41–50 of 81 posts
I don't think I've ever been introduced to artists I wouldn't have listened to otherwise through Spotify. In general I find Spotify's recommendation to be slightly worse than just listening to the radio. I don't have a good alternative at the moment though. A long time ago I built a music recommendation system based on Discogs that made a vector space based on the genres and then found the most similar albums of one…
That being said.... nothing ever changes. Any cloud music platform has always been just another radio-- whether they brand themselves that way or not. For the year or so that I used spotify I did find some gems, but I would forget about them as quickly as I found them.
I think of my media library as something I have to put work into to have it be meaningful. Organizing it, deciding what you keep and what you toss out, what to pay for what to skip, all make it more important to you and more memorable. Having a library in itself is also of course a useful UX thing to remind yourself what you like and continue to go back to it.
I use YouTube Music today as its family plan is reasonably priced (although the price is increasing next year) and it includes YouTube Premium…but I have found with it (and every other service I’ve tried) that I have to use other tools for actual music discovery.
I tried Spotify for a while but the promotion of Podcasts caused me to speak with my $ and stop using it…plus its music discovery is no better than YTM.
I still use LastFM as my primary source for recommendations and it does okay.
But I will never forget how wonderful Rdio was to use…it felt (atleast to me) like a service for people who loved music and discovering new music
This is very similar to what the British comedian James Acaster does/did. He buys music off Bandcamp then puts it on his iPod. He documented it all in his second book Perfect Sound Whatever, it helped him get over a breakup and depression around 2016 if I remember right. He jokes in his book that he has an 'iPod guy' who hooks him up with the old iPods. His recommendations here: https://www.jamesacaster.com/my-music/
Wow! What a list! I'd love to see more people make lists like it. I'll have to give the book a check too, thanks for sharing!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For me is the opposite, almost half the value i get from Spotify is about discovery (the other half is convenience). Specifically, I discovered amazing artists through the Discovery Weekly and the Artist's Radios. But also the "Fans also listen to" section in an artist profile. I found all sort of things, even obscure indies with a few thousands of listens and other "hidden gems". I'm really happy they now added the…
I really wish that I could (while respecting privacy) dig into real people's music tastes. I used to download songs with Napster and find some amazing song/artist, and them dig into what else that person had and loved almost all of it. I have been looking to recreate this discovery through kindred-spirits-in-music ever since.
I'd love to have discovery require a little bit of work again, there was a lot of fun and playfulness in digging.
I don't think I've ever been introduced to artists I wouldn't have listened to otherwise through Spotify. In general I find Spotify's recommendation to be slightly worse than just listening to the radio. I don't have a good alternative at the moment though. A long time ago I built a music recommendation system based on Discogs that made a vector space based on the genres and then found the most similar albums of one…
Going through my recommendations feels like a bunch of bad cover bands of things I like.
> I think a lot of people would probably look at my distaste of Spotify and recommend another, more suitable, streaming platform like Apple music or Pandora Just go to YTM? I stopped using Spotify when their client became slow and bloated. Then I went to GPM which was easy (didn't care for my library much). Then onto YTM (which in the beginning sucked), but is now close to parity with GPM. Took them a while but they…
Eh, I just left Youtube Music considering to go back to Spotify. Youtube Music has a terrible UI, lacks features, and feels like an afterthought to entice people to get Youtube Premium. Honestly, if you're paying for Youtube Premium, you might as well use YT Music, but it's all around worse than Spotify. I'm currently giving Deezer a try.
I've been using Plex with a server for my music on it for a while. I'd like to eventually switch to subsonic. Music has always been very personal for me -- I still have some sub-1000 youtube view songs I found as a 12 year old. So I've always known Spotify wouldn't be an answer for me. There's definitely a lot of unique and sometimes Spotify-exclusive content on the platform. That being said.... nothing ever changes.…
It’s helped me rediscover some of my own local music and find it to be a much better experience for listening to music via Plex.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/iNIBySph9Vc (Sorry, youtube made it a short and I don't know how to make it a video.)