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Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

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Re: Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

#231

Post by dumol »

smt88 wrote: post #193
_jomo wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone else just pointed out Google Play Music as well. Apparently it works in the Browser without Flash?

It does need Flash, according to Google anyway[1]. People might be missing the Flash requirement because Flash is bundled with Chrome. 1. https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/1114577?hl=en

The default player needs the Flash plugin, but there's an experimental HTML5 player that works in Chrome/Chromium (even the BSD ports). I have used it almost exclusively for the past 9 months or so, and had no problems with it.

Here's how to enable it: https://www.maketecheasier.com/enable-html5-playback-google-...

Re: Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

#232

Post by wobbleblob »

Ahh, Pandora. They were ahead of their time at one time. Then suddenly and without warning, they kicked me out. "We don't want your filthy money, foreign scum. English speaking countries only!"

Yes, I know how proxies and VPNs work, but I'm not going to spend money and break the terms of service just to trick a company into accepting my money. If they don't want to do business with me, then so be it. Spotify's recommendation algorithm isn't as good (ooh, you liked a song in Russian? that must mean you only want to hear Russian bands from now on, right?), but they don't think I'm too foreign for them.

Re: Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

#233

Post by andrewingram »

barclay wrote: post #190
ak217 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple of years ago Spotify rewrote their clients to use CEF (Chromium Embedded Framework), so since then their clients are in some sense native and in some sense not, and much more consistent across platforms. Anyway, I agree with you that they have been pushing the envelope in terms of mobile functionality, especially iOS. Lately I'm not happy with how Android has crippled their lock screen experience by screwing…

> A couple of years ago Spotify rewrote their clients to use CEF Eh. And not to sound like a cranky old man, but that shit sucks. It's ridiculous that their "app" needs 20-30 seconds to boot on a modern computer. It's a damned music player. Plus, when the machine is under load, it skips like a 1993 disc player. And the damned thing crashes routinely. Pre-CEF I was terribly impressed by their mac client. It's been a p…

It takes roughly 2.5 seconds to load on my machine, not sure what's happening on yours that means it takes 20-30 seconds.

Re: Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

#234

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

bmelton wrote: post #185
tomclancy wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had Google Music for 6 months and, while their music selection is great, their UI is horrendous. For example if I'm scrolling through an artists albums, they would list every release of an album (European release, NA release, Japan release, extended version, radio friendly, non-radio friendly). Maybe that's nice for some? It was just a hassle for me. Overall navigation through the app I found to be really, really b…

I've never noticed that myself, but if you say it's a feature, I'll believe you, and applaud Google for doing it that way. As different album releases often contain different recordings, sometimes finding EXACTLY the song I want to hear is hard to do. Having fallen for Sublime when they were still playing live shows, but knowing that they were only able to capitalize on their fame after the death of their singer, the…

The downside being that the duplicate detection is nonexistent - I have a playlist I sync to my phone, and often when I'm listening on "I'm Feeling Lucky" mode at my PC a song will come up that I like and I'll add it to the playlist. As you can imagine, this often leads to multiple versions of the same song taking up valuable space. The same goes for thumbs-up and thumbs-down - it won't apply to all versions of a song. Which is fair enough when they're actually different (live, remastered, remixed or whatever) but when we're talking about the European release, NA release and Japan release of the same album it's often literally exactly the same recording.

Trouble is, I can't come up with a "best of both worlds" fix that allows both (perfectly valid) use cases.

Re: Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

#235

Post by andrewingram »

thirdsun wrote: post #214
vlunkr wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spotify now has a playlist called discover weekly or something that is songs they pick for you once a week, and in my experience it's actually pretty good. I've discovered several artists that way. And I also found Spotify radio to be awful.

Frankly, that doesn't sound appealing at all as a discovery tool - unless I know I like the curator's taste, I'm probably not interested in his recommendations. That's why the heavy rotation section in rdio that only showed popular music among your friends (which you should select carefully!) was so useful - if you had a circle of great tastemakers.

It's generated algorithmically based on your recent-ish listening habits combined with a bit of fairy dust, I believe they acquired a company that specialised in it.

It's pretty good at recommending songs to me that are similar to what i've been listening to, along with a few curveballs that encourage me to branch out, or throwbacks to older habits.

Re: Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

#236

Post by kyrre »

wobbleblob wrote: post #232

Ahh, Pandora. They were ahead of their time at one time. Then suddenly and without warning, they kicked me out. "We don't want your filthy money, foreign scum. English speaking countries only!" Yes, I know how proxies and VPNs work, but I'm not going to spend money and break the terms of service just to trick a company into accepting my money. If they don't want to do business with me, then so be it. Spotify's recomm…

isn't this due to complex licensing issues?

i created my original rdio account while living in London, and then when i moved to Norway i decided to upgrade my subscription, at which point my playlists became unplayable as a large portion of songs were suddenly marked as "unavailable" in my region

Re: Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

#237

Post by [deleted] »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #210
mbesto wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Are we really going to start using Spotify after so many years of hating on it?" —our 15-year-old. Genuinely curious here - why are so many techies desperately passionate (both positive and negative) about choice of unseemly unnecessary tech products? I feel like there is this peculiar subculture of tech-minded folk who defend at odds their tech choices. "Slack is the best" "Hell no, IRC has been around for years!…

You have to keep in mind that this is a kind of game. Almost no one truly, really hates the other product. People don't get into fistfights over Vim vs. Emacs. It's just a community joke. So for instance I'm in the IRC camp of group communication, and I'll go to great length to use it over Slack, but if you really need me to use Slack and it makes sense, then I'll use Slack. But I will be doing cynical jokes so that…

[deleted]

Re: Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

#238

Post by wobbleblob »

kyrre wrote: post #236
wobbleblob wrote: post #232

Ahh, Pandora. They were ahead of their time at one time. Then suddenly and without warning, they kicked me out. "We don't want your filthy money, foreign scum. English speaking countries only!" Yes, I know how proxies and VPNs work, but I'm not going to spend money and break the terms of service just to trick a company into accepting my money. If they don't want to do business with me, then so be it. Spotify's recomm…

isn't this due to complex licensing issues? i created my original rdio account while living in London, and then when i moved to Norway i decided to upgrade my subscription, at which point my playlists became unplayable as a large portion of songs were suddenly marked as "unavailable" in my region

Spotify seems to have found a solution for these complex licensing issues.

Netflix allows me to pay them money, but they have a different selection available depending on where I'm connecting from.

Initially, Pandora gave the impression that they were working on it, but how long has it been, 10 years? They can go sit on the roof with a bunch of onions as far as I'm concerned.

Re: Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

#239

Post by Dylan16807 »

rtpg wrote: post #216
TeMPOraL wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to keep in mind that this is a kind of game. Almost no one truly, really hates the other product. People don't get into fistfights over Vim vs. Emacs. It's just a community joke. So for instance I'm in the IRC camp of group communication, and I'll go to great length to use it over Slack, but if you really need me to use Slack and it makes sense, then I'll use Slack. But I will be doing cynical jokes so that…

>People don't get into fistfights over Vim vs. Emacs. It's just a community joke. Unfortunately, this can get out of hand, see systemd death threats. Hope people will learn to be nicer on the internet now that the general population is on it.

That's not a product rivalry, that's a deeper upset with how systemd is handling things.

Nobody thinks vim is trying to take over the editor space.

Re: Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

#240

Post by Dylan16807 »

bmelton wrote: post #185
tomclancy wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had Google Music for 6 months and, while their music selection is great, their UI is horrendous. For example if I'm scrolling through an artists albums, they would list every release of an album (European release, NA release, Japan release, extended version, radio friendly, non-radio friendly). Maybe that's nice for some? It was just a hassle for me. Overall navigation through the app I found to be really, really b…

I've never noticed that myself, but if you say it's a feature, I'll believe you, and applaud Google for doing it that way. As different album releases often contain different recordings, sometimes finding EXACTLY the song I want to hear is hard to do. Having fallen for Sublime when they were still playing live shows, but knowing that they were only able to capitalize on their fame after the death of their singer, the…

Having every version is good.

Listing them equivalently with no subcategorization makes navigation a huge pain.

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