Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

blog.raed.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 511 posts

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#451

Post by jemmyw »

bko wrote: post #203
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…

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 think you're of the majority opinion actually. There are loud voices on HN whenever this topic comes up, but clearly most people don't think about these issues much, they just want to access music.

Spotify isn't really the problem. Record labels being the gatekeepers and a bunch of byzantine historic laws that they sit on are the problem. Musicians themselves are the problem - those few who've made it big could band together than change things in various ways for all, but that would mean giving up some money so...

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#452

Post by ambichook »

lowercased wrote: post #407
lotsofpulp wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The current situation is that you don't own anything and you can't just deal with raw files (which locks you into a quite shitty UI). It has never been easier to own an easily copiable and backup-able form of the music you want and use it with myriad ways to play it and listen to it. People just don’t want to pay a dollar or two for their favorite songs.

Or... don't want to repay. I've followed some bands from vinyl to tapes to cds to now. I've bought some of the same songs 4, 5, 6 or more times. Listening for 'free' via streaming is good enough for most stuff any more, even if it means I'll lose access to some stuff. If I'm really desperate, maybe I'll look for a torrent, but I haven't done that in years.

if you have the CD why are you repaying? you literally already have the file on a physical medium that can be backed up and copied to whatever device you want

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#453

Post by asadotzler »

bko wrote: post #203
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…

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…

You assume a lot, wrongly.

Artists don't have a choice. If the only viable marketplace is ripping off sellers, and sellers chose to remain there because it's the only viable marketplace, and the sellers gotta hear their buyer defending the owners of the only viable marketplace ripping them off, they're not gonna keep selling and you're not gonna keep getting new music.

This race to defend the most evil of corporations, ripping people off right and left, is rampant on HN over the last 5 years. It's like all the hacker turned into lackeys or something. What a shame. The first 10 years of this site the people here had backbones but now they're mostly just bootlickers.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#454

Post by skydhash »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #323
nzoschke wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m an audiophile skeptic too, 320 kbps ogg is great for most casual listening. But as a DJ and audio/video artist, I absolutely can tell the difference using lossless sources vs lossy in some contexts. Again Bandcamp is great because you can get FLAC or Wav and take those to the club sound system or remix them in Ableton or Final Cut. Then record the output and compress it for SoundCloud or YouTube. Recompressing co…

I felt this same way until I did a mixed blind listening test: https://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_abx (Take a high quality lossless track, re-encode a copy as whatever lossy format, load both into the tester.) Hurt my ego, but at least made me understand that I am just wasting money paying extra for lossless stuff. This was with a high quality DAQ and a range of high-end headphones too. But perhaps the re…

I did the best test possible. I transcoded the Flac version to AAC VBR, load both inside audacity, invert one of them and play the mix. I also made sure to align the samples. The result was some high frequency sound from the instruments, and the vocals sounded like the artist was whispering.

I don't keep lossless just for listening, but storage is cheap, and I like the fact that I can switch transcoding profiles as I want to.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#455

Post by skydhash »

Zambyte wrote: post #294
Semaphor wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but if I want to keep listening to music, I don't see a way around it Buying albums works. It’s what I do. It is markedly more expensive than Spotify, though.

> It is markedly more expensive than Spotify, though. A big reason I switched away from Spotify to buying DRM free albums is actually because I realized it's significantly cheaper to do the latter. I plan on listening to music for the rest of my life. I'm in my mid 20s. Let's say I live for another 60 years. At current Spotify prices, that is nearly $8000. Obviously the cost of premium won't be $11 for the next 60 ye…

And the fact is that you don't even need to listen to that many music. When I had Spotify, I only have an handful of playlists (managing albums sucked), that I listened to every day. Same with Apple Music, I only added the albums I already have in the library. I have like 500+ albums and when I want to add something, I spend time listening on Youtube (could go back to free spotify) if it's worth the effort to get them in my curated local library.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#456

Post by rufus_foreman »

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…

>> there were literally zero ways to discover new songs

Older than you, and into hardcore, not metal, but there were definitely ways to discover new songs back then.

First of all, I had friends that were into the same music, so when one of us got a new record, we all got a new record, I would borrow records from friends and if I liked it I would tape it, and friends made me tapes.

Radio did play hardcore, only they were pretty limited in what they could play, since if a band had a name like "The Crucifucks" or something like that, they couldn't even say that name over the air, but they still had hardcore radio shows that came on in college towns around 2 AM in the morning, and people would tape them and they would get passed around. We would go to a different town and drive around at 2 in the morning and tape straight from the car radio to a boombox just to find new music.

Next thing was compilation albums, so the labels would put out an extra cheap LP that was just a song or two from every band on the label, so for hardcore, Blasting Concept by SST, Rat Music for Rat People, American Youth Report, Let Them Eat Jellybeans, the Decline of Western Civilization, the Flipside comps, etc. Some of those you could even get at the mall.

Wasn't played on MTV other than a couple songs that were humorous (TV Party, Institutionalized) but you could find a little bit on Night Flight. Then there were the zines, Maximum Rocknroll and Flipside, later maybe Forced Exposure. If they compared a band you liked to another band, you would try to check them out. And of course going to $5 all ages shows, if you went to see a band you liked, 3 or 4 other bands were playing too.

So there were ways. I've never used Spotify but I know it is way easier now to find exactly what you want at the press of a button. But the search was part of the fun back then. The lack of technology did not stop us.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#457

Post by skydhash »

toyg wrote: post #139
exitb wrote: post #83

In modern capitalism, the larger the company, the more it needs to grow in order to exist. Some, like Apple, manage to continuously expand into new markets. For now, at least. Others, like Spotify, are not positioned for that - once they reach their potential, they start to franticly juice their market destroying their product along the way.

Spotify is actually trying very hard to expand in different markets - audiobooks and podcasts were big moves. Unfortunately, these markets really don't play well with their core proposition. I honestly don't understand why certain giant companies are obsessed by integration; instead of trying to stuff everything in one UI, why not integrate backends (to leverage economies of scale) while keeping UIs separate? So you…

When you have engagements as KPI, that's what you get. Everything stuffed inside the same platform and the user have troubles with their workflow. I keep thinking that Winamp had the best music player interface, because it lets you turn off parts of the UI you don't need (I did not use the media library, because my files were barely tagged), and the UI was very informative. I've just setup MPD and NCMPCPP and the experience is miles better than Apple Music.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#458

Post by anderber »

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…

You might like Deezer, it's very similar to Spotify but with the added bonus of being able to upload your own MP3s.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#459

Post by anderber »

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…

Deezer is actually a great replacement and competitor to Spotify. I like that their playlists are still human curated.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#460

Post by mr_toad »

vintermann wrote: post #236
stdbrouw wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has always seemed like fear-mongering to me, because for the pooled proportion of plays to be completely different from the mean of the per-user proportion, there would need to be an extreme discrepancy in amount of songs listened to per month and/or in the kinds of songs played by those who pay for premium vs. those who opt for ad-supported. No, if I only play the same artist for an entire month, they likely wo…

It's pretty easy to do some math on this. There are pseudonymous background music artists who have just released one or two tracks, and who have more listens than famous bands with a 30-year history, because they were featured in one of Spotify's background music playlists. It is of course rumours that this music is commissioned by Spotify (which they deny) or that they get kickbacks in some other form. You don't get…

If background music is the reason people are paying for Spotify then what would you expect Spotify to do?
Post reply on HN