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The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

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Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#361

Post by [deleted] »

gdilla wrote: post #343
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…

I can't stand spotify. I need indy artists, DJ mixes, flips and remixes, so Soundcloud is my go-to. Free tier is less annoying too, less ads.

[deleted]

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#362

Post by tehnub »

NoLinkToMe wrote: post #49

Long article for a single comment: I quit Spotify because I can’t customise the home page which pushes podcasts and music I’m not interested in. For me I navigate my music via My Liked songs + my own playlists for particular moods. If I open the app and press play it defaults to where I left off. The fact there is a home page which shows options similar to what I like is fine, sometimes useful. Yes I’d prefer to cust…

>The one major gripe is not being able to upload my own songs

You can do this on Apple Music. Upload from one device, and it's available to stream on any of your devices. For me it's the main reason I use Apple over Spotify. https://support.apple.com/guide/music/import-items-already-o...

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#363

Post by falcolas »

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…

I have a similar opinion, but with one big caveat (which means I'd be happy to drop Spotify in a heartbeat): I still have access to all those old albums I bought with my wages and allowance. I've digitized them, and they have migrated from computer to computer.

And a large number of those albums/songs... aren't on Spotify.

And all the songs I've 'discovered' on Spotify will also be gone some day, because they're not from mainstream artists. If I want to listen to them in another 10 years, I'll have to buy them.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#364

Post by jszymborski »

freedomben wrote: post #346

> The lack of customization feels like a slap. Like Spotify designers telling me “you don’t know what you want, we know better,” but the problem is they don’t, and they haven’t for a long time. Warning: extremely broad stereotyping to follow. This is macro level stuff, not micro level stuff. Real individual humans are far more complex and nuanced than what I'm about to say and don't fit neatly into these categories.…

> If your boots are beautiful but your toes are getting frost-bitten, they aren't good boots!

Reminds me of a saying that a Scottish woman taught me:

"All fur coat and no knickers"

Although, as a Canadian, I can relate to your idiom a bit more.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#365

Post by this_user »

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.

> and it's $11 every month, forever.

So the complaint is that not enough money is being paid for music and that it costs too much?

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#367

Post by nicgrev103 »

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…

I suspected this practice and ran a very rudimentary test which concluded they were not doing such things. I made a playlist with Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Justin Bieber and then an equal amount of songs from obscure artists with fewer than 1000 followers (this was back when followers was the main popularity metric, now it's monthly streams). I then played the playlist on shuffle, expecting for the 'popular'/ expensive artists to be played less. I tallied each song for a day of listening (that's as much as I could take!) and the popular songs were played equally as frequently and the non- popular. Like I said, very rudimentary but didn't yield the result I was expecting.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#368

Post by [deleted] »

light_hue_1 wrote: post #300
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 feel like I am betraying all artists just saying this, but I keep coming back to wondering why everyone feels like they deserve the exact same deal like a big-name artist (who bring their own audience I am benefiting from). Because we want a level playing field that leads to innovation. Just like we used to not tolerate monopolies in other areas of our lives. Or price fixing. If you let the top few entities work…

[deleted]

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#369

Post by oneepic »

deeviant wrote: post #344
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…

> 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...) This argument can be used to justify basically any business practice. It's a weak argument. Should I be forced to buy 10 inedible doughnuts to find one editable one in the name of allowing people to prac…

I think there's a strawman here. I look for different things artistically and functionally about the things you mentioned. Cars should function well and feel good when I test-drive them, but I wouldn't buy a hideous car.

Music is somewhat functional (does the cd or record play? does it skip at all etc) but then you have to listen to it. Years ago we might have seen a music video, heard a song on the radio, then went and bought a whole album to hear the rest. I guess I'm saying the buying process is different and it doesnt make sense to apply it to every imaginable product or industry.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#370

Post by rglullis »

Just this weekend I wrote a "Ask HN" post about an alternative funding model for musicians. [0]

The TL;DR: it would be a Patreon-style platform where people can choose what artists they want to support directly, but instead of the artists defining "support tiers", it's the users who define a total fixed monthly contribution and how to split this among the many artists they want to support.

The idea is that there are many people who would like to support many individual artists, but can not afford to give $5-$10 to each of them. With the contributions being fixed, the average contribution might be lower, but the total payout would increase.

Another advantage of this model (compared to Spotify) is that it evens out the playing field a lot. The superstars already make most of their money from touring/merch/extra deals. The ones that are just starting and do not have the means (or the audience) to go on larger tours can rely instead of a more steady income from their (relatively) small fanbase.

A quick look says that Spotify has > 600M users and ~1.5M artists. If this platform manages to get 400:1 ratio of users:artists, and each user donated $10/month, this means an average of $4000/artist/month. It wouldn't make everyone a millionaire, but it could certainly make for a lot more healthy industry than the status quo.

[0] : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39399121

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