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

Goodbye, Slopify

alexeystar.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 286 posts

Re: Goodbye, Slopify

#141

Post by wwweston »

Years ago, I saw a sign at a junkyard mechanic's shopyard: "We screw the other guy and pass the savings on to you." I laughed, as one does. A little dark humor goes a surprisingly long way, though the darkness feels stickier and the levity more trivial as you realize that maybe the laugh is meant to take the sting out of the truth that you may never know if you're the other guy or not.

This is what Spotify was from the beginning. It was always going to be exploitative, it was always going to turn to the dark side and embrace the every form of enshittification possible because it was born that way.

It was born out of sleight of hand between broadcast and retail.

It was born out of papering over the economics of piracy with a thin veener of false legitimacy, where the word decimated doesn't begin to cover what actually happened to artist payouts because it's off by more than an order of magnitude. The shameless scale of it would make Walmart blush.

It was born out of collecting consumers with convenience and a dash of zeitgeist.

It was born screwing the people who create the work the platform depends on and passing the savings on to you.

Screwing with you was inevitable, it was just put off until later.

Re: Goodbye, Slopify

#142

Post by jcstk »

I'm reading these comments and I'm thinking "are we using the same Spotify?" I don't see any AI music, I don't get Podcasts pushed on me, the UI is fine, playlists are fine and I get new music I like suggested to me often.

Re: Goodbye, Slopify

#143

Post by grugagag »

mastazi wrote: post #111

Even before the rise of AI music, they started "customizing" playlists based on the algorithm, so that you see different songs compared to someone else who subscribes to the same playlist. This was one of the reasons why I left Spotify. There are hundreds of posts about this issue on the Spotify community site, e.g. https://community.spotify.com/t5/Content-Questions/Option-to... https://community.spotify.com/t5/Conte…

It's funny how the Spotify moderators are gaslighting people. Users complaining about some bad feature and moderators ignoring the issue and responding to seemingly another question. I've noticed this phenomenon cropping up 4-5 years ago on Microsoft forums, now it's across the spectrum. I don't blame the people who are paid to do it, I understand they have to do this for a paycheck but it's such a shitty thing to do.

Re: Goodbye, Slopify

#144

Post by vintagedave »

Philpax wrote: post #72
muppetman wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most hilarious startups are all called "get(name)" I guess the hope is they won't end up in the toilet and they might, in the future, be able to buy a domain not prefixed by "get"

My personal favourite is PostHog, which sounds like something one might say on Grindr.

I am obviously incredibly ignorant (not that I’d normally think so — but here I have no idea!) but I can’t think of what this means.

Would you mind explaining please?

Re: Goodbye, Slopify

#146

Post by cdme »

They also commission half-baked slop from session musicians for a fixed rate and then feed it into playlists to reduce the payouts due to artists.

Between churning licenses, AI and session slop, it’s not a usable platform nor one worth supporting. It didn’t even start as a music platform — it was advertising first and music was determined to be an affordable draw.

Re: Goodbye, Slopify

#147

Post by smackeyacky »

jcstk wrote: post #142

I'm reading these comments and I'm thinking "are we using the same Spotify?" I don't see any AI music, I don't get Podcasts pushed on me, the UI is fine, playlists are fine and I get new music I like suggested to me often.

"I'm not seeing a problem so how is there a problem" is not the right critique in an era where the selection algorithm is so personalised.

Spotify is awful for me, I concur with the original article. YouTube Music is heading slowly the same way. At this rate I'll have to cast around for another phone that can take an SD card again.

The service I really miss is eMusic, they had little in the way of well known music so leaned into small label music and it was wonderful.

Re: Goodbye, Slopify

#148

Post by turbojet1321 »

I recently ditched Spotify for Qobuz. Spotify has always been a bit of a letdown, even though I've been using it since Rdio went bust (so ~10yrs). The thing that finally pushed me over the edge was the amount of shit content they push at my kids.

I want to me able to give my 10yo an app on their phone to listen to music, and not have to check to see if they're actually watching videos, or listening to (possibly wildly inappropriate) podcasts - or worst of both worlds - watching video podcasts.

Qobuz isn't perfect in terms of UI, but they seem to care about, and only care about, music. I trialed Amazon Music, but it (unsurprisingly) is an ad platform, too. Apple Music was a contender - the only reason I didn't end up with it is because (also unsurprisingly) it doesn't integrate well with network streamers.

Qobuz is a bit more expensive, but so far it has been worth it.

Re: Goodbye, Slopify

#149

Post by mvdtnz »

antigeox wrote: post #89

My Spotify experience was poisoned as soon as I signed up some 8 years ago to try it; I realized there was no way to remove the popular but garbage music from the dashboard. It was essentially advertising space for slop. So I cancelled my subscription within 1-2 days. I instead ended up going with Youtube Music which doesn't try to push propaganda on me and instead either shows me what I have in my library already th…

> As an aside, accepting that I'm in the minority here speaking on behalf of them, I am not someone who would write a blog post announcing that I'm leaving some shitty platform. I'll just cancel my sub and move on. I don't need nor want to grandstand regardless of AI or just people's shit taste.

Without someone writing the post you wouldn't be here discussing it. I applaud the author for writing his short post on his own personal website. He's hardly "grandstanding". You're the only one who claims to be "speaking on behalf" of others.

Post reply on HN