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The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

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Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#381

Post by mips_r4300i »

stronglikedan wrote: post #372
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…

Pandora is much better at discovery (Spotify is actually really terrible by comparison), and cheaper too. Unfortunately, they refuse to implement high quality streams for whatever reason, or I could finally ditch Spotify. As it is, I just use Pandora's free tier for discovery to help curate my Spotify playlists.

It is drastically better than Spotify. I am surprised this isn't more well known. Maybe people just haven't tried Pandora recently.

The most I can get from Spotify is about 40 songs in a custom Radio playlist that I can't refresh or update.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#382

Post by HeckFeck »

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…

Indeed. I've felt alienated since they launched the Electron redesign. The old client was both gorgeous and intuitive, as well as easy on system resources.

See for yourself: https://twitter.com/awesomekling/status/1634601462645882880

When I used Spotify I tried to hold onto the old client for as long as possible, going as far as locking down the Spotify update directory in %APPDATA% to null the autoupdater...

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#383

Post by ethbr1 »

Adrig wrote: post #373
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.…

Sadly it's not only designers but sometimes the whole product org who is biased… I lost on a potential design contract earlier this year because the company wanted a paid case study. 3 hours to improve their onboarding and customer activation. I showed an outline of the direction I thought was best, highlighted the core concepts to watch for, and opened to further tests we could do to achieve the target KPI. They tol…

There's an inherent issue with being both a paying patron and lay judge.

If I want greatness, I probably shouldn't hire an expert and then say "Eh, I don't like it"... but you constantly see that dynamic in management and creative consulting.

Argue on the merits and goals, sure! But why substitute a VP's taste for an expert they're paying?!

If someone needs an ego fluff, there are cheaper ways.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#384

Post by latentcall »

I remember Spotify when it was a small upstart company from Sweden and their service wasn't available yet in the US. Using VPN's, proxies, anything to try the service out was fun.

I paid for a Spotify subscription for many years but cancelled in 2021 when I found I didn't like the recommendation system at all. Not to mention, if you listen to a lot of electronic music there are a lot of releases missing.

I previously had a FLAC collection sitting idle on a NAS and now use Roon to listen at home and use Roon ARC to stream away from home and it works very well. This along with a sizeable vinyl and tape collection works well for me.

Also want to mention Bandcamp if you can afford it. Artists see more money from a purchase than a stream, and it's an invaluable service.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#385

Post by disqard »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #123
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…

CDNow was amazing before Amazon bought and killed them. Their recommendations were great and turned me on to artists I wouldn't have ever thought about otherwise. For discoverability these days? Radio, mostly college radio. Much of it is streamed over teh intertubes. KXSF (ex-USF), KEXP (UW), KALX (Cal). Of course there's internet only stuff like SOMAFM or Midlands Metalheads. And there are aggregators like Sound Gar…

Yes, KEXP is great! I regularly discover new artists there.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#386

Post by latentcall »

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…

I think people get frustrated when services change to try and acquire more revenue, which explains podcasts being shoved down your throat.

In regards to Spotify allowing uploading of your own songs, I remember I think they did have that at the beginning. I remember there used to be an option to import your iTunes library on Windows. I uploaded a small collection of MP3's and it worked okay, but was somewhat cumbersome compared to say Foobar or MusicBee.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#387

Post by cm11 »

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.…

I agree, 20% sounds about right. But designers are rarely high in the food chain—they receive requirements, they receive feedback, they receive timelines. A lot of the bad "design" comes before the interface gets worked on. These aren't really two way conversations. Much of the arguments engineers lose to non-technical leaders have the same dynamics. Except that the engineering function, if not an individual engineer, generally has more sway.

Tech companies aren't organized well to make good products. Functional managers, like a design manager, are pretty toothless—their role is a middle man between the designer and frankly nothing. And a product manager (in many ways, the designer's real boss) has their own priorities.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#388

Post by brabel »

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…

We're from the same generation and I also loved heavy metal... I learned about new bands by buying magazines specializing in metal, renting videos from the big bands which usually would include opening acts with new bands (or even the famous guys or their fans on the video wearing other bands' t-shirts), from friends, by going to festivals (there were lots of them around if you were willing to travel around a bit, though I was in a highly populated area so that may not have been an option for you)... there was always more bands that I knew about than what I could possibly listen and buy albums... of course, today it's so much easier, but I feel like the problem today is actually the abundance of choice! You could just listen to the best couple of songs of each band, and still have more than enough music to enjoy. That seems to be what happens if you let Spotify or other services pick songs for you. You can still dig in if you really want, but I feel like most people won't do that... and you start having very high expectations from what a good song is as you only listen to effectively, the "greatest hits"!

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#389

Post by Rochus »

xetplan wrote: post #341
criddell wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It is a joke now compared to what it was. There are entire parts of the music industry that no longer exists. There use to be working musicians in every city that were basically unknown outside the city. NYC or SF had their own entirely unique music scenes. There use to be entire bars that were goth bars or punk bars in even mid sized cities. Imagine opening a bar in 2024 that only caters to people who like punk musi…

> Music has been degraded in importance by streaming video and social media..."

I don't think this is the root cause of your findings. I rather think that this development started with the DJ and rap culture which made musicians virtually obsolete. It is and was much cheaper to hire a DJ than a band, and people don't seem to care whether it's just a guy pressing some buttons or a bunch of people with real musical instruments. There is no longer any appreciation for real musicians. The public is satisfied with a few sampled tracks or cheap sequencer arrangements. In consequence fewer and fewer people see a need to learn an instrument. As a result, fewer and fewer music teachers are needed.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#390

Post by alwaysbeconsing »

nicgrev103 wrote: post #367
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…

I believe statement is about the playlist Spotify makes, not those made by user. Those called "Daily Mix", generated on user listening choices.
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