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

neil.computer

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

#251

Post by lightbendover »

grishka wrote: post #138
dm270 wrote: post #14

I don't know if others saw the same behavior. I'm on Android. And I feel like I'm in some sort of a big A/B test regarding their app. One day, the interface changes one way, couple days later it changes back. Constantly some menu or behavior changes. It's super frustrating. Lately it seems to have stabilized, but it really made me feel like a guinea pig. And maybe that's my inner old person speaking, but most of the…

Wait till you see how much Instagram A/B tests everything. I found a debug menu in it one day when reverse engineering it to get rid of the ads, and so enabled it as well. Among other things, there is a complete list of all server-side settings (or "quick experiments" as they call them) with the ability to override them. There's at least several hundred of these, possibly a thousand or more. It's insane. The kinds of…

Honestly, blame humans. If our species wasn't susceptible to changing our behavior due to these seemingly-inconsequential changes, A/B testing would return to a more sane baseline; however, these "silly" changes (when statistically proven to be effective long-term) can lead to 8 figure shifts in megacorp revenue so they will continue to be made.

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

#252

Post by HeadsUpHigh »

frogstomp19 wrote: post #165
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…

I feel like we've lost essentially nothing. In the streaming era, it's easier than ever before to discover new artists and listen to an unprecedented variety of music with minimal investment. If it's slightly cumbersome to listen to albums on Spotify, it's still much less cumbersome that going to a store to buy a CD or purchasing online and waiting for it to arrive + keeping your collection physically organized and i…

My results from discovering new artists have been far superior on community oriented places vs spotify or any streaming service. Algos just suck at this.

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

#254

Post by easton »

flycaliguy wrote: post #244
lapser wrote: post #43

Spotify is horrendous. Their UI is subpar. Their mix of podcasts with songs is odd at best (seriously, I never listen to podcasts, why can't I switch it off completely?). Their shuffle is just not. Imagine listening to the same 20ish songs from a playlist of nearly 2k songs. How can you mess up shuffle that bad? It's also not easy to move away from it. It requires time and effort. Time that many don't have.

Spotify was promoting a podcast to me for a while called “c*m town” (add a u). It was so gross, the album cover was written in white liquid. I could not make it go away! One of the worst UI experiences ever, actually made my stomach turn.

It’s worth noting that said podcast is (or was, at least) #1 on Patreon in terms of number of people paying money to the creator(s). I bet that makes it really popular on Spotify, and if you have explicit content turned on, that’s probably why it was recommended.

There should still be a master “turn off podcasts” button, although since it’s the only way Premium subscribers are still exposed to ads, fat chance of that happening.

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

#255

Post by hammock »

There is a great website someone put up called “sort my music” and also “organize your music”. If you google those terms they are the first and second result.

It will allow you to sort Spotify playlists by a number of hidden variables like BPM and year of release. You can also export/copy paste the tables that it generates in the process.

Not perfect and might not fit your exact use case, but wanted to let HN know.

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

#256

Post by mahogany »

hyperbovine wrote: post #202
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…

Dystopian you say? For $15 a month I can access basically every song ever recorded at the click of a button, wirelessly on an ultrapowerful mobile computing device that fits comfortably in my pocket. Place yourself in about 1997 and savor that statement for a moment. But what have we gained?

> I can access basically every song ever recorded

Not really, there is a lot missing from Spotify, and not just obscure music. And you have to accept the fact that music may (and does) go missing at any time.

Plus, even for songs that are on the platform, you are forced to listen to what version they have, which is almost always a "remastered" version. Example: early Beatles songs have vocals hard-panned to one side, which sounds terrible on headphones. It sounds way better on the original mono version.

Spotify is a mediocre experience at best for music nerds, which is probably what the person you're responding to is (has an amp and speakers, vinyl, etc).

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

#257

Post by zamalek »

For those wanting an alternative, do give Tidal a trial (there are services that can port over your playlists).

Pros: You can view almost everything as a list, although their UI is optimized for touch screens - so the rows are rather large. Their radio rivals Pandora in terms of properly understanding your tastes.

Cons: After a very quick look, I don't think they do podcasts. Their API support is utter shit, 3rd party clients aren't a possibility, and there is no Linux client. You have to use the their client for "master" quality (which isn't bit-perfect and is definitely snake oil).

Having tried Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Play, Pandora, and Qobuz, I have found that Tidal is comfortably the best.

Amazon Music is a very close second, but suffers from what I call the "Armin Effect". Armin van Buuren plays many genres of electronic music, and so inferior recommendation engines tend to connect this huge umbrella of genres through Armin. Your taste in music may not be affected by this problem. Tidal and Pandora are the only two services I have used that don't suffer from this.

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

#258

Post by maxique »

hammock wrote: post #255

There is a great website someone put up called “sort my music” and also “organize your music”. If you google those terms they are the first and second result. It will allow you to sort Spotify playlists by a number of hidden variables like BPM and year of release. You can also export/copy paste the tables that it generates in the process. Not perfect and might not fit your exact use case, but wanted to let HN know.

Those tools and more are on Playlist Machinery (http://www.playlistmachinery.com/)

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

#259

Post by afiori »

texasbigdata wrote: post #13
texasbigdata wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just pull up a top played playlist?

Alsothe API is exposed and really easy to use.

Too bad Spotify is primarily a consumer app and not a Music-Streaming Salas to be used by third parties

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

#260

Post by psyc »

WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote: post #226
boesboes wrote: post #69

I f'ing hate spotify with a passion. The shit UX and them pushing JRE and other bullshit podcasts I dont want or need in my life was bad, but for me the final straw was that they decided to show me popups for their shit playlists when I was trying to put on one some music. Found out they have been doing it for years to people, and if you complain they basically refer you to the suggestion box and to go f yourself. I…

Hey something about this comment just seemed a bit over the top negative/angry and didn’t sit right with me. Hope you remember not to take all these small frustrations too seriously in life. Wishing you well and sending positive vibes. (and I switched to Apple too)

Here's mine.

Fuck Spotify. Any user problem gets referred to the suggestion box where you'll always be told to go fuck yourself. That's the only attitude they know: fuck you with a generic smile.

There's this feature that they think is neat, and nobody wants, where they'll switch to whatever device you pick up and pick up where you left off. The problem is that for many users, the only thing it does is persistently switch to whatever device you're not using, including your neighbor's, thereby rendering the whole app 100% unusable. And you can't turn it off.

There's a 7-year-long thread on their support forum - the only recourse - going right up to the present day, of people begging them either make the feature optional or fix it. And the only response they ever give is a straight "We are not going to fix this."

Fuck. Spotify.

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