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Goodbye, Slopify

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Re: Goodbye, Slopify

#221

Post by beart »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #96
pjs_ wrote: post #46

Recommend getting an MP3 player. Just feels good man. 500GB of music, no ads, no network, no subscription, no distractions.

On a lark, I refunded up my phone with my mp3 library I keep on my laptop and I built up so many years ago. I enjoyed it just fine for the nostalgia but I still don't understand where I'm going to discover new music without services like Spotify. I used go to shows and see new artists that way, but with kids that's not as much a valid proposition as it once was.

Back when music blogs were exploding, it was a great way to discover new music. I'm not sure how many of those are still around, but hype machine has been out there for probably 20 years now and that was always a great way to just blow a few hours listening to all kinds of new stuff - https://hypem.com/latest/all

There's also local independent radio stations, many of which have streaming now.

WYCE is my personal favorite - https://grcmc.org/wyce

Re: Goodbye, Slopify

#222

Post by grogenaut »

cobertos wrote: post #7
ssalka wrote: post #5

I stopped paying for Spotify years ago and instead make playlists on there that I can feed into any of the various websites that will rip mp3s for you. Yes they are 128kbps, but for casual listening, it's fine. Some tools will try to match against YouTube and download audio from there, since apparently in some cases YouTube will have higher audio quality. Unfortunately the free version of the Spotify iOS app is absol…

Where do you get the highest quality audio if you want to put in some work? I'd like to jump ship back to a personal library but don't know how I'm gonna extract these 2000 songs I only have 1/4 of locally

buy the cd and rip it? buy it from amazon music and download it (somewhat annoying now)? does apple still sell music for download?

Re: Goodbye, Slopify

#223

Post by beart »

Sabinus wrote: post #110
muppetman wrote: post #57

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 belov…

>no thanks, Podcasts are terrible. If I wanted to hear idiots laughing at each other I'd listen to the Radio DJs I agree this format of podcast is terrible, but there are many podcasts that are more like one or a couple of people each giving a presentation and I enjoy them a lot. Ukraine the Latest by The Telegraph and The History of Rome by Mike Duncan are ones I particularly enjoyed.

Hardcore History has not been as productive lately but the back catalogue is incredible. Makes a 6 hour drive feel like nothing at all. I know some people don't like Dan Carlin, but I really enjoy the long-form historical storytelling style.

Re: Goodbye, Slopify

#224

Post by myst »

macNchz wrote: post #139
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…

I really don’t like this feature—I enjoyed their genre/mood oriented running playlists explicitly as a way to listen to stuff well outside of my usual listening while out on runs, but since they made them “made for you” they’re strictly worse. Relentless algorithmic sameness is everywhere and I’m sick of it. Spotify is also funny for maintaining the existence of their feature suggestion community boards while just ut…

The solution is simple: stop paying.

Re: Goodbye, Slopify

#225

Post by gs17 »

swyx wrote: post #11

without any hate to the well intentioned engineers working on the thing, spotify has just exceedingly poor product taste in any number of dimensions - the godawful ai dj they tried to force on pple - buying gimlet media and running it into the toilet. some of the world's best and favorite podcasts, gone because some swedish billionaire decided to throw all his money into foie grasing a perfectly fine niche media comp…

>they faked spotify wrapped numbers

That would explain why mine were definitely wrong too. Although I wouldn't attribute it to malice since it makes little sense to tell me I used their paid service much less than I thought, at least compared to the opposite.

Re: Goodbye, Slopify

#226

Post by nunez »

9283409232 wrote: post #174
grugagag wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get a standalone music player and you will have full control (but you also may have some upfront work to do your music downloading and create your playlists but worth it imo). I got a Miyoo Mini game emulator for my kid and ended up getting one for myself, all for ~$50. Being offline (by choice, the device does have wifi) and being able fully customize the thing, backup the SD it's really great. It's such a whiff of…

A lot of the get an iPod comments ignore music discovery. I like new music and think new music is good and would like to discover new music. Having to buy all the music I want to try would be to expensive.

College and community radio are infinitely better for new music discovery. KEXP and KTRU here in Houston have expanded my horizons significantly. Bandcamp as well.

Re: Goodbye, Slopify

#227

Post by gs17 »

protocolture wrote: post #182

AI music is fine take it or leave it. The killer app of Spotify has been expanding my horizons past the 30 tracks on my MP3 player. But that seems to have stalled. I do like being notified when bands I like release new music. I am hopeless at keeping up with music so thats useful.

> I do like being notified when bands I like release new music.

One of my main complaints with Spotify is how lousy it is with that for me. Release Radar is usually a pile of songs almost, but not quite, entirely unlike what I listen to. Bands it knows I follow since it makes playlists for them will have new tracks never show up unless I go to their page or it comes up randomly.

I have no idea what the "follow" feature does because it doesn't notify me for new music from followed artists, and "What's New" doesn't include new releases from all of them. But it has given me four notifications that Journey is coming to Nashville in case I didn't get it the first time.

Re: Goodbye, Slopify

#228

Post by subpixel »

discostrings wrote: post #180
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…

Similarly to making so many of the playlists "made for you", they've completely ruined the "radio" feature. You used to be able to select the radio option on a song, artist, or playlist and get a playlist of songs that seemed to be a good mix of musically similar and being liked by people who liked the selected starting point. Starting at some point around 2 years ago (it seems they A-B tested this for a while becaus…

The tests must reveal what is easily deduced: most, nearly all people do not enjoy much variety. They want to think they do, but their actions prove otherwise.

This sucks for you and me but is Spotify giving the masses what they actually enjoy.

Re: Goodbye, Slopify

#229

Post by lern_too_spel »

robertlagrant wrote: post #203
lern_too_spel wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spotify has over 640 million active users. Of those, 100 million are active podcast listeners, despite having an app they frequently use that lets them listen to podcasts. This suggests that many of Spotify's users hate podcasts as much as they hate the wacky morning DJs who say democracy's a joke.

Zero could hate them and they wouldn't all listen to them. I don't hate podcasts and I've never listened to one on Spotify.

I didn't say that all 540 million hate podcasts. I said that many do. It doesn't take a very large fraction of 540 million to get millions that hate podcasts.

Re: Goodbye, Slopify

#230

Post by lern_too_spel »

mvdtnz wrote: post #169
lern_too_spel wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's at odds with millions of people but also in agreement with millions of others. I also don't listen to podcasts for the same reason. Spotify shouldn't push something that so many people detest without letting them opt out.

I don't know if you think this opinion (expressed in this way) makes you seem insightful, but just so you know, it just makes you seem uninformed. It's like saying "Listen to music? No thanks, I don't want to listen to a guy in makeup screaming about satanism into a microphone". Like, yes, that type of music does exist, but it's uninformed to make the claim that that's all music is.

It is not uninformed to say that podcasts are worse than articles, books, and audiobooks on the same subjects. I know. I've tried. I'm informed.
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