Goodbye, Slopify

I don't use spotify (primarily buy CDs and use ipod classics, also records because I am a cliche) and this made me think of the articles about the guy who was one of the most listened artists on spotify (piano for study/concentration type stuff iirc?) and he got punished or something because he was publishing under several names? I couldn't quite find that or what actually happened, but I did stumble upon this Wikipedia page about controversy over fake artists on spotify[0] that suggests some of those are commissioned by spotify.

The only feature of spotify that I've ever been interested in was discovering new and new to me music. I'm not interested in AI slop though, and I can't imagine a lot of people would be (maybe the background noise use case don't mind so much which is fair, I suppose). Is this going to get to a tipping point with spotify for it to go under (or lose a LOAD of value), or is it going to be like 'smart' TVs where non-'smart' TVs essentially don't exist because almost all manufacturers have realised they can make more money from forcing ads and spyware? I see that it's been a problem for nigh on a decade according to that Wikipedia page but with the floodgates for AI feel a lot more open than they used to.

Kinda related, does anybody use soundcloud any more? Just interesting that it seemed hugely popular and was then derided (terms like 'soundcloud rapper') and I haven't heard about it in a while.

I suppose netflix still exists despite derision for their awful originals, killing the good originals, and having little content (especially internationally!).

Spotify will be fine, especially with how little they pay artists, but it's probably a shame for a lot of users.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversy_over_fake_artists_...

They also deprecated their library (libspotify) which had previously been used to build alternative third-party clients and playback-capable integrations for paying Spotify users. They promised a replacement, but that never happened… the best we ever got was a set of watered down APIs that’s curiously missing what one would need to build a third party client.

They couldn’t allow for users to opt out of the constant A/B testing and user herding in the ever-changing official client by using a sane third-party client that just acts like a normal music player and obeys the user’s preferences. The ability to shove the music that’s most profitable and whatever other non-relevant audio content in users’ faces by mandating official client use is too valuable to give up.

Somehow even Apple is better on this front, with there being multiple alternative Apple Music clients out there that are build with official Apple SDKs and aren’t reverse engineered, which is crazy. They’ve out-Apple’d Apple.

Spending that money was part of their strategy to go for a "bundled" rate for royalties, which 99% (their number) of the US customer base now does. In a nutshell, they can downrate the royalties for music as long as they bundle other things with it- that's why there's books on there now as well. UMG is now fighting it [0] but all the indies are basically fucked as there's no global leverage.

The second part was demonetizing any songs with under 1000 streams per year- they're just taking most of the long tail for themselves now.

[0] https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2025/01/26/universal-music-...

I can't understand how people use Spotify. It was great ~10 years ago? It's terrible these days. Pushing Podcasts at you (no thanks, Podcasts are terrible. If I wanted to hear idiots laughing at each other I'd listen to the Radio DJs), terrible music, the UI getting harder and less intuitive to use.

It's a shame all good things have to slowly tend towards sucking, instead of getting better. Bitwarden, one of my beloved apps, has done the same with a god-awful UI redesign.

Youtube music is just as bad with pushing unwanted content. I can't believe the answer after 10 years of this is to go back to doing it myself, downloading MP3s and using something (currently Jellyfin) to curate them.

At least Youtube music lets me upload my own music to it, so that's the main reason I'm still mostly using it.

PS: Please don't reply and tell me I just haven't found the right podcast. The "X person/people talking taking 2 hours to discuss something that could be discussed succinctly in 5 minutes" isn't a format I'm interested in.

I'd say with very few features I miss from Spotify, that yt music is simply a better platform (even more so with owning yt premium)