Spotify was down • Hacker News Board

Re: Spotify was down

#111

Post by gatonegro » Tue, Mar 08, 2022, 7:54 PM UTC

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #23

gatonegro wrote: post #5

And this is why I refuse to give up on owning media and relying on streaming. Discord seems to be gone, as well.

As I've said before: Spotify / Tidal / YouTube Music is great for discovery, IMO. Just not consumption. I use them for checking out new artists, or albums by artists that I haven't heard before. But once I've passed from the "Huh, that was interesting" stage to "Yeah, I think I'm gonna listen to this album again in the future", it's time to buy it, rip it to MP3/FLAC(if I bought a physical copy), and get it into my m…

This is essentially what I've been doing. Spotify is usually decent enough when it comes to recommending new artists based on what I'm listening. When I find an artist whose work I plan on listening on a regular basis, I'll jump to Bandcamp or some other site where I can buy the song or album I'm interested in.

Sadly, the list of such sites seems to be shrinking with every passing year, and I've found many artists I'd like to support by buying their stuff, but they only offer streaming options. I've noticed it happens more frequently with artists that have been scooped up by a major label or one of its subsidiaries, unsurprisingly.

Re: Spotify was down

#112

Post by rbritton » Tue, Mar 08, 2022, 7:55 PM UTC

bob1029 wrote: post #16

apetresc wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why? Because once every year or two it'll be unavailable for a couple of hours?

To be more generous, there are also many cases where more obscure music will start evaporating from your playlists. Some of us have serious problems with this kind of UX.

This is why I personally built a home media server. Lapsing licensing agreements, older content, escalating streaming subscription costs, etc all led me to it. The secondary effect of being able to consume the content without depending on anything other than electricity is an additional benefit.

Re: Spotify was down

#113

Post by paulpauper » Tue, Mar 08, 2022, 7:55 PM UTC

julkali wrote: post #48

sublimefire wrote: post #24

The painful bit was that I got automatically logged out with all of those "offline" songs. Is it a feature or a bug? IMO if there was no logout then many clients would just keep playing the cached songs, and people would not notice a disruption that much.

I am under the impression that Spotify doesn't care a lot about UX in general. Inconsistencies in gesture handling, sessions still buggy after years, being logged out as soon as the API is unreachable, directly playing a song when opening a link, etc

I used Spotify for free a few times and the interface is terrible . like from the early 2000s. no attempt at modernization or improvement. Compare it to YouTube.

Re: Spotify was down

#114

Post by gatonegro » Tue, Mar 08, 2022, 7:57 PM UTC

GnomeSaiyan wrote: post #57

shimmy568 wrote: post #53

Spotify is still working for me on their desktop app for the downloaded songs. Really weird that it logged everyone out on mobile...

I got logged out from both mobile and desktop apps. Very frustrating.

I got logged out from their website!

Re: Spotify was down

#115

Post by manquer » Tue, Mar 08, 2022, 7:58 PM UTC

sublimefire wrote: post #24

The painful bit was that I got automatically logged out with all of those "offline" songs. Is it a feature or a bug? IMO if there was no logout then many clients would just keep playing the cached songs, and people would not notice a disruption that much.

Offline is just bandwidth saving feature. It is not intended to be 100% offline especially when all service APIs are down. It is designed for no network, not handle failures of service backend.

Clients would need to keep checking once in a while to see if your account is still active.

Re: Spotify was down

#116

Post by zthrowaway » Tue, Mar 08, 2022, 7:59 PM UTC

julkali wrote: post #48

sublimefire wrote: post #24

The painful bit was that I got automatically logged out with all of those "offline" songs. Is it a feature or a bug? IMO if there was no logout then many clients would just keep playing the cached songs, and people would not notice a disruption that much.

I am under the impression that Spotify doesn't care a lot about UX in general. Inconsistencies in gesture handling, sessions still buggy after years, being logged out as soon as the API is unreachable, directly playing a song when opening a link, etc

I’m sure their UX Researchers try, but like most shops their findings never make it into the skulls of the PM’s and Devs. There’s a massive issue in our industry with R&D ignoring UX research guidance, or just flat out thinking they know better.

Re: Spotify was down

#117

Post by ibejoeb » Tue, Mar 08, 2022, 7:59 PM UTC

paulpauper wrote: post #113

julkali wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am under the impression that Spotify doesn't care a lot about UX in general. Inconsistencies in gesture handling, sessions still buggy after years, being logged out as soon as the API is unreachable, directly playing a song when opening a link, etc

I used Spotify for free a few times and the interface is terrible . like from the early 2000s. no attempt at modernization or improvement. Compare it to YouTube.

Which interface are you using? I use the android app and I'm pretty happy with it. My use case is primarily playing content on Sonos and cast devices.

Re: Spotify was down

#118

Post by techsupporter » Tue, Mar 08, 2022, 7:59 PM UTC

lelandfe wrote: post #96

techsupporter wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google Play Music was the only app to really nail it For what it's worth, I have had good results with Apple Music. It works great as a "custom jukebox in the sky" for me. I use iTunes installed from the Windows Store and just drag my own music files onto iTunes. It syncs them to Apple Music where the files stand right alongside the streamed tracks from the paid service. I can put them in playlists together, edit m…

The thing GPM did that neither Apple Music nor Spotify do was cache played songs in an offline playlist. You could specify the size of the cache you wanted (e.g. 10GB), and each time you streamed a song it would thereafter be playable offline until dropped from cache. You're dead on, though, that Apple Music is lightyears ahead of Spotify wrt local files.

That is very cool, I didn't know about that feature. I agree, that would be super neat. The closest Apple Music gets is you can set it up to automatically download to mobile any tracks added to library with the "+" button.

Re: Spotify was down

#119

Post by t_mann » Tue, Mar 08, 2022, 7:59 PM UTC

Spotify, Discord, AWS - bets are on, do you think the timing is a coincidence or is Vlad's cyber offensive finally kicking into gear, two weeks in?

Re: Spotify was down

#120

Post by colinmhayes » Tue, Mar 08, 2022, 8:00 PM UTC

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #23

gatonegro wrote: post #5

And this is why I refuse to give up on owning media and relying on streaming. Discord seems to be gone, as well.

As I've said before: Spotify / Tidal / YouTube Music is great for discovery, IMO. Just not consumption. I use them for checking out new artists, or albums by artists that I haven't heard before. But once I've passed from the "Huh, that was interesting" stage to "Yeah, I think I'm gonna listen to this album again in the future", it's time to buy it, rip it to MP3/FLAC(if I bought a physical copy), and get it into my m…

The whole point of music streaming services is to avoid doing this. Maybe it works for you, but that does not sound like a sustainable strategy for someone who listens to 100+ albums a year.