The worst part of using spotify today is their random pop ups that interrupt you right when you want too quickly choose a song or Playlist and play something. Instead they block you with a random full screen dialog box with some unwanted bs in it. Oh and the dismiss button is a tiny hard to find text. Feels functionally similar to using an ad supported service, even though I'm paying.
The day I canceled my Spotify subscription
471–480 of 511 posts
Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription
#472I 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 understand you - I am a bit older and did similarly, buying cassettes in the 70s Yet, I miss the undivided attention of that first listening, listening to all tracks in sequence (picking the track sequence was an art in itself, creating an atmosphere across the album). Feeling the difference between Side A and B. Those 10$ felt like great return. Exchanging tapes with friends, recording mixtapes, listening sit down…
I trade songs with family on Spotify regularly. I suspect it is influencing our recommendations! You can also listen to music together using Jam, though I have not tried it: https://newsroom.spotify.com/2023-09-26/spotify-jam-personal...
Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription
#473> 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.…
Spotify's UI is unusually rigid. You can't resize or move anything.
Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription
#474I 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.
I can't find your email address in your bio, and I don't know if you can message on HN. Can you update your bio.
Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription
#475I feel similar about the UX and the poor AI playlists, but with a little effort you can find the gems and build a library
Regarding artists being shafted, when I find an album (yes I listen to albums) I love, I’ll buy it on Bandcamp or (for the major artists) somewhere like Qobuz so I can own it (come the day the streamers die) and support the artist a bit more directly.
Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription
#476[dead]
Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription
#477Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a multilayered issue: - licensing could be expired, could change hands, could be removed, could...) - naming and attribution: A single song by a single artist will have a gazillion versions (ep, lp, original, re-recorded, re-released, re-mastered, re-re-mastered, best hits, best songs, essential, released for the European market, released for the Japanese market, Christmas special...). On top of that distributor…
I guess the downvotes come from people who have never dealt with licensing issues or data from content providers. I have :) The above is about 2-5% of the crap content companies (streaming or otherwise) have to deal on daily basis. Because all of the above doesn't even begin to deal with things like territorial restrictions, content restrictions, territorial content restrictions, territorial content requirements, tak…
I found your comments helpful. Thanks.
Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription
#478Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I don't know if you are testing for the same thing. Your test consist of highlighting the losses with some audio processing. But could you do the difference in a blind test?
Take your lossless files, convert them to lossy audio, and back to lossless. Mix the new files and the original files randomly with a script or by asking someone else, don't look at the sizes or spectrograms, play the couples and see if you are significantly better than guessing correctly which one has been loosely compressed 50% of the time.
Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription
#479Reading "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 swapped to Apple Music recently too (as I got 6 months free) and the UI is horrible compared to spotify + painfully slow to load on my phone.
Somewhat similar experience for me- I canceled apple music today because the Linux experience is... not great. The web client has an issue where the emoji font (Noto Emoji) makes all spaces full width. There's an unofficial client called Cider, but it has issues with favoriting items. And neither web nor Cider support playing to a networked speaker.
Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription
#480Goodness, 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…
UX def sucks. I don't understand how a design-focused company that invests so much into its design teams (www.spotify.design) can create a user interface so cluttered and hard to navigate to find music. After years of using it, I've recently discovered (on mobile) that they've hidden the search and sorting on top of the playlists. My home page is full of things I'm not interested in; there is no way to customize whic…
Was going to try this out, but the permissions required are too much for me.
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