having flushing toilets in our houses and refrigerators. It's just life now, it's the new normal, not amazing.

Although true in comparison, it is still relative. I was born in 1991 in an underdeveloped country. Buying CDs was a luxury and i lived out of torrents and pirated CD copies. I still bought original CDs from time to time. But the biggest appreciation for me, and maybe for the original commenter, is the amount of music itself. I love music, is my main hobby and passion. And having all of this available at all times is…

How do you deal with availability overload?

First half of my story feels surprisingly similar, despite being born much earlier and in a very developed country. Piracy only through tapes, later writable CDs and eventually also mp3 on writable CDs. When the Napster wave hit, I had my first "real" money beyond kids affordance and started buying a little more. Napster and its successors just felt too easy, that music did not feel sufficiently "mine", like a handmade copy on physical media did, despite being just as unlicensed. Very often, the records I did buy were quite a disappointment at first, before they started growing on me, and some of what I consider the best today would have never made it past that threshold if they happened in the abundance of Spotify or the heyday of unbounded internet piracy.

It's actually quite ironic: all my friends who indulged in Napster et al now have spotify accounts, whereas I have just stopped extending my repository of CD rips.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#203

Post by bko »

vintermann wrote: post #130
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…

> 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…

I may be in the minority, but I just don't really find the "support the artist" argument that compelling. I have artists I like and I grew up with. If I saw them in public I'd get giggly and maybe try to say an awkward hello. But I am under no impressions that I have some kind of personal relationship with this artist.

I assume the artists are reasonable rational adults. If they're on the platform, its economically advantageous to them. If they sold their rights at some point in time for money, or pay their tax debts, or whatever, I assume they did so knowing full well what that means. If Spotify is no longer advantageous to them, they would pull their music off and I may search other ways to listen to it.

We have a system to deal with these sorts of things, it's called voluntary exchange and it's the only way things change. If artists pulled their music, Spotify would have to adjust. In the meantime I just don't have the time or energy to track every individual employee grievance

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#204

Post by cageface »

throwaway220033 wrote: post #3

I can't stand Spotify's redesign anymore. Looking for an improved Winamp-like app with very simple interface and playlists. What should I try? Apple Music is a joke as well. I can't even play some of my custom audio files (they're not music, custom sounds) because Apple thinks they are not allowed to play in my country. I can't play my own audio files because of some buggy software Apple doesn't care about maintainin…

I'm working on a new cross platform desktop music app with a clean modern interface. It should be ready for beta testing soon. Message me if you're interested in trying it.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#205

Post by JazCE »

The Author doesn't understand how the streaming business works, and as far as I can tell, no one in the comments here has shone a better light on it.

There is and there isn't just a pool of money that goes to beyonce, the weeknd and taylor swift... i say there is because what actually happens is, the collecting societies will collect the money, then distribute it based on streams correctly to the artists/writers/producers etc that are registered. now if it so happens that a collecting society can't find the correct person to distribute to, the money might sit for a while before it is divvied up between the biggest players, so that would mean taylor swift, elton john etc might get a share of any unclaimed royalties.

When i worked in the business, we would often have many a drunken night talking about how we should just record the rain on the roof, upload it and use the "royalties" as beer money.

for the most part, being on spotify does pay, but i think people don't really understand how the pie is cut and when the artist actually gets a slice. there are many routes to being on spotify (or any streaming service), the router for taylor swift will be different to the route for your dad's garage band, as will the payout.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#206

Post by probably_wrong »

Xeyz0r wrote: post #173

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…

Is this comment auto-generated?

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#207

Post by boesboes »

crossroadsguy wrote: post #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 m…

I even got popups with premium, trying to get me to listen to there bullshit playlists... And then they gaslight you and call it support.

I'm ashamed I've paid them for years. I've spend, over the years, probably more the 5x what I would have spend on buying CDs as I only listen to a select few artists mostly.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#208

Post by Hartgeld »

I'm genuinely surprised why noboby is mentioning online community radios as a source for music. Why would an algorithm of a billion dollar company provide a better selection of music than a real human being who dedicated his life collecting, playing and producing music? When listening to music I want to be surprised and discover new music. Spotify and its competitors only please you with stuff u already know or sound most similar, delivering the most boring experience one can imagine. Whereas with online community radios you even have a chance to interact with the selectors and the audience through chat or calls. Most of the time they even provide the playlist for the show. And if you so keen on buying the music, why not support dedicated record stores instead of these mulit-billion dollar companies which are killing the actual music and ripping of the artists?

Heres a very small collection only scratching the surface

Community radio stations: https://www.nts.live/ https://kioskradio.com/ https://dublab.de/ https://callshopradio.com/

record stores: https://hardwax.com/ https://www.oye-records.com/ https://clone.nl/ https://coldcutshotwax.uk

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#209

Post by waihtis »

neuronic wrote: post #22
throwaway220033 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nerf herders were totally fine with Winamp. I remember old people using Winamp back in the days.

My Spotify use is 99% mobile. Am I missing something or is the reappearing Winamp comparison simply misplaced?

On the contrary, you're one of the few people who get the point

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#210

Post by ikt »

mittermayr wrote: post #172
jchw wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dis…

Even better, use Spotify to discover artists then buy their music! It's not mutually exclusive!
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