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The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

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Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#331

Post by GSimon »

akudha wrote: post #248
jbgt wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weren't we all complaining 20 y ago that music labels were giving bands pennies on the dollar and the only way they could actually live off of the music was by touring and selling merch? I think Radiohead then did the groundbreaking selling of mp3s for a pay what you want fee. Now the baddie is Spotify.

Didn’t Louis C.K sell his standup stuff direct to fans for 5$ for a DRM free downloadable mp3, from his website? Why don’t more artists do that?

I bought it when he released it. It was good for him but arguably he lowered his worth and took a pay cut, and it also set a bit of a price ceiling base rate for comedy specials at 5$, which if you aren’t the #1 comedian at the time like Louis was you can’t bring in the same sales volume.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#332

Post by apocalyptic0n3 »

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…

If you're interested in owning your own music and hosting it yourself, you could spin up a Plex server and use Plexamp. Plexamp is probably the best music experience I've come across in the last 20 years. I just buy music from Bandcamp, HD Tracks, and Amazon when those don't have what I'm after.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#333

Post by prepend »

panzagl wrote: post #302
ParetoOptimal wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Spotify isn't fair to them they should pull their catalog. I can't be an arbiter to every economic transaction I participate in. To me this reads the same as "I can't be bothered to consider ethics for every economic transaction I participate in". I'm not sure its possible to do it 100% of the time, but I try to constantly consider it.

What ethics are there to consider besides 'money can be exchanged for goods and services'? Everyone is a willing participant in the transaction.

I think it’s more of a function of mental leisure time. People like worrying about these things and wrapping up simple transactions (“I’d like to stream music this month for $10”) into some moral and ethical quandary as if they can resolve or contribute to an existing relationship between two other parties.

It’s nice that we have the luxury to think about these things. But for the most part, I ignore it and discount people who bring it up to other people, unless they genuinely think people aren’t aware of the situation.

Maybe it’s guilt over benefiting from this. Maybe it’s just internet points for demonstrating one’s knowledge and virtue. Beats me, I hope it reduces.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#334

Post by short_sells_poo »

mbreese wrote: post #194
short_sells_poo wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> basically subsidizing the extremely popular artists I don’t think this is right. I don’t know much about revenue distribution, but I think you’re conflating listeners and money. The ratio between the two is not constant. And I think this was the GP’s point — the percentage of money a top artist gets is more than an indie musician gets. Why? Because they have a better contract with Spotify (and Apple, etc). (And tha…

I agree with your analysis, I just wanted to point out that this is effectively a regressive taxation. In this instance, Spotify is the state and from it's perspective, it makes sense to tax the pop stars less (as a %-age of income) than some tiny alt-nu-grunge-garage-under-over-in-out rock-jazz-house band. That's what maximizes Spotify's tax revenue. But it's still a regressive tax. The richer you are (in the Spotify ecosystem) the less of your earnings you have to give up. Whether this is fair or unfair is debatable - I suppose in a pure market economy, whatever the market agrees on is fair. But there's a massive disparity in negotiating power, which means that the small artists are naturally disadvantaged. Big popstars have a huge concentrated negotiating power. Small artists do not. It is thus less likely that they'll be able to negotiate a "fair" revenue model, whatever that might mean.

Again, fairness is debatable. As a society, we decided that regressive taxation is unfair, because rich people can proportionally bear much higher taxes than poor people without impacting their lifestyle. I'm not going to go into the realities of rich people ending up paying a much lower effective tax rate due to being able to afford to optimize their taxes.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#335

Post by prepend »

iamsaitam wrote: post #305
bko wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

"I assume the artists are reasonable rational adults. If they're on the platform, its economically advantageous to them." - Your assumption is wrong though. Artists aren't on spotify because it's economically advantageous for them, they are on spotify because they have no other alternative. It doesn't matter if it's streaming platform A or B or C, they are ubiquitous and as an artist you want your music to be heard,…

Is there some other market system that produced better music?

This one has its flaws but it seems to be optimizing for a great variety.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#336

Post by jncfhnb »

I find the complaints kind of lame. I don’t like the podcasts, but it’s very easy to not click on the podcasts.

The music recs vary over time but music is a diamond in the rough thing. Every niche band I listen to is from a chance find on Spotify and that’s cool. Power user tools for exploring stuff would be cool

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#337

Post by StackRanker3000 »

crtasm wrote: post #284
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…

> 11$/month I could have all the music. ALL OF IT. except the huge amount of music that will never be on there. and it's $11 every month, forever.

> except the huge amount of music that will never be on there.

I can count on one hand the amount of times this has happened to me in the last decade.

Is it fair to say that you have fairly esoteric taste in music? I don't think it's the norm among Spotify users to feel that there is a ton of stuff that's missing from the library.

And if you are among the ones who can't find the vast majority of the music they want to listen to on that platform, then that's fair play - it's probably not for you. You likely have alternatives that suit you better. That doesn't really take away from the experience of the normies for whom it's got everything they want.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#338

Post by burnerthrow008 »

Triphibian wrote: post #317

Reading "Choke Point Captialism" by Cory Doctorow I learned that Spotify uses playlists to prioritize songs that cost less for them or pays out to artists they deal with. That notion, that the algorithm is more concerned with cash savings than serving you the songs you want to hear, really changed the way I think about these services -- and the idea of music recommendation writ large. I currently subscribe to Apple M…

> Reading "Choke Point Captialism" by Cory Doctorow I learned that Spotify uses playlists to prioritize songs that cost less for them or pays out to artists they deal with.

Gosh, that sounds horrible. With such a large market share and such monopolistic business practices, how did they escaped being named a gatekeeper for the purposes of the DMA?

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#339

Post by phone8675309 »

nunez wrote: post #254
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…

> Would you have told me back then, that for just 11$/month I could have all the music. ALL OF IT. And I would have a super knowledgeable entity that suggests new stuff to me. And I could just listen to a track or two without buying an Album. And it wouldn't take up space. And it didn't have CDs that could get scratched - I think I would have fainted. My question would have been "But how do artists get paid?" Which i…

Relatedly, the music industry has never really cared if/how artists got paid - all they care about is that the businessmen (and they have primarily been men, historically) get paid.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#340

Post by aramndrt »

jncfhnb wrote: post #336

I find the complaints kind of lame. I don’t like the podcasts, but it’s very easy to not click on the podcasts. The music recs vary over time but music is a diamond in the rough thing. Every niche band I listen to is from a chance find on Spotify and that’s cool. Power user tools for exploring stuff would be cool

No, you are simply more accepting of a certain interface being pushed onto you. I find the podcasts incredibly frustrating because I like to keep my interfaces streamlined and minimalistic. I would much rather have my homepage focused on my content than a bunch of podcasts I don't care to listen to and a bunch of playlists in which I have no interest. In my opinion, the app is frustratingly bloated. Your opinion is valid, but this complaint is as well.
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