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Spotify Form F-1

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Re: Spotify Form F-1

#311

Post by conradfr »

TacticalTable wrote: post #187
conradfr wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was using Spotify 3 years ago but it was killing the battery life on my Nexus 4 so I switched to Google Play Music (chose it because of the upload feature). I like the service but there is many things in the UI that I don't like: - No desktop app - Album listing is a mess: . It doesn't differentiate between singles and albums so the album list is sometimes very long for no reasons . You can't mentally filter them y…

I've really enjoyed using https://www.googleplaymusicdesktopplayer.com/ for desktop. Its just an Electron App but it seems to add a few extra features that make it much nicer to use.

Thanks I'll check it out. I used Nuvola player on Ubuntu at work which is a bit the same concept. Mostly I want access to quick play/stop buttons ...

https://tiliado.eu/nuvolaplayer/

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#312

Post by KozmoNau7 »

dx034 wrote: post #280
mancerayder wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

also think they cracked music discovery. Their discovery weekly playlist is stellar. Love Spotify, disagree strongly with this. My experience is terrible music that doesn't seem to have anything to do with any of the hundreds of songs I have on my playlist. I get this curious Millennial mix of soft rock music with long, boring instrumental guitar strumming, a disco beat and a sleepy, sarcastic-voiced gal (sometimes g…

Same for me. My Discover weekly started including Dutch rap music (I don't speak Dutch nor did I ever listen to that genre) and the percentage has been increasing ever since. It's now at 30-40% of my playlist. No idea how to get it off there again.

What music are you generally listening to?

There may be some odd connection made internally, between fans of some specific genres and Dutch rap, and you were unlucky enough to be hit by it.

I get why Spotify doesn't want to expose the connections their algorithms make (because that's their biggest competitive advantage), but it would be nice to dig through once in a while, to see the connections they've made.

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#313

Post by disappearance »

hxn wrote: post #100

I am a huge huge music fan and meanwhile I tried most music services. I had Spotify for a while too. But nowadays I prefer to use smaller sites like http://www.bandcamp.com and the sites of small labels. For discovery I use http://www.gnoosic.com an AI recommender created by a fellow HN member. For me, music consumption feels more adventurous this way.

Just to throw another into the ring: https://fanburst.com/

I discovered them recently. The model appears to be (paraphrasing) 'give us non-exclusive world-wide rights to distribute your music freely, and we'll work on ways to monetise later'.

Of note: high-profile artists Wyclef Jean and Bonobo appear to have signed up.

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#314

Post by KozmoNau7 »

pertsix wrote: post #193
KallDrexx wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my experience with Discover Weekly as well. Everyone seems to be really divided on how well their algorithms work, they either work really well or terribly. I think it's because the quality of signals their algorithm can key off of is so limited due to it being such a passive medium. There's no way to know if I listened to that track in full because I liked it or because I had it on in the background while do…

Add songs to your library. It's given more weight than simple up-thumb/down-thumb.

That may be why my recommendations seem to work so well, unlike a lot of other commenters on this article.

For posterity, I have a little under 1000 tracks saved from 200 or so artists (of which I am following around half), around 50 favorite album playlists and about as many "I should give this album a listen" playlists.

So not really a huge collection in absolute terms. It is very much focused on hard rock and metal, though.

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#315

Post by KozmoNau7 »

sandos wrote: post #278
voltagex_ wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me too, but I'm worried about what it will mean for my music listening when Spotify goes away. I think the last time I tried to price a single one of my playlists, it'd cost me thousands to buy the songs and that's without trying to track down FLACs.

Literally everybody uses spotify atleast here in Europe. I dont think its going away to be honest? Not for a very long time anyway.

Spotify is a major cash cow for the labels, so it's in their best interest to keep it going.

It wouldn't surprise me if they end up killing their golden goose out of sheer incompetence, though.

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#316

Post by KozmoNau7 »

einr wrote: post #302
jakecopp wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does paying for Spotify actually help any artists meaningfully though? I've been wondering whether paying for a Bandcamp album every so often to match the cost of Spotify, and pirating music otherwise would actually benefit artists more. I've read that Spotify pays fractions of a cent per play, where as Bandcamp pays out quite well, better than iTunes and Google Play.

Does paying for Spotify actually help any artists meaningfully though? No. Your monthly $10, after Spotify and the labels get their majority cut, goes by percentage to the most popular artists on the service, with absolutely no regard to which artists you have personally listened to, so if you have even remotely obscure taste you are effectively not supporting the artists at all . Bandcamp, on the other hand, takes a…

Has this payout structure been conclusively documented? I mean specifically the part about obscure artists getting absolutely nothing.

I know a couple of relatively obscure bands personally, and they do get something from Spotify. It's not much, but they do get a little bit. They consider streaming more as advertising that gets their name out there and their music easily accessible, but they make most of the actual money from shows and merch.

E: Artists can see their playcount stats and payouts here: https://artists.spotify.com and as far as I know, even niche artists are paid the $0.006 per song, not just the biggest players.

E2: I am a huge fan of the Bandcamp model, though. Most of the time I find music there that isn't on Spotify, and I've also bought albums on there even though they're on Spotify as well, because I want to support the artists directly. I have completely stopped buying physical albums.

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#317

Post by croon »

einr wrote: post #302
jakecopp wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does paying for Spotify actually help any artists meaningfully though? I've been wondering whether paying for a Bandcamp album every so often to match the cost of Spotify, and pirating music otherwise would actually benefit artists more. I've read that Spotify pays fractions of a cent per play, where as Bandcamp pays out quite well, better than iTunes and Google Play.

Does paying for Spotify actually help any artists meaningfully though? No. Your monthly $10, after Spotify and the labels get their majority cut, goes by percentage to the most popular artists on the service, with absolutely no regard to which artists you have personally listened to, so if you have even remotely obscure taste you are effectively not supporting the artists at all . Bandcamp, on the other hand, takes a…

Isn't distributing each subscribers fee individually and distributing all of them collectively by listening habits the same thing?

Made up example: $100000000 * 0.0000001 of all listening activity = $10

Or $10 * 1 of all my listening activity = $10

Or are you saying that Spotify cuts off at a certain point and doesn't pay anything out, or that they take a fixed cut after allocation?

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#318

Post by Cthulhu_ »

mancerayder wrote: post #219
dopeboy wrote: post #96

Spotify is the reason why I don't pirate music anymore. I say this as someone who used to be involved in the scene (low level FXP couriering in the late 90s and early 00s) and has gigs of release from the RNS, EGO, etc days. It's much faster and convenient to use Spotify. I also think they cracked music discovery. Their discovery weekly playlist is stellar. My only wish is they'd get off Electron (EDIT Chromium - tha…

also think they cracked music discovery. Their discovery weekly playlist is stellar. Love Spotify, disagree strongly with this. My experience is terrible music that doesn't seem to have anything to do with any of the hundreds of songs I have on my playlist. I get this curious Millennial mix of soft rock music with long, boring instrumental guitar strumming, a disco beat and a sleepy, sarcastic-voiced gal (sometimes g…

I think Discovery is good, but only at first, same with the Daily Mix / Radio / autoplay-after-finishing-album features, which for me seem to be a lot of "more of the same" or a lot of "generic blargh". Mind you I've probably already exhausted what I like by now. I should probably cancel my sub for a while and see if Apple Music is any better or at least gives me something fresh.

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#319

Post by deadbunny »

noway421 wrote: post #284
tomc1985 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their coverage of indie labels and the dance music underground still sucks. Plus I don't think their streaming is lossless and you can easily spot the difference with something as simple as a pair of $100 wireless headphones (NOT beats) hooked up to a $100 USB headphone amp.

There's high definition audio setting somewhere in preferences, although that might be just higher bitrate

IIRC it's basically the equivalent of going from 192kbps to 320kbps.

Re: Spotify Form F-1

#320

Post by KozmoNau7 »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #242
tomc1985 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their coverage of indie labels and the dance music underground still sucks. Plus I don't think their streaming is lossless and you can easily spot the difference with something as simple as a pair of $100 wireless headphones (NOT beats) hooked up to a $100 USB headphone amp.

Their streaming is not lossless. There are also two different quality levels for streaming that you can choose in settings, ensure you've selected high quality, I'm not sure what the default is. Upon saying that, even with my Sennheiser HD 202s and Macbook built-in audio I can tell the difference between Spotify and lossless FLAC. My Australian internet is so bad that I probably couldn't even stream FLAC anyway.

Default is 160kbps Ogg Vorbis, high quality is 320kbps.

For the mobile app, it's 96, 160 and 320 for normal, high and extreme, respectively.

Chromecast and the browser-based player both use AAC, at a maximum of 256kbps.

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