Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs? • Hacker News Board

Re: Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?

#191

Post by pessimizer » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 11:39 AM UTC

m1gu3l wrote: post #164

javajosh wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Spotify is extremely biased towards playlist listening and makes browsing and listening to a library of albums really painful. Does anyone else get a dystopian vibe from this statement? I feel like the old guy in the SF movie pulling his hair and exclaiming, "But what have we lost?!" We used to have vinyl, tapes, finally CDs, and even the ability to rip our library to a computer, which we could carry with us. It was…

> "But what have we lost?!" make a comment or thread about spotify/pandora/tidal and sit back and wait to see how long it takes for some “audiophile” to come along and to admonish you and tell you a story about their setup and music appreciation “workflow” and how it is better and somehow more correct. we lost nothing. it is all still here. and, apparently, the added bonus of droves of sweaty people telling you you’r…

Looks like we lost the ability to go through a list of songs from an album, episodes from a podcast, or podcasts from a collection, which is the subject of TFA.

Re: Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?

#192

Post by im3w1l » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 11:40 AM UTC

javajosh wrote: post #154

mcjiggerlog wrote: post #16

This is a big frustration of mine, too. The other is that Spotify is extremely biased towards playlist listening and makes browsing and listening to a library of albums really painful. The good news is that Spotify's SDK and API are actually powerful enough that you can build up an entire alternative interface, which is actually what I recently started doing: https://i.imgur.com/ar7VrYy.png . It's still work in progr…

>Spotify is extremely biased towards playlist listening and makes browsing and listening to a library of albums really painful. Does anyone else get a dystopian vibe from this statement? I feel like the old guy in the SF movie pulling his hair and exclaiming, "But what have we lost?!" We used to have vinyl, tapes, finally CDs, and even the ability to rip our library to a computer, which we could carry with us. It was…

Yes I get a dystopic vibe, but for an entirely different reason. As for what we lost, I would say a gradual loss of the social element. Music used to be something that everyone did. Then become something that musicians did and other people listened to, but at least you got to see them perform and create a shared experience. Then we started recording music so you could listen to it at home, but there was still the social element of listening to the same music and sharing recommendations and forming subcultures based on listening to the same music. Now with dj spotify you don't even need to discuss music with other people.

Now don't get me wrong, of course there are still lots of people doing music for the fun of it, people still go to live performances, people still share recommendations. So it isn't fully lost by any means, just a question of degrees.

Re: Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?

#193

Post by iambateman » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 11:41 AM UTC

I find that the top result is the right one about 90% of the time, so it’s not really an issue. That said, the other 10% is pretty irritating.

Side note…I believe that all music apps are _fated_ to irritating mediocrity.

iTunes was once perfect, and grew unusable. Spotify was perfect in 2019 and is trending toward usability issues as well.

Re: Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?

#194

Post by capableweb » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 11:43 AM UTC

stavros wrote: post #184

capableweb wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if you could call that "the other day", I think it happened back in 2015 or something like that.

I meant this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31420722 Oh, apparently they're completely blocking access now, yay.

In favor of the alternative SDK, whose native SDK seems to be just around the corner. Otherwise there is always librespot (https://github.com/librespot-org/librespot).

7 years to go from announcing the deprecation to actually removing it seems fair to me. Miles difference from what I'd expect any other company to do (looking at you Google, who seem to announce a deprecation and go through with it in the very same month).

Re: Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?

#195

Post by slig » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 11:43 AM UTC

Cynosaur wrote: post #160

I still don't understand why sometimes I click play on an album of a specific artists and in half an hour or so songs from a completely different artists start playing too. I specifically did not click mix or radio or genre - just play on the album itself. I have no idea why big companies like that always have to have such shitty UI.

Same reason the default YouTube config is to autoplay indefinitely: normal people are not bothered, and it turns it into a TV.

What I can't figure out is why TF can't we disable the autoplay on YouTube playlists.

Re: Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?

#196

Post by srrr » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 11:47 AM UTC

mcjiggerlog wrote: post #16

This is a big frustration of mine, too. The other is that Spotify is extremely biased towards playlist listening and makes browsing and listening to a library of albums really painful. The good news is that Spotify's SDK and API are actually powerful enough that you can build up an entire alternative interface, which is actually what I recently started doing: https://i.imgur.com/ar7VrYy.png . It's still work in progr…

15 years ago when I worked in the music streaming space we also had to push users to playlists instead of albums. The reason, in Germany at least, was that a playlist only payed 1/10 the royalties to the GEMA [1] than an album playthrough. Playlists were classified as ¨radio¨ and thus a performance of the radio station but an album was the performance of the original artist.

Our interface was optimized for low royalties, not the end user. Maybe it is the same situation now.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEMA_(German_organization)

Re: Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?

#197

Post by mritchie712 » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 11:47 AM UTC

danielovichdk wrote: post #48

I use Winamp for my MP3 collection that I downloaded of my T1 line at the office. When I turn that mother up on and my CRT monitor starts smoking because of the Winamp addons that spikes all kinds of shit whenever the tune is changing, then I know I have found the right track. Then I get cracking on the floor. Break dancing and caps flying around. The neighbors come jumping in the door and starts clapping and the mus…

I thought this was a scene from a movie.

If it's not, please write it.

Re: Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?

#198

Post by stavros » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 11:51 AM UTC

capableweb wrote: post #194

stavros wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I meant this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31420722 Oh, apparently they're completely blocking access now, yay.

In favor of the alternative SDK, whose native SDK seems to be just around the corner. Otherwise there is always librespot ( https://github.com/librespot-org/librespot ). 7 years to go from announcing the deprecation to actually removing it seems fair to me. Miles difference from what I'd expect any other company to do (looking at you Google, who seem to announce a deprecation and go through with it in the very same m…

Oh, they're releasing an alternative SDK? That's great, I don't like being tied to the official client and releasing an alternative SDK ensures I'll stay with them.

Re: Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?

#199

Post by objclxt » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 11:52 AM UTC

daveoc64 wrote: post #189

javajosh wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Spotify is extremely biased towards playlist listening and makes browsing and listening to a library of albums really painful. Does anyone else get a dystopian vibe from this statement? I feel like the old guy in the SF movie pulling his hair and exclaiming, "But what have we lost?!" We used to have vinyl, tapes, finally CDs, and even the ability to rip our library to a computer, which we could carry with us. It was…

Enjoyment of music linked to a specific physical item seems incredibly shallow to me. If the music is worth listening to, the medium shouldn't matter at all.

> Enjoyment of music linked to a specific physical item seems incredibly shallow to me.

To a certain extent, but across the arts there's always artists that want to play with the format, so a changing of format can result in something being re-contextualised.

For example, you can have [multisided vinyl][1] with hidden tracks, or loop a track onto itself so the record plays forever (like Sergeant Pepper). Neither are really possible with MP3 (there's a Brian Eno record that does both (the track bifurcates and loops at them end), so you get a random sample looping at the end of the LP).

I am not saying this means the enjoyment of the music is lessened when you listen to it digitally - just that plenty of artists have written and produced pieces with the physical format at the front of their minds.

[1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multisided_record

Re: Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?

#200

Post by AlecSchueler » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 11:52 AM UTC

daveoc64 wrote: post #189

javajosh wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Spotify is extremely biased towards playlist listening and makes browsing and listening to a library of albums really painful. Does anyone else get a dystopian vibe from this statement? I feel like the old guy in the SF movie pulling his hair and exclaiming, "But what have we lost?!" We used to have vinyl, tapes, finally CDs, and even the ability to rip our library to a computer, which we could carry with us. It was…

Enjoyment of music linked to a specific physical item seems incredibly shallow to me. If the music is worth listening to, the medium shouldn't matter at all.

Why should the medium not matter? I actually feel that's the shallow take

Quite often, historically, music comes as part of a complete experiential package. Gatherings around fire, singing and dancing in groups, celebrating life's milestones, getting dressed up for concerts, excitement at buying tickets, journeying in and out of the city to pick up new recordings.

All of those things are valid aspects of musical culture for me. Stripping the meta musical aspects from the musical experience is inherently lossy and in some ways diminishes the full spectrum of what music can be.

This is especially true for music that was created outside of and/or before the streaming milieu.